[vox-tech] autofs - visible mountpoints and mountpoint locations

[Mark K. Kim]

Heh... maybe you can kill two birds with one stone here.  What if you
create /cdrom, /floppy, ... as symblinks to /auto/cdrom, /auto/floppy,
...?  Then whenever you access /cdrom, the kernel's gonna try to access
/auto/cdrom, which will then tell autofs to check the CDROM and mount it
if necessary.

Just an idea.  I personally don't like automounting at all, partly because
I can't tell when it's mounting and unmounting and I can't be sure if I
can just pop my floppy out, and it doesn't let me eject the CD sometimes,
it doesn't recognize new floppy properly when I swap in a new floppy, ...

-Mark


On Sun, 29 Jun 2003, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:

> hi all,
>
> i just learned how to configure and use autofs.  works great except for
> a few minor glitches.
>
> one of the minor glitches is that the mount point, say, /auto/cdrom,
> disappears until the filesystem gets mount.  for example, this produces
> no output:
>
>    $ ls /auto/
>
> however, this produces the the directory listing for the cd drive:
>
>    $ ls /auto/cdrom
>
> in other words, when automount runs, the mount point is not there until
> you ls or cd into the directory.  when the filesystem gets unmounted,
> the mount point directory again disappears.
>
> i googled for this, and found that other people experience the same
> thing.  it kind of sucks because:
>
> 1. can't use filename completion (which i rely on)
>
> 2. graphical file openers cannot reach the filesytem.
>
> 3. having to tickle the directory before you use it is just
>    very unaesthetic.
>
> does anybody know a way around this?   in other words, does anybody know
> how to keep the directories visible even when the filesystem isn't
> mounted?
>
> i could've sworn i've installed mandrake systems at our IF's that had
> this behavior....
>
>
>
> another minor glitch is that it appears you can't automount onto a top
> level directory.  in other words, i can have the cd automount into
> /auto/cdrom but not into /cdrom.  this is frustrating, because i really
> like having the mountpoint /cdrom.  can someone confirm or refute this?
> if possible, i'd REALLY like to have /cdrom, /floppy, and /jaz automount
> rather than /auto/cdrom, /auto/floppy, and /auto/jaz.
>
> thanks!
> pete
>
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-- 
Mark K. Kim
http://www.cbreak.org/
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