Can Symbolics machines handle SUN automount directories?

[cjl@AI.MIT.EDU (Chris Lindblad)]

    Date: Thu, 17 May 90 18:17:10 PDT
    From: shirley@parc.xerox.com


    Does anyone know of a way to get Symbolics machines to handle SUN automount
    directories?  Has anyone else run into this issue and does anyone know whether
    Symbolics plans to support this in the future?  (I've got a question in to
    Symbolics software maintenance, but I figured I'd ask here too ....)

    (Automount is a SUN facility that helps to provide seamless access to a large
    filesystem shared over many hosts.  This allows users to ignore some of the
    details about exactly where their files are stored, much like logical
    pathnames do.  The effect of symbolics machines not handling automount
    directories would be like their not handling symbolic links -- the user would
    be forced to know where in the potentially large filesystem the desired file
    resides in order to name it more directly.  In a mixed SUN/Symbolics
    environment like ours (mostly SUN), it would be good if Symbolic users didn't
    have to do more work to keep track of the filesystem than SUN users.)

>From the Symbolics NFS doc: 

       1nfs-automount2 3user-property2 0                         3User Property

0       4This host user property informs the Symbolics client that an NFS serv-
0       4er is running the automount program so Symbolics NFS can duplicate
0       4the file system layout of the NFS server.2 4The value of the 3user-
0       3property4 argument should be the arguments given to the automount
0       4program running on the NFS server.2 4See the UNIX man page for the
0       4automount program for more information about the automount pro-
0       4gram.

0       4If the value of this user property is a single token that does not begin
0       4with2 4the character N, Symbolics NFS assumes the host is running the
0       4automount program with no arguments.2 4Symbolics NFS will then con-
0       4sult the2 4auto.master yellow pages map for automount configuration
0       4information.

0       4If the value of the user property is more than one token, the value is
0       4interpreted as the arguments to the automount program running on the
0       4server.2 

0Here at the AI lab, since we run automount with no arguments, our namespace
objects for our suns have the user property:

  USER-PROPERTY NFS-AUTOMOUNT YES