Very Computer

        Or so it seems.  I have been trying to get a Red Hat 5.1 machine
to mount user's home directories when they log onto the system using NIS.
The user's can log in, but home directories do not mount.  If I create
a local copy of auto.home the directories mount.  If I try using the NIS map
auto.home nothing happens.  I can ypcat the auto.home file from the NIS server
and, hot damn, it looks EXACTLY like what the linux machine wants a local
auto.home file to look like.  Any attempt to use autofs/NIS is greeted with

login: user
Password: ******
Last login: Tue Nov 17 17:43:25 from meeker
No directory /home/user!
Logging in with home = "/".

        Can Red Hat 5.1 and autofs use an NIS auto.home map?  If so, HOW?
Adding "+auto.home" to an empty /etc/auto.home file doesn't work, nor did any
of the gyrations I tried in /etc/auto.master work - attempts inspired by
Hal Stern's "Managing NFS and NIS."

        Thanks,
        Bob Martel

--
******************************************************************************
 Bob Martel - System Administrator   | I met someone who looks a lot like you
 Levin College of Urban Affairs      | She does the things you do            
 Cleveland State University          | But she is an IBM                      
 (216) 687-2214                      |                                        

******************************************************************************

:
:       Can Red Hat 5.1 and autofs use an NIS auto.home map?  If so, HOW?

        Never fails, get *really* fustrated, post a question, *then* discover
the answer.

        The /etc/rc.d/init.d/autofs script doesn't seem to like that we do not
have an NIS auto.master, and thus never bothered to create and run an
automount command for the NIS auto.home table - even though I had that
information in the local /etc/auto.master file.

        When I typed the automount command on the command line, things worked
fine.  While I still don't understand why the +auto.home in the local
/etc/auto.home file didn't do the trick I suspect I'll find the reason the
NIS info in the local /etc/auto.master file was not getting used buried
a little deeper in the autofs script.

        -Bob
--
******************************************************************************
 Bob Martel - System Administrator   | I met someone who looks a lot like you
 Levin College of Urban Affairs      | She does the things you do            
 Cleveland State University          | But she is an IBM                      
 (216) 687-2214                      |                                        

******************************************************************************

run a shell ex: get_auto_home

let the shell

exec ypmatch $1 auto_home

Then:

edit /etc/rc.d/init.d/autofs and add...

 ypcat -k auto_master | (
        while read dir map options
        do
            if [ ! -z "$dir" -a ! -z "$map" \
                        -a x`echo "$map" | cut -c1` != 'x-' ]
            then
#               map=`echo "$map" | sed -e 's/^auto_/auto./'`
#               if echo $options | grep -- '-t' >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then
#                   mountoptions="--timeout $(echo $options | \
#                     sed 's/^.*-t\(imeout\)*[ \t]*\([0-9][0-9]*\).*$/\2/g')"
#               fi
#               options=`echo "$options" | sed -e '
#                 s/--*t\(imeout\)*[ \t]*[0-9][0-9]*//g
#                 s/\(^\|[ \t]\)-/\1/g'`
                MAP=`basename $map`
                echo "/usr/sbin/automount $dir program /usr/admin/get_${MAP}"
            fi
        done
    )
fi

This will do the job!!!

Roger Smith