Enterprise Linux - Autofs Automounting

Implementing an automount to NFS /home directory when user login to NIS client.

• NFS Client

Make sure netfs, nfslock, portmap are installed and daemons are running.
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# chkconfig nfslock on
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# service nfslock start 
Starting NFS statd:                                        [  OK  ]
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# chkconfig portmap on
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# service portmap start
Starting portmapper:                                       [  OK  ]
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# chkconfig netfs on
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# service netfs start
Mounting other filesystems:                                [  OK  ]
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# mv /home /home.save
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# mkdir /home
Manual mount
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# mount 10.3.20.100:/home /home
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# umount /home
Configure autofs automount
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# cat /etc/auto.master
/home   /etc/auto.home
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# cat /etc/auto.home
*   -fstype=nfs,soft,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,nosuid,tcp 10.3.20.100:/home/&
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# chkconfig autofs on
[root@linux64-client1 ~]# service autofs restart
Stopping automount:                                        [  OK  ]
Starting automount:                                        [  OK  ]
[root@linux64-client1 ~]#


After doing this, you won’t be able to see the contents of the /home directory on linux64-server as user root. This is because by default NFS activates the root squash feature, which disables this user from having privileged access to directories on remote NFS servers.