[ILUG] How to mount a directory?

[Timothy Murphy]

On Tuesday 21 July 2009 22:23:06 Brendan Minish wrote:

> > If I just add it to /etc/fstab
> > there is an inordinate delay if alfred cannot be seen.
>
> Use the autofs to mount it when you access it and it will also un-mount
> it when done. This avoids the need to do it at login but makes it
> available (if present) when you try to access it
...
> http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/Deployment_Guid
>e-en-US/s1-nfs-client-config-autofs.html

Thanks very much.
It is clear that autofs is the way to go.

I found the autofs documentation very difficult to follow;
like much Linux documentation
it seemed to be directed at people running enormous systems
with extraordinarily complicated mounting problems.
It took some time to work out what was the difference 
between direct and indirect maps,
or even what a "map" was.

In the end I yum-installed autofs on my Fedora-11 laptop,
changed /etc/auto.master to the single line
	/-              auto_direct
and wrote  a single line /etc/auto_direct
	/common -rw,sync alfred:/common

This seems to work fine on re-booting.
Thanks again.