[Freeipa-devel] automount in LDAP

[Rob Crittenden]

Nalin Dahyabhai wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 05, 2008 at 04:49:57PM -0500, Rob Crittenden wrote:
>> Ok, here is some LDIF that will define some defaults. I haven't tackled  
>> auto.home yet.
> [snip]
>> So adding a new direct mount is as simple as:
>>
>> ipa automount-addkey --key=share --info=server:/share auto.direct
> 
> Slick!
> 
>> Nalin, if I create an auto.home map that handles /home is that going to  
>> confuse local accounts who exist on /home? That happens on Solaris and  
>> has always driven me nuts.
> 
> Yes.  On Linux, at least, /home becomes a mount point for an autofs
> filesystem, and behaves like other mount points (meaning whatever was
> there before the filesystem was mounted is hidden until it's unmounted
> again).
> 
> You could get around that using the direct map, but that requires more
> resources, maybe too many.
> 
> I don't have hard numbers to back it up, but I expect that heavy users
> of the automounter make sure to either store home directories for local
> users elsewhere on the filesystem (/export?), or to use some other
> location for the mountpoint (in school, we used /ncsu).
> 

Ok, so how about an API to create indirect maps. Then all one would need 
to do is add the keys (mounts) needed.

As I understand it a new indirect map requires 2 entries, one that 
defines the map name itself and one that associates the mount point with 
  that map.

So it might look something like:

% ipa automount-addindirect --root=/export auto.export

This will create these two entries:

dn: automountmapname=auto.export, cn=automount, $SUFFIX
objectclass: automountmap

dn: automountkey=/export, automountmapname=auto.master, cn=automount, 
$SUFFIX
objectclass: automount
automountinformation: ldap:automountmapname=auth.export, cn=automount, 
$SUFFIX
automountkey=/export

Then you could add a new key with:

% ipa automount-addkey --key=src --info=server:/exports/stuff/src 
auto.export

And then have /export/src available.

If I'm reading this right this should be equivalent to:

auto.master:
	/export	auto.share

auto.export:
	src	server:/exports/stuff/src

What this buys one is that the admin adding the indirect map doesn't 
need to worry about the details of the automountinformation attribute.

Does this make sense?

And one more question. If I want to provide some mount options, say 
-ro,soft, where are those applied? I assume it goes into the attribute 
automountInformation but is it a prefix or a suffix:

So:

automountInformation: server:/exports/stuff/src -ro,soft

OR

automountInformation: -ro,soft server:/exports/stuff/src

thanks

rob