Solaris™ Operating Environment Boot Camp By David Rhodes, Dominic Butler
Table of Contents
Chapter 18. NFS, DFS, and Autofs
Solaris can use the standard mounting mechanism (mount and /etc/vfstab) for NFS-based filesystems to provide a static connection between the client and the remote file system. This means that when a machine boots, it will mount the device just as it would a local disk and it will remain connected while the machine is available.
When many machines act as NFS servers, it can become cumbersome and awkward to manage all the mount points, so Autofs is supplied to alleviate these problems. It is an "automatic-mounting filesystem," and is commonly known as the "automouter."
Autofs can also be incorporated into a naming service, allowing them to be centrally administered.
