Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two

Hack #57. Automount NFS Home Directories with autofs

Let users log in from any machine and be in familiar territory.

If you administer an environment that supports large numbers of users who occasionally need access to any one of a wide array of hosts on your network, you might find it a bit tiring having to answer support calls every time your users try to log into a machine only to find that their home directories are nowhere to be found. Sure, you could run over and edit the /etc/fstab file to NFS-mount the remote home directories and fix things using that machine's NFS client, but there are a couple of downsides to handling things in this way.

First, your /etc/fstab file will eventually grow quite large as you add more and more mounts. Second, if a user leaves your department, you'll be left with the choice of either dealing with failed mount requests in your logfiles (assuming you removed the user's home directory at the time of departure) or running around and editing files on all of the machines that have the entry causing the error. Which machines have the offending entry? Well, you'll just have to look, won't you? This is not a position you want to find yourself in if you maintain large labs, clusters, and testing or development environments.

One thought might be to mount a directory from an NFS server that holds the /etc/fstab file. This is asking for trouble, since this file is in charge of handling not only NFS mounts, but the mounts of your local devices (read: hard drives). ...