NIS, automounting, Solaris and headaches

[Derek D. Martin]

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At some point hitherto, Mark Komarinski hath spake thusly:
> > My gut instinct tells me this is a 'direct map' which is Verbotten in 
> > LinuxLand :(  Linux's autofs has no support for direct maps.  You 
> > might be okay using a Linux client and a Solaris server this way, but 
> > it will definitely fail with an all-Linux environment.
>  
> I figured it out.  They were direct maps, and I've started converting
> to indirect.  This is one of the places where Linux is really lacking
> in "prime time" capabilities.  NFS encryption support would be
> nice too.

Well, as Tom B. pointed out, indirect maps are a bit more efficient
than direct maps, and should be supported by any autofs
implementation...  You might as well just convert everything over
(assuming you don't have other constraints preventing you from doing
so).

The Linux autofs team does (or at least did) eventually plan to add
direct map support; however there's no great rush to do so for three
main reasons:

  - direct maps are hard to implement (required significant kernel
    changes, IIRC)
  - you can generally achieve the same effect with indirect maps
  - indirect maps are better

I'd personally switch over entirely to indirect maps, but be sure to
document WHY directly in the map files.  This will help future
administrators who've been accustomed to using direct maps to not make
the mistake of trying to switch back.

- -- 
Derek Martin               ddm at pizzashack.org    
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