automount solaris and linux

I have a mixed environment with a Solaris file server and some Solaris and various flavored Linux clients. My server runs NIS and serves home directories. I want to be able to have my Linux clients mount most of the users home directories from the file server using NIS for the automounting, but also have a handful of home directories that are on the client that are mounted.

So, supposed I have users foo and bar, and hosts Server (Solaris) and Client (FC2). Foo's home directory is on Server and bar's home directory is on Client. When foo logs in to Client, /home/foo should be Server:/aux/home/foo. When bar logs into Client, /home/bar should be Client:/aux/home/bar.

Client's nsswitch.conf file contains an entry "automount files nis".

Client's /etc/auto.home file only contains "bar -intr localhost:/aux/home/&".

I've tried a couple things with Client's /etc/auto.master file. "/home /etc/auto.home" will mount the local directory, but not the remote. "/home yp:auto.home" will mount the remote directory.

What do I need to have in Client's /etc/auto.master and/or /etc/auto.home files in order to mount both the local and remote home directories?

Thanks in advance!

I beleive you can specify network shares in /etc/fstab/ you just have to pass the proper options such as passwords and usernames.

I don't know NIS concept but a working NFS setup would be :

/etc/auto.master :

/home     /etc/auto.home

/etc/auto.home :

foo    -fstype=nfs,rw,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,hard,intr   Server:/aux/home/foo

Originally posted by keefaz I don't know NIS concept but a working NFS setup would be : /etc/auto.master : /home /etc/auto.home /etc/auto.home : foo -fstype=nfs,rw,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,hard,intr Server:/aux/home/foo

NIS basically means I have one set of maps (auto.home etc) that I maintain on one master server and all my clients get their information from that server, so I only need to maintain information in one place.

The problem with having the remote information in the local auto.home is that then I end up maintaining multiple copies, one on the master and then one on each client for which I need to have a different configuration.

Basically the problem boils down to why doesn't the entry in nsswitch.conf work properly? On my Solaris computers I can have an /etc/auto.home and the nsswitch.conf file has "automount files nis" so anything I have in the local file takes precedence, but if an entry isn't found in the local file, it automatically checks the nis table for that map. That is the behavior I need for the Linux computers as well, but so far I am at a loss as to how to make it do this.

Thanks!

The automounter in Linux is autofs, it has a kernel part (compiled into it or as a module) and
a software part (automount deamon which need to be started after each boot, with an
init script)

Do you have autofs package installed in your system and is autofs enabled in your kernel ?

I think so. The Linux clients are running a standard FC2 installation. I checked with rpm and I have autofs 4.something

Also, I can make the automounting work so that I can have either a local /etc/auto.home OR a NIS auto.home, but I can't figure out how to set it up to do both at the same time, which is what I need to do. That's why I have the nsswitch.conf set up the way I do, but it's not working the way I expect it to....