Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 14:59:42 -0700 (PDT) From: Don Lewis <truckman@FreeBSD.org> To: brandon@dvalentine.com Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: amd/autofs on BSD (was Re: waiting on sbwait) Message-ID: <200406252159.i5PLxgE8061116@gw.catspoiler.org> In-Reply-To: <20040625200419.GA51537@brandon.dvalentine.com>
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On 25 Jun, Brandon D. Valentine wrote: > On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 02:43:03PM +0300, Danny Braniss wrote: >> I understand, but the problem is that all access via amd are now stalled, till >> the one process failes/times-out. I guess it's because the single thread amd. > > This is an excellent opportunity to ask: > > Is anyone working on or does anyone know of a project to develop a real > autofs implementation for BSD that's compatible with the autofs > implementations on every other UNIX? I see where am-utils got some > 'gamma quality' autofs support added for Linux and Solaris systems, but > still nada on BSD. IMO amd has probably outlived its usefulness and > should be shot in the head and replaced with a Sun-style automounter. > It does much to discourage BSDs adoption in large multiuser environments > when it requires special cruft to make it play nicely with automounting. In two different large scale automounter deployments, I've used amd rather than the old Sun automounter or autofs because of the extra flexibility in amd. For instance, I can use different mount options (rsize, wsize, timeouts, etc.) when mounting file systems between sites versus mounting file systems local to the LAN while only having to maintain one set of maps. I've also found good uses for type:=link maps. It's also useful to be able to distribute maps via hesiod (DNS), especially when the enterprise has multiple NIS domains. That said, I would dearly like to avoid the need for a separate mount point for the automounted file systems. It's ugly when this wierd path shows up in the outout of pwd. It is even worse when software caches this path and tries to return there after the file system has been unmounted and fails because it is bypassing the automounter. Autofs is much nicer in that respect.
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