4.1.2: pwd(1) vs. automount(8) -- AUTOMOUNT_FIXNAMES?

[jma...@iona.ie]

The SunOS 4.1.2 pwd(1) manual states:

>The pathnames of files mounted with the Automounter can also
>change if the file is not used for a certain time interval
>(the default is five minutes). To prevent this, set the
>environment variable AUTOMOUNT_FIXNAMES. See automount(8)
>for more information.

Is this true? It doesn't seem to work here, no matter what I set
it to. Seeing as getcwd(3) just popens pwd(1), this would be a
worthwhile trick...

"The Art of Automounting" doesn't seem to mention it, either.

What's the story?

--
Justin Mason (Iona Technologies' unix caretaker, fixer-upper and disk-filler)

email: <jma...@iona.ie> -><- phone: +353-1-6790677
www: http://www.iona.ie/ -><- fax: +353-1-6798039

[Barry Margolin]

In article <27n3ng$k...@overload.iona.ie> jma...@iona.ie writes:
>The SunOS 4.1.2 pwd(1) manual states:
>
>>The pathnames of files mounted with the Automounter can also
>>change if the file is not used for a certain time interval
>>(the default is five minutes). To prevent this, set the
>>environment variable AUTOMOUNT_FIXNAMES. See automount(8)
>>for more information.
>
>Is this true? It doesn't seem to work here, no matter what I set
>it to. Seeing as getcwd(3) just popens pwd(1), this would be a
>worthwhile trick...

I think that paragraph of pwd(1) is obsolete. Early versions of the
automounter used random strings as the names of mount points in /tmp_mnt.
If the directory became unmounted and later mounted again it would get a
different random name. AUTOMOUNT_FIXNAMES probably caused it to remember
the name it used and use it again. But since around 4.1.0 the mount points
have been named after the directory being automounted, e.g. /foo/bar would
be mounted as /tmp_mnt/foo/bar, so no special flag is needed now.

You can still run into problems if a remote directory is referenced in
multiple automount entries. The first one to be referenced will be used as
the name of the mount point, and references to the others will just become
links to the first. If it becomes unmounted, it will later be mounted with
the next name to be referenced, which might not be the same as the previous
one.