Provided by: autofs_5.1.8-1ubuntu3_amd64 
NAME
autofs - Format of the automounter maps
DESCRIPTION
The automounter maps are FILE, NIS, NISPLUS or LDAP (including LDAP via SSS) referred to
by the master map of the automounter (see auto.master(5)). These maps describe how file
systems below the mount point of the map (given in the master map) are to be mounted.
This page describes the sun map format; if another map format, other than amd , is
specified (e.g. hesiod), this documentation does not apply.
Indirect maps, except for the internal hosts map, can be changed on the fly and the
automouter will recognize those changes on the next operation it performs on that map.
Direct maps require a HUP signal be sent to the daemon to refresh their contents as does
the master map.
SUN FORMAT
This is a description of the text file format. Other methods of specifying these files
may exist. All empty lines or lines beginning with # are ignored. The basic format of one
line in such maps is:
key [-options] location
key
For indirect mounts this is the part of the path name between the mount point and
the path into the filesystem when it is mounted. Usually you can think about the
key as a sub-directory name below the autofs managed mount point.
For direct mounts this is the full path of each mount point. This map is always
associated with the /- mount point in the master map.
options
Zero or more options may be given. Options can also be given in the auto.master
file in which case both values are cumulative (this is a difference from SunOS).
The options are a list of comma separated options as customary for the mount(8)
command.
There are several special options
-fstype=
is used to specify a filesystem type if the filesystem is not of the default
NFS type. This option is processed by the automounter and not by the mount
command.
-strict
is used to treat errors when mounting file systems as fatal. This is
important when multiple file systems should be mounted (`multi-mounts'). If
this option is given, no file system is mounted at all if at least one file
system can't be mounted.
-use-weight-only
is used to make the weight the sole factor in selecting a server when
multiple servers are present in a map entry.
-no-use-weight-only
can be used to negate the option if it is present in the master map entry
for the map but is not wanted for the given mount.
location
The location specifies from where the file system is to be mounted. In the most
cases this will be an NFS volume and the usual notation host:pathname is used to
indicate the remote filesystem and path to be mounted. If the filesystem to be
mounted begins with a / (such as local /dev entries or smbfs shares) a : needs to
be prefixed (e.g. :/dev/sda1).
EXAMPLE
Indirect map:
kernel -ro,soft ftp.kernel.org:/pub/linux
boot -fstype=ext2 :/dev/hda1
windoze -fstype=smbfs ://windoze/c
removable -fstype=ext2 :/dev/hdd
cd -fstype=iso9660,ro :/dev/hdc
floppy -fstype=auto :/dev/fd0
server -rw,hard / -ro myserver.me.org:/ \
/usr myserver.me.org:/usr \
/home myserver.me.org:/home
In the first line we have a NFS remote mount of the kernel directory on ftp.kernel.org.
This is mounted read-only. The second line mounts an ext2 volume from a local ide drive.
The third makes a share exported from a Windows machine available for automounting. The
rest should be fairly self-explanatory. The last entry (the last three lines) is an
example of a multi-map (see below).
If you use the automounter for a filesystem without access permissions (like vfat), users
usually can't write on such a filesystem because it is mounted as user root. You can
solve this problem by passing the option gid=<gid>, e.g. gid=floppy. The filesystem is
then mounted as group floppy instead of root. Then you can add the users to this group,
and they can write to the filesystem. Here's an example entry for an autofs map:
floppy-vfat -fstype=vfat,sync,gid=floppy,umask=002 :/dev/fd0
Direct map:
/nfs/apps/mozilla bogus:/usr/local/moxill
/nfs/data/budgets tiger:/usr/local/budgets
/tst/sbin bogus:/usr/sbin
FEATURES
Map Key Substitution
An & character in the location is expanded to the value of the key field that matched the
line (which probably only makes sense together with a wildcard key).
Wildcard Key
A map key of * denotes a wild-card entry. This entry is consulted if the specified key
does not exist in the map. A typical wild-card entry looks like this:
* server:/export/home/&
The special character '&' will be replaced by the provided key. So, in the example above,
a lookup for the key 'foo' would yield a mount of server:/export/home/foo.
Variable Substitution
The following special variables will be substituted in the location field of an
automounter map entry if prefixed with $ as customary from shell scripts (curly braces can
be used to separate the field name):
ARCH Architecture (uname -m)
CPU Processor Type
HOST Hostname (uname -n)
OSNAME Operating System (uname -s)
OSREL Release of OS (uname -r)
OSVERS Version of OS (uname -v)
autofs provides additional variables that are set based on the user requesting the mount:
USER The user login name
UID The user login ID
GROUP The user group name
GID The user group ID
HOME The user home directory
SHOST Short hostname (domain part removed if present)
If a program map is used these standard environment variables will have a prefix of
"AUTOFS_" to prevent interpreted languages like python from being able to load and execute
arbitrary code from a user home directory.
Additional entries can be defined with the -Dvariable=Value map-option to automount(8).
Executable Maps
A map can be marked as executable. A program map will be called with the key as an
argument. It may return no lines of output if there's an error, or one or more lines
containing a map entry (with \ quoting line breaks). The map entry corresponds to what
would normally follow a map key.
An executable map can return an error code to indicate the failure in addition to no
output at all. All output sent to stderr is logged into the system logs.
Multiple Mounts
A multi-mount map can be used to name multiple filesystems to mount. It takes the form:
key [ -options ] [[/] location [/relative-mount-point [ -options ] location...]...
This may extend over multiple lines, quoting the line-breaks with `\ยด. If present, the
per-mountpoint mount-options are appended to the default mount-options. This behaviour may
be overridden by the append_options configuration setting.
Replicated Server
A mount location can specify multiple hosts for a location, portentially with a different
export path for the same file system. Historically these different locations are read-only
and provide the same replicated file system.
Multiple replicated hosts, same path:
<path> host1,host2,hostn:/path/path
Multiple hosts, some with same path, some with another
<path> host1,host2:/blah host3:/some/other/path
Multiple replicated hosts, different (potentially) paths:
<path> host1:/path/pathA host2:/path/pathB
Multiple weighted, replicated hosts same path:
<path> host1(5),host2(6),host3(1):/path/path
Multiple weighted, replicated hosts different (potentially) paths:
<path> host1(3):/path/pathA host2(5):/path/pathB
Anything else is questionable and unsupported, but these variations will also work:
<path> host1(3),host:/blah
UNSUPPORTED
This version of the automounter supports direct maps stored in FILE, NIS, NISPLUS and LDAP
(including LDAP via SSS) only.
AMD FORMAT
This is a description of the text file format. Other methods of specifying mount map
entries may be required for different map sources. All empty lines or lines beginning
with # are ignored. The basic format of one line in such maps is:
key location-list
key
A key is a path (or a single path component alone) that may end in the wildcard
key, "*", or the wildcard key alone and must not begin with the "/" character.
location-list
Following the key is a mount location-list.
A location-list list has the following syntax:
location[ location[ ... ]] [|| location[ location[ ... ]]
A mount location-list can use the cut operator, ||, to specify locations that should be
tried if none of the locations to the left of it where selected for a mount attempt.
A mount location consists of an optional colon separated list of selectors, followed by a
colon separated list of option:=value pairs.
The selectors that may be used return a value or boolean result. Those that return a
value may be to used with the comparison operators == and != and those that return a
boolean result may be negated with the !.
For a location to be selected for a mount attempt all of its selectors must evaluate to
true. If a location is selected for a mount attempt and succeeds the lookup is completed
and returns success. If the mount attempt fails the procedure continues with the next
location until they have all been tried.
In addition, some selectors take no arguments, some one argument and others optionally
take two arguments.
The selectors that take no arguments are:
arch
The machine architecture which, if not set in the configuration, is obtained
using uname(2).
karch
The machine kernel architecture which, if not set in the configuration, is
obtained using uname(2).
os
The operating system name, if not set in the configuration, is obtained
using uname(2).
osver
The operating system version, if not set in the configuration, is obtained
using uname(2).
full_os
The full operating system name, if not set in the configuration this
selector has no value.
vendor
The operating system vendor name, if not set in the configuration this
selector has the value "unknown".
byte
The endianness of the hardware.
cluster
The name of the local cluster. It has a value only if it is set in the
configuration.
autodir
The base path under which external mounts are done if they are needed. Most
mounts are done in place but some can't be and this is the base path under
which those mounts will be done.
domain
The local domain name. It is set to the value of the configuration option
sub_domain. If sub_domain is not given in the configuration it is set to the
domain part of the local host name, as given by gethostname(2).
host
The local host name, without the domain part, as given by gethostname(2).
hostd
The full host name. If sub_domain is given in the configuration this is set
to the contatenation of host and sub_domain deperated by a .. If sub_domain
is not set in the configuration the value of domain is used instead of
sub_domain.
uid
The numeric value of the uid of the user that first requested the mount.
Note this is usual the same as that used by amd but can be different within
autofs.
gid
The numeric value of the gid of the user that first requested the mount.
Note this is usual the same as that used by amd but can be different within
autofs.
key
The string value of the key being looked up.
map
The string value of the map name used to lookup keys.
path
The string value of the full path to the mount being requested.
dollar
Evaluates to the string "$".
The selectors that take one argument are:
in_network(network) , network(network) , netnumber(network) , wire(network)
These selectors are all the same. in_network() is the preferred usage. The
network argument is an address (which may include a subnet mask) or network
name. The function compares network against each interface and returns true
if network belongs to the network the interface is connected to.
xhost(hostname)
The xhost() selector compares hostname to the ${host} and if it doesn't
match it attempts to lookup the cannonical name of hostname and compares it
to {host} as well.
exists(filename)
Returns true if filename exits as determined by lstat(2).
true()
Evaluates to true, the argument is ignored and may be empty.
false()
Evaluates to false, the argument is ignored and may be empty.
The selectors that take up to two arguments are:
netgrp(netgroup[,hostname])
The netgrp() selector returns true if hostname is a member of the netgroup
netgroup. If hostname is not given ${host} is used for the comparison.
netgrpd(netgroup[,hostname])
The netgrpd()i selector behaves the same as netgrp() except that if hostname
is not given ${hostd}, the fully qualified hostname, is used instead of
${host}.
The options that may be used are:
type
This is the mount filesystem type. It can have a value of auto, link,
linkx, host, lofs, ext2-4, xfs, nfs, nfsl or cdfs. Other types that are not
yet implemented or are not available in autofs are nfsx, lustre, jfs,
program, cachefs and direct.
maptype
The maptype option specifies the type of the map source and can have a value
of file, nis, nisplus, exec, ldap or hesiod. Map sources either not yet
implemented or not available in autofs are sss, ndbm, passwd and union.
fs
The option fs is used to specify the local filesystem. The meaning of this
option (and whether or not it is used) is dependent on the mount filesystem
type.
rhost
The remote host name for network mount requests.
rfs
The remote host filesystem path for network mount requests.
dev
Must resolve to the device file for local device mount requests.
sublink
The sublink option is used to specify a subdirectory within the mount
location to which this entry will point.
pref
The pref option is used to specify a prefix that is prepended to the lookup
key before looking up the map entry key.
opts
The opts option is used to specify mount options to be used for the mount.
If a "-" is given it is ignored. Options that may be used are dependent on
the mount filesystem.
addopts
The addopts option is used to specify additional mount options used in
addition to the default mount options for the mount location.
remopts
The addopts option is used to specify mount options used instead the options
given in opts when the mount location is on a remote retwork.
A number of options aren't available or aren't yet implemented
within autofs, these are:
cache
The cache option isn't used by autofs. The map entry cache is continually
updated and stale entries cleaned on re-load when map changes are detected
so these configuration entries are not used. The regex map key matching is
not implemented and may not be due to the potential overhead of the full map
scans needed on every key lookup.
cachedir
The cachefs filesystem is not available on Linux, a different implementation
is used for caching network mounted file systems.
mount , unmount , umount
These options are used by the amd program mount type which is not yet
implemented.
delay
This option is not used by the autofs implementation and is ignored.
FEATURES
Key Matching
The amd parser key matching is unusual.
The key string to be looked up is constructed by prepending the prefix, if there is one.
The resulting relative path string is matched by first trying the sting itself. If no
match is found the last component of the key string is replaced with the wildcard match
character ("*") and a wildcard match is attempted. This process continues until a match is
found or until the last match, against the wildcard match key alone, fails to match a map
entry and the key lookup fails.
Macro Usage
Macros are used a lot in the autofs amd implementation.
Many of the option values are set as macro variables corresponding to the option name
during the map entry parse. So they may be used in subsequent option values. Beware
though, the order in which option values is not necessarily left to right so you may get
unexpected results.
EXAMPLE
Example NFS mount map:
Assuming we have the autofs master map entry:
/test file,amd:/etc/amd.test
And the following map in /etc/amd.test:
/defaults type:=nfs;rhost:=bilbo
apps rfs:=/autofs
util rhost:=zeus;rfs:=/work/util
local rfs:=/shared;sublink:=local
In the first line we have an NFS remote mount of the exported directory /autofs from host
bilbo which would be mounted on /test/apps. Next another nfs mount for the exported
directory /work/util from host zeus. This would be mounted on /test/util.
Finally, we have an example of the use of the sublink option. In this case the filesystem
bilbo:/shared would be mounted on a path external the automount directory (under the
directory given by configuration option auto_dir) and the path /test/local either
symlinked or bind mounted (depending on the setting autofs_use_lofs) to the "local"
subdirectory of the external mount.
NOTES
To be able to use IPv6 within autofs maps the package must be build to use the libtirpc
library for its RPC communications. This is because the glibc RPC implementation doesn't
support IPv6 and is deprecated so this is not likely to change.
SEE ALSO
automount(8), auto.master(5), autofs(8), autofs.conf(5), mount(8),
autofs_ldap_auth.conf(5).
AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Christoph Lameter <chris@waterf.org>, for the Debian
GNU/Linux system. Edited by H. Peter Avian <hpa@transmeta.com>, Jeremy Fitzhardinge
<jeremy@goop.org> and Ian Kent <raven@themaw.net>.
9 Feb 2014 AUTOFS(5)