Introduction

At work I usually have to connect to several servers. Some are Windows Servers, some are Linux Servers. On my local Linux machines (running Kubuntu 17.10 at the time writing this) I usually used /etc/fstab entries. However, the fstab way does not mount on boot and always needs manual re-mounting. I was told that there have been times in which automatic mounting during boot using fstab was working but I never managed to get it working although I tried several mount options like _netdev and others. Since I often have to re-mount the network shares (whenever there was a network disconnect), an option to automatically re-connect and mount the folders on boot was highly sought for.

Autofs

Recently I came across autofs. It basically mounts the network shares on-demand (when the folder is accessed) for a desired time. If there was no activity during that time the shares are unmounted again. This gives a practical feeling of networks shares which are mounted at boot.

After installation of autofs using your favorite package manager, you will see an /etc/auto.master file. This file holds the main settings.

Mine looks as follows:

# /etc/auto.master
/- /etc/auto.all --timeout=60 --ghost

The first option /- sets the root directory as an universal mount point. Other attempts as suggested in various examples^{1 2} did not work for me.

Next, you need to edit the specified file from above (here /etc/auto.all). It will hold the specific mount instructions for each protocol. You can either use multiple entries in /etc/auto.master with subsequent multiple /etc/auto.* files or use a single file for various protocols (e.g. cifs, sshfs, nfs).

I prefer to use a single file that looks as follows:

/mnt \
/server1 -fstype=cifs,rw,credentials=/etc/.smbcredentials.txt,uid=1000,file_mode=0775,dir_mode=0775,users ://<server ip>/<share> \
/server2 -fstype=fuse,rw,allow_other,uid=1000,users :sshfs\#<user>@<server ip>\:/<share>

Notes

• /mnt is the desired mount point here.

• I mount a Windows server using cifs (samba protocol) with the respective credentials (username, password) stores in /etc/.smbcredentials.txt and a Linux server using sshfs.

  • The private ssh key which enables a passwordless ssh connection for sshfs has to be copied from ~/.ssh/id_rsa to /root/.ssh/id_rsa because root will be the user which creates the connection. Subsequently, sshfs will try to use its respective id_rsa file. Make sure that you set the correct permission rights for the id_rsa file: sudo chown 644 /root/.ssh/id_rsa.
  • Besides id_rsa, you also should copy .ssh/known_hosts to /root/.ssh/known_hosts.

• Note the escaping \ in the sshfs setup. Without it in front of #username@server and :/home, the mount process will not work.

• I set specific file and directory rights (file_mode, dir_mode) so that I have full access to the mounted folders.

Be aware that only the direct mount point (here /mnt) exists permanently. The on-demand folders (here e.g. /mnt/server1) will be created during the mount process and should not exist before.