On Tue, 15 Dec 1998, Martin Tessun wrote:
> > The Solaris automounter allows a "seamless" mount of a local directory
> > onto another place on the local filesystem. This is frequently used, for
> > example, when a user logs in to the actual fileserver. The home directory
> > is usually located at /export/home/joeblow and is automounted to
> > /home/joeblow when referenced. This could, of course, be achieved by
> > actually NFS mounting from the local server. I'd rather shoot myself
> > however (am I sure Solaris doesn't do this? no)
>
> Solaris does achieve 'NFS-mounts from the local Server' via a special
> "Filesystem", the so called "Loopback Filesystem (lsof)". If you give me
> a few days I can look what the lsof does. I expect, that it does
> something like a "redirect" or a "special hard-link" without increasing
> the Link-Counter.
>
> So what I think you have to do is to write a new filesystem with a new
> mount-command (mount.lsof), so that you can do a mount -F lsof
> localhost:/export/home/bla /home/bla.
>
> In my opinion this isn't too easy to handle. By the way: I would never
> let inexperienced people work on the Fileserver; even I wouldn't let any
> person except Administrators work on the fileserver.
>
> > autofs can do this. However, it does so trivially by creating a
> > symbolic link which is then traversed. This has mostly cosmetic
> > disadvantages, but a few more substatial ones. Any subprocess will see
> > the actual 'pwd' of /export/home/joeblow. Thus inexperienced users will
> > get confused and bother their system administrator, and, more seriously,
> > an application may wrongly determine the location of its private files,
> > defeating the 'logical structure' of the filesystem, and preventing
> > restructuring of the physical layout.
>
> Martin
>
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