New Features of AutoFS

On-demand mounting - In previous versions, AutoFS mounted an entire set of file systems if they were hierarchically related. However, Enhanced AutoFS mounts only those file systems that users access; other file systems that are hierarchically related to these file systems are mounted as needed. This increases the performance by preventing unnecessary mounting and unmounting.

Browsability - Enhanced AutoFS allows a user to view the directories that can be mounted for indirect maps, without having to actually mount each file system.

Device ID - Enhanced AutoFS uses the device id of a mounted file system stored in the /etc/mnttab file as a reference for a future unmount. This increases the performance because during unmounting, Enhanced AutoFS does not have to retrieve the device id from the remote file system.

Concurrent mount or unmount - Enhanced AutoFS performs concurrent mounts and unmounts using a multithreaded automountd daemon. This results in a performance enhancement, which prevents services from hanging if a server is unavailable.

Reliable NFS ping - Enhanced AutoFS supports a -retry=n mount option for an NFS map entry to configure the ping timeout value based on the network setup.

CIFS Client support - Enhanced AutoFS has the ability to support HP CIFS Client.

NFS loopback mount - By default, Enhanced AutoFS uses LOFS mounts for locally mounted file systems. Enhanced AutoFS provides an option to allow loopback NFS mounts for the local mount. You need to use this option in the High Availability NFS environments.