Using the NFS Server from HP Tru64 Unix

It is possible to set up the /etc/fstab file to manually mount all of the nfs-uxsup exports at boot. This however, involves tracking any changes we make. While we try to keep these to a minimum, they do happen from time to time. Because of this, this page will explain how to use the automounter to handle all our exports. It will take care of tracking any changes.

It's also possible to configure the automounter to use a /net directory in the same way as Solaris. However, the HP implementation has a serious limitation. Rather than attempt to mount everything exported from a target system, Tru64 appears to only attempt to mount those directories exported to it explicitly or to the world. If a directory is exported to a netgroup that the client cnnot resolve, but is in, then the client will not attempt to mount the directory. This means that Unix Support's /dec export will not be mounted by this means.

Setting up the automounter

We are going to create a directory called /nfs-uxsup and configure the automounter so that whenever someone looks for /nfs-uxsup/directory it should try to mount it from nfs-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk:/directory.

Enable the automounter. As root you should run the nfssetup program. If the automounter is started with the option "-f /etc/auto.master" it will read its instructions from the file /etc/auto.master This is the most manageable way to control it on a single machine. (You might want to consider NIS maps on multiple machines.)

# nfsssetup
 ...
        Would you like to run the automount daemon [n] ? y

  Enter line of arguments to follow 'automount' (if any).
  See the automount(8) manpage for argument definitions.
  Note: the rcmgr(8) utility can later be used to change
  the arguments to automount (AUTOMOUNT_ARGS variable).

   % automount -f /etc/auto.master

  The automount daemon will be started as follows:

   % automount -f /etc/auto.master

  Is this correct [y] ? y
 ...

Create the /nfs-uxsup directory.

# mkdir /nfs-uxsup

Create the configuration file ("map file") for the automounter to know what do do with this directory. It needs to contain the following line. In this example we will call file file /etc/auto.uxsup.

*       nfs-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk:/&

Next, add the following line to the automounter master control file, /etc/auto.master, to tell it about this new directory it controls.

/nfs-uxsup	/etc/auto.uxsup

And finally, (re)start the automounter to read in the new master control file.

# /sbin/init.d/nfsmount stop
Unmounting NFS filesystems

# sleep 5

# /sbin/init.d/nfsmount start
Mounting NFS filesystems
NFS automount service started

Example of use

$ ls /nfs-uxsup

$ ls /nfs-uxsup/bsd
4.4BSD-Lite/ FreeBSD/