Berkeley Automounter Explained

am-utils
Developer:	Erez Zadok
Latest Release Version:	[ftp://ftp.am-utils.org/pub/am-utils/am-utils-6.2.tar.gz 6.2]
Latest Release Date:	Oct 30, 2014
Operating System:	Cross-platform
Genre:	NFS Automounter
License:	BSD License
Website:	http://www.am-utils.org/

In computing the Berkeley Automounter (or amd) is a computer automounter daemon which first appeared in 4.4BSD in 1994. The original Berkeley automounter was created by Jan-Simon Pendry in 1989 and was donated to Berkeley.^[1]

Notes and References

1. Amd - An Automounter | author = Jan-Simon Pendry | date = 1989-12-01 | newsgroup = comp.unix.wizards | url = https://groups.google.com/group/comp.protocols.nfs/msg/4951e03d27b7c7e2 | accessdate = 2007-12-23}} After languishing for a few years, the maintenance was picked up by Erez Zadok, who has maintained it since 1993.

   The am-utils package which comprises and is included with FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. It is also included with a vast number of Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora Core, ASPLinux, Trustix, Mandriva, and others.

   The Berkeley automounter has a large number of contributors, including several who worked on the original automounter with Jan-Simon Pendry.

   It is one of the oldest and more portable automounters available today, as well as the most flexible and the most widely used.

   Caveats

   There are a few "side effects" that come with files that are mounted using automounter, these may differ depending on how the service was configured.

   • Access time of automounted directories is initially set to the time automounter was used to mount them, however after the directories are accessed, this statistic changes.
   • On some systems, directories are not visible until the first time they are used. This means commands such as ls will fail.
   • If mounted directories are not used for a period of time, directories are unmounted.
   • When automounter mounts directories, they are said to be owned by root until someone uses them, at that time the correct owner of the directory shows up.

   External links

   • Am-utils Home Page (home of amd)
   • RPMs from rpmfind.net

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