Prompted by Kyle’s presentation at NBLUG on autofs; I decided to try my hand at it.
I figured the perfect task for autofs would be to automatically mount my install CDs when I needed them. For instance, when I want to install software; instead of physically loading the CD into the drive I can just hit “install” and magically have the software loaded and installed.
In a previous entry I showed how easy it was to store your install CDs as ISOs on your hard drive. From there all you need to do is edit a few configuration files to get autofs working for you.
First is /etc/auto.master which is the main configuration file for autofs. I altered the file so that there was only a single non-commented line:
/mnt/iso /etc/auto.iso –timeout=60 .
Now to create the file /etc/auto.iso, which I wrote to look like this:
mdkinstall_1 -fstype=iso9660,ro,loop :/iso/Mandrake-10.0-install_1.iso
mdkinstall_2 -fstype=iso9660,ro,loop :/iso/Mandrake-10.0-install_2.iso
mdkinstall_3 -fstype=iso9660,ro,loop :/iso/Mandrake-10.0-install_3.iso
Now whenever you try to navigate to either /mnt/iso/mdkinstall_1 , /mnt/iso/mdkinstall_2 , or /mnt/iso/mdkinstall_3 the images are automatically mounted for you and you can easily browse them.
In order to make this new magic usable by my software installation tool I updated my software sources to point to file://mnt/iso/mdkinstall_1/Mandrake/RPMS/ , file://mnt/iso/mdkinstall_2/Mandrake/RPMS2/ , and file://mnt/iso/mdkinstall_3/Mandrake/RPMS3 for “Installation CD 1″, “installation CD 2″, and “Installation CD 3″ respectively.
Now when I want to install software from the installation CDs I just fire up my install tool, select the software I want and go; no wasting time loading CDs into the tray, or even taking the time to mount the images anymore. Life is good.
Auto-mounting makes sense for removable things and perhaps network devices, but why ISOs? Why not just have them mounted at start-up and stay that way? That might even have some additional benefits– they might be indexed with locate, allowing another way to review data on them.
Not only removable. If someone has many possible mounts, but needed from time to time – like I – it will be unnecessary to mount all that stuff on everyday boot. It will only delay booting without benefits.