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7. Testing Your Automounter

CAUTION: Before killing your automount daemons, make sure no one is using the mounted filesystem

Common problems such as "hung commands" and slow commands can be avoided by a well administered network policy.

7.1 To Kill, Start, Reload Your Automounter

To Kill your automounter

root# /etc/rc.d/init.d/autofs stop

To Start your automounter

root# etc/rc.d/init.d/autofs start

To Reload your automounter

root# /etc/rc.d/init.d/autofs reload

                Checking for changes to /etc/auto.master ....
                Start /usr/sbin/automount --timeout 60 /.autofs file /etc/auto.misc
                #
                # Check the log file ( /var/log/messages )
                #
                Aug 14 01:18:24 xxx automount[764]: starting automounter version 0.3.14, path = /.autofs, maptype = file, mapname = /etc/auto.misc
                Aug 14 01:18:24 xxx automount[764]: >> mount: automount(pid764) already mounted or /.autofs busy
                Aug 14 01:18:24 xxx automount[764]: >> mount: according to mtab, automount(pid370) is already mounted on /.autofs
                Aug 14 01:18:24 xxx automount[764]: /.autofs: mount failed

7.2 Verify the log files for any error messages

Please verify that log messages in /var/log/messages, you should see the following if it mounted your directories properly

        Messages at boot time

        root# tail -100 /var/log/messages | grep automount 
                Aug 14 01:05:36 xxx automount[370]: starting automounter version 0.3.14, path = /.autofs, maptype = file, mapname = /etc/auto.misc
                Aug 14 01:05:36 xxx automount[370]: using kernel protocol version 3
                Aug 14 01:05:38 xxx automount[370]: attempting to mount entry /.autofs/local
                Aug 14 01:05:53 xxx automount[370]: attempting to mount entry /.autofs/mail

7.3 To See the Status of your automounter

        root# ps auxwl | grep auto      or:  root# ps auxwl | grep '[a]uto'
                /usr/sbin/automount --timeout 60 /.autofs file /etc/auto.misc 

        root# /etc/rc.d/init.d/autofs status    ( for autofs )

                Configured Mount Points:
                /usr/sbin/automount --timeout 60 /.autofs file /etc/auto.misc  

                Active Mount Points:
                /usr/sbin/automount --timeout 60 /.autofs file /etc/auto.mis

        root# amq -ms   ( for amd )

        root# showmount -e thishost     ( for the mountpoints on thishost )

Current Mounted Filesystem

To view what is currently mounted filesystem on this machine as with any un*x variants, there are many ways to see mounted machines:

        root# /etc/rc.d/init.d/autofs status

        root# showmount -a

        root# df

        root# cat /etc/mtab

        root# ls -l /.autofs/

Each of the avove command will result in a attempt by the automounter to mount the requested directory and logged

        root# tail -100 /var/log/messages
                ...
                Aug 14 01:42:39 xxx automount[370]: attempting to mount entry /.autofs/home

Tracking the activity of the automounter

NOTE: When you run a command like "ls -la /Net/*" you will have to wait for ALL the servers to respond either by timeout period or for that server to come back online

        root# ls -l /Net   or /Net/*

                lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root            1 Jul 30 03:39 localhost -> //
                lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root           19 Jul 30 03:40 home -> ../.autofs/home/
                lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root           18 Jul 15 02:52 mail -> ../.autofs/mail/
                lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root           19 Jul 15 02:52 backup -> ../.autofs/backup/

        Log entries in /var/log/messages:

                Aug 14 01:48:08 xxx automount[370]: attempting to mount entry /.autofs/home
                Aug 14 01:48:08 xxx automount[370]: attempting to mount entry /.autofs/mail
                Aug 14 01:48:08 xxx automount[370]: attempting to mount entry /.autofs/backup

        and if you do NOT access the servers before the timeout period expires

                Aug 14 01:49:08 xxx automount[730]: expired /.autofs/home
                Aug 14 01:49:08 xxx automount[730]: expired /.autofs/mail
                Aug 14 01:49:08 xxx automount[730]: expired /.autofs/backup

        To view should show you the contents of all the server's exported directories

                root# ls -la /Net/*/
        
                will show you the contents of the xported directory on each of the remote servers

        To view the mail mount point
                root# ls -la /var/spool/mail

        To view the contents of the mail server
                root# ls -la /var/spool/mail/

        To view the Servers on the net
                root# ls -la /Net/*

        To compare timestamps, sizes on the passwd files
                root# ls -la /Net/*/etc/passwd

When the filesystem is not being used, the automounter will timeout and unmounted the unsused filesystem. See /var/log/messages

When access to the filesystem is needed again, the automounter will remount the requested filesystem. See /var/log/messages

7.4 Sample Network Monitor Tools


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