need help with automount

[Andrew Shore]

I've been having trouble with automount on SunOS 4.0 and I'd like some
suggestions and advice.  We have a mixture of servers and clients running
3.5 and 4.0 (actually 4.0.1, without the "fix" to automount which I
understand has other problems).  Here is an unfortunately long description
of my current setup and my problems.

My 3.5 servers (I'll call them serv1 and serv2) have file systems with
names like:

	/mnt/serv1		/usr.MC68020/serv1
	/mnt/serv2		/usr.MC68020/serv2

3.5 Clients were used to mounting them under:
	/mnt/serv1		/usr/serv1
	/mnt/serv2		/usr/serv2

For folks with 3.5 clients YP passwd entries had home directories like:
	/user/shore	/user/warnock
where /user was a symlink to a directory on the server which contained
symlinks to real home directories, e.g.,:
	/user	->	/usr/serv1/user
	/usr/serv1/user/shore	-> /mnt/serv2/shore

Once we have this, we use symlinks to get folks from generic path names
that don't mention any server to real directories. E.g., on all machines,
we've got things set up like
	/usr/local/fonts	-> /mnt/serv1/lib/fonts
	/usr/ps			-> /mnt/serv2/pssrc
Note that there are other things under /usr/local or /usr that live
on each server.

On my 4.0 servers (call them servA and servB) I have filesystems 
with names like:
	/home/servA	/mnt/servA
	/home/servB	/mnt/servB

I've been setting up accounts with home directories like:
	/home/servA/jackson

So now on 3.5 servers I'm mounting 4.0 volumes under /home and /mnt So 3.5
machines can get to 4.0 volumes.

On 4.0 servers I'm using automount, but I'm not happy with it.  Right now,
I'm not using an automount map, just setting things up in rc.local with
the default maps:

	automount -m	/net -hosts -rw,hard,grpid,intr,bg \
			/homes -passwd -rw,hard,grpid,intr,bg

This means that servers must be referred to twice in path names:
	/net/serv1/mnt/serv1/XXX
If I want my 3.5 style path names to work, I can set up 
symlinks on 4.0 machines:
	/mnt/serv1 -> /net/serv1/mnt/serv1
	/usr/serv1 -> /net/serv1/usr.MC68020/serv1

I can make /user directories on 4.0 machines which can still get to 
3.5 home directories:
	/user	-> /mnt/servA/user
	/mnt/servA/user/shore -> /net/serv2/mnt/serv2/shore

I can set up other symlinks to still work the way I want:
	/usr/local/fonts	-> /net/serv1/mnt/serv1/lib/fonts
	/usr/ps	->	/net/serv2/mnt/serv2/pssrc

Note that each 4.0 boot-client of servA fstab lines like:
	servA:/mnt/servA	/mnt/servA nfs rw,hard,intr,bg 0 0
so /mnt isn't empty on the clients.
I'm also explicitly mounting a few oddball directories on 3.5 and 4.0 clients:
	adobe:/usenet/news/spool /usr/spool/news nfs ro,soft,bg 0 0
	adobe:/usenet/news/lib /usr/lib/news nfs ro,soft,bg 0 0
(Clients post with nntp, so reading need only be via ro nfs).

Note that we aren't making much use of the /homes map, just the /net one.

All this creates an administrative mess!  The effort to commission a new
4.0 server or new clients is rather large in setting up symlinks,
mountpoints, fstabs, etc.

Users are finding that the default automount timeouts are non-optimal in
our environment, but I'm not sure if I should start tweeking them.

My question:

Is my server volume (filesystem) naming convention part of what is
screwing me? The 4.0 "setup" wants to just name server volumes /home (not
/home/server), should I let it?

Would setting up an explicit automount map help solve my problems?  From
my reading of the man pages, the "directory" supplied on the automount
command line should be a special place (an otherwise nonexistent or empty
directory).  Can I specify /mnt as the directory for a map when /mnt/servA
already exists (and is mounted) there?

E.g., something like:
	automount  /mnt mntservers

where mntservers is a map with:
	serv1	serv1:/mnt/serv1
	serv2	serv2:/mnt/serv2
	servA	servA:/mnt/servA
	servB	servB:/mnt/servB

Can I automount my news directories into /usr/spool and /usr/lib?

Note that servA is explicitly mounted by its clients (do I need to do
that?) and also in the automount map so that clients of other servers can
get it.

Is there a better approach?

Any advice, experience, or examples would be appreciated.

--Andy Shore
  Adobe Systems
  shore at adobe.com
  {decwrl,sun}!adobe!shore