Mounting NFS directories using AutoFS
AutoFS allows to automatically mount network shares on demand. Compared with traditional fstab
configurations, using AutoFS has the following benefits.
- With AutoFS, directories are automatically mounted when they are accessed and are unmounted after a period of inactivity — can reduce boot time and improve overall performance.
- Auto-mounting via
fstab
will fail if the network connection to the network share is not yet established during boot time (common issue with WiFi netwoks) — not an issue with AutoFS, as the shares are mounted on demand.
However, mounting a NFS directory using AutoFS requires a little more work, compared to adding a rule to the /etc/fstab
file, here is an example.
Install dependencies:
sudo apt-get install autofs5
Create a mount point:
sudo mkdir /nfs
Configure the mount point, add the following line to the end of the file /etc/auto.master
:
/nfs /etc/auto.nfs --ghost
Note: That line tells the AutoFS service that the mount points under /nfs
are configured in file /etc/auto.nfs
.
Add the following line to the file /etc/auto.nfs
(create the file if it does not exist and adopt the hostname of the NAS and the name of the NFS directory):
music -fstype=nfs,ro,noacl,noatime,nodiratime,noac,tcp mynas:/volume1/music
Note: In the example above, the NFS share is mounted read-only, with some flags to optimize performance. Adopt the NFS mounting options to your needs, if necessary.
Restart the AutoFS service:
sudo systemctl restart autofs