Re: autofs: kernel-assisted automounter

Martin von Loewis (martin@mira.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de)
Tue, 8 Apr 1997 08:50:48 +0200

> I vaguely recall problems with kernel-level automounters in general really
> messing things up on a hanging mount, and that multithreading within the
> automounter was the answer. How does Linux autofs handle this?

Currently, I believe it doesn't. It could be easily enhanced to support
that, though. The actual mounting still happens in user space. The automount
daemon invokes the mount command using fork/exec/waitpid. If you omit the
waiting part, you could have several mounts in progress, working around
hanging mounts.

Regards,
Martin