Comments on: Autofs goodness in Apple’s Leopard (10.5) – Part II

By: rajeev karamchedu

rajeev karamchedu — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:42:51 +0000

Did you check the permissions on the NAS server? (for the unix perms on the AFP share root dir?)

By: vadalus

vadalus — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:14:40 +0000

Hi,

When you mount an AFP share under, say /Network/myshare the permissions on the share change to be OWNER rwx and nothing else, meaning this mount cannot be accessed by anyone other than the person who triggered autofs to mount the remote filesystem. Anyone worked out how to specify that you want rw for all?

Thanks

By: Anthony

Anthony — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:13:58 +0000

Hello Rajeev,

Sorry, if you wind up getting this twice as I wasn’t sure if it had been sent correctly.

I was wondering, given your extensive expertise and knowledge with Autofs on Leopard, if it’s possible you could help clarify something for me ?

It’s a simple question, really.

How does one get rid of sub-directories created in /net ?

Somehow, I’ve accidentally managed to create these sub-directories…

/net/localhost
/net/broadcasthost

….after running the following (on Mac OS X 10.5.8 (client version)) as I was trying to create a new user….

‘dscl . -create /Users/aUserShortName NFSHomeDirectory /Local/Users/aUserShortName’

I simply wished to created a standard user for for this Mac in the out of the box /Users directory. i.e.- In the local directory services database with no intended current or future relationship with servers whatsoever, period. When the user’s home directory didn’t appear in /Users I ran this (perhaps causing more damage)…

‘dscl . -create /Users/aUserShortName HomeDirectory /Local/Users/aUserShortName’

After running the above commands was the point which I discovered the undesired ‘/net/localhost’ and ‘/net/broadcasthost’ directories.

As a site note, I probably should of ran this instead given that it’s just a standard end user Mac OS X (Client) type machine (not used in a server related environment)…

‘dscl . -create /Users/aUserShortName NFSHomeDirectory /Users/aUserShortName’

I see from one of your articles that there’s a special map/ -null option (‘/users -null’) to disable entries after it the auto_master file. However, upon examining my backup volumes they don’t have that set (and these don’t have the annoying ‘/net’ sub-directories). So, some configuration must of been unintentionally turned on elsewhere.

As well, I’ve read through Apple’s white paper on this (http://images.apple.com/business/docs/Autofs.pdf) and numerous other articles/docs/posts related to Leopard’s Directory Services. While there’s considerable info on how to enable and configure these services there’s little on how to turn them off and make ‘/net/*’ directories completely go away once created.

Thanks,

-A

By: rajeev karamchedu

rajeev karamchedu — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:06:15 +0000

@jeckyll

You should be able to mount it using CIFS protocol.

By: jeckyll

jeckyll — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:17:03 +0000

Thanks for the great Tutorial!
I wanna map a smb share of a server here at work to a directory in my user directory. Is there a way to do this? Thanks

By: Mark Myers

Mark Myers — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:00:31 +0000

I forgot: you will of course probably need to supply username and password in the URL for the RecordName attribute, so it should be “url=smb://username:password@server.dns.name.or.ip/path_to_share.”

By: Mark Myers

Mark Myers — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:58:08 +0000

I find there is a more Mac-style way on Leopard to create SMB or AFP automounts than editing config files in /etc. What I do is create a new record using Workgroup Manager in the Mounts node of the local directory (/Local/Default). You have to create these attributes: RecordName, VFSLinkDir, and VFSType. For RecordName, use the URL to your SMB share, i.e. “url=smb://server.dns.name.or.ip/path_to_share”, for the value. VFSLinkDir should be the local path to the mount point, i.e. “/Network/sharename.” VFSType should be “smb” or “afp” as needed. This creates an entry in the local directory (dslocal) that is (in my opinion) more easily managed than files in /etc.

By: Shingi

Shingi — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:41:35 +0000

Hi Guys.
I am seeing an interesting behavior with my Mac os leopard setup. When i connect resources on my nfs mount through finder i get permission errors because of group permisions, files i own work just fine.

What is strange is that from the terminal i can access and edit or delete these same resoures just fine. But when i try and edit a file in finder it just wont work.

Any ideas? I also have the machine hooked up to ldap.

By: freedumb2000

freedumb2000 — Thu, 01 May 2008 11:39:54 +0000

This sounds great but reading this http://www.stress-free.co.nz/automounting_samba_shares_in_leopard
made me a little uneasy.
Quote: “After a few weeks of use I have found the automount technique described here is a little unreliable not only from the perspective of keeping the mount point active but also for maintaining the correct file permissions.”

Is automounting SMB sharees really adviseable in a production environment?

By: rajeev karamchedu

rajeev karamchedu — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 01:41:01 +0000

@JB

Short answer to your question – you can’t..

Not so long answer:

As you know, /mnt or /smb are unix mount points and Finder does not seem to recognize and interact with them at those junctions..

By: JB

JB — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:56:44 +0000

When setting up the indirect map for cifs (the /smb auto_smb), how do I get that directory to show up in the finder off the root of the drive? As soon as automount runs, the directory vanishes out of finder and the only way I have to access the share is to drill through the network/servers/server/share that I used to connect the automount. the only other way to get in is to go to the command line and go to /smb/.

By: rajeev karamchedu

rajeev karamchedu — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:15:53 +0000

@Adam

I see sshfs as an addendum/compliment to nfs. Having said that, I also have not tried macFuse yet – have you ?

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 06:19:17 +0000

Can Leopard’s autofs be setup to work with macFUSE and sshfs mounts?

By: rajeev karamchedu

rajeev karamchedu — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 16:14:45 +0000

@Mo

URL is the keyword for the fstab entry.

So for example

Servername = myserver
path = /vol/homes/jdoe
mountpoint = /home/jdoe
username = jdoe
password = jdoelovesmac

then the entry would be

myserver:/vol/homes/jdoe /home/jdoe url net,automounted,url==afp://jdoe:jdoelovesmac@myserver:/vol/homes/jdoe 0 0

HTH

By: mo

mo — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 16:04:30 +0000

I am confused, what does “url” signify in the afp/-fstab entry
“servername/path mount_point url net,automounted,url==afp://username:password@server/path 0 0″. If you could provide an actual sample/example for that section it would be very very helpful.

By: the occasional blog | Autofs goodness in Apple’s Leopard (10.5) - Part I

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:22:34 +0000

[...] the next part of this article, I will cover the use of the “net” option and using automount for AFP [...]