In a message dated: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 21:02:14 CST
Todd Shoemaker said:
>Paul-
>
>Are there any docs available to explain how the OS intercepts this, and
>moreover, how does it inform autofs that some file under /mnt/autofloppy has
>been requested?
You might try the O'Reilly NFS/NIS book, though it's terribly
outdated by now, and very SunOS 4.x specific. The man pages might
help also, I don't know.
I understand the concepts, though I don't know where I learned them
from to be honest, years of just dealing with it I guess :)
If you're up to it, "Use the source, Luke!" :)
>It seems like if the kernel can tell autofs that /mnt/autofloppy is needed,
> all autofs needs to be is small program that basically does this:
Well, as hpa said, that's what it basically is, except it's not a
shell script, it's a C program running as a daemon, and there's a lot
more security based code than there probably is "automount" code.
It seems like the amount of code that goes into solving any given
problem is quickly outweighed by all the extra crap you need to
account for "in case the sh*t hits the fan" :) If this were a perfect
world, there would be far less code required to "account for
wierd but common situation X" and a lot more code "solving problem Y"!
>Of course, I'm sure autofs would be more appropriate in more advanced cases;
>I'm just referring to local removable drives here.
I've never used automounter for local drives. I don't know why.
It's always just seemed easier for me to say:
mount /floppy
or mount /cdrom
and umount /floppy
I think it comes from my nightmarish experiences of trying to use
floppy disks under early releases of Solaris 2.x :)
>What would it take to do this? In addition to the autofs source, do you know
>of any other resources that I can refer to?
Not really. Sorry, as I said, I know the concepts, but not the
finer details (which is why I'm on this list :)
--
Seeya,
Paul
----
God Bless America!
...we don't need to be perfect to be the best around,
and we never stop trying to be better.
Tom Clancy, The Bear and The Dragon
