Enhancements to the Autofs Automounter
Ricardo Labiaga · USENIX Large Installation Systems Administration Conference · 1999
An automounter is a system tool that enables administrators to share a uniform file system name space across an organization. Until the introduction of the enhanced autofs automounter, no automounter had integrated browsability of maps into the operating system. This paper describes enhancements made to the autofs automounter that enable entry listing in automounter maps without triggering mount storms. This allows applications to seamlessly browse potential mountable entries without the overhead of file system mounts. In addition, this paper describes the implementation of lazy mounting of hierarchies, which improves on-demand file system mounting.