Remote Filesystems and Autofs

Nov 18, 2025
rhcsa

Configuring a Base NFS Server

Note: Setting up an NFS server is not required for the exam

dnf install nfs-utils
mkdir -p /nfsdata /home/ldap/ldapuser{1..9}
echo "/nfsdata *(rw,no_root_squash)" >> /etc/exports
echo "/home/ldap *(rw,no_root_squash)" >> /etc/exports
systemctl enable --now nfs-server
for i in nfs mountd rpc-bind; do firewall-cmd --add-service $i --permanent; done
firewallcmd --reload

Mounting NFS Shares

From the client:

showmount -e {nfs-host-address}
mount {nfs-host-address}:/path/to/share /mnt

Configuring Automount

Red Hat - autofs

Example: autofs managed directory, /autofs-mounts, containing a single mount, nfsdata

/etc/auto.master.d/autofs-mounts.autofs

/autofs-mounts /etc/auto.autofs-mounts

/etc/auto.autofs-mounts

nfsdata -rw localhost:/nfsdata

Autofs for Home Directories

  • It is common for an NFS server to provide access to home directories
  • In this configuration, autofs can be used to automatically mount home directories when a user logs into a system
  • This is very convenient for users that need to log into several different machines

Example:

/etc/auto.master.d/ldap.autofs

/home/ldap /etc/auto.ldap

/etc/auto.ldap

* -rw localhost:/home/ldap/&

Systemd Automount

  • Systemd automounts offer similar functionality to autofs with one downside, they do not offer wildcard mounts

Example:

/etc/systemd/system/nfsdata.mount

[Unit]
Description="nfs mount"
Requires=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Mount]
What=localhost:/nfsdata
Where=/nfsdata_am
Options=
Type=nfs

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

/etc/systemd/system/nfsdata.automount

[Unit]
Description="nfs automount"
Requires=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[AutoMount]
Where=/nfsdata_am
TimeoutIdleSec=30

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Note: The Where location has to match the unit name. A mount point of /nfs/data would become nfs-data.mount. A mount point of /nfs-data would need to contain escape characters, so it’s best to use an underscore instead.

To generate the mount unit name for a path:

systemd-escape -p --suffix=mount "/nfs-data"

Lab Exercise

Configure a second server, nfsserver, to host an nfs share. Create home directories /home/ldap/user{1..9} and export /home/ldap.

  1. From the workstation, set up automount for the home directories on /home/ldap. The result should be that the directory /home/ldap/userN is mounted when userN logs in. Test it by creating a userN and logging in.
Solution

  1. —

    /etc/auto.master

    /home/ldap /etc/auto.ldap

    /etc/auto.ldap

    * nfsserver:/home/ldap/&

Note: Sander van Vugt used * nfsserver:/home/ldap/& in the /etc/auto.ldap file. This setup did not seem to work, but * nfsserver:/home/ldap did.

- Clint Jordan