The 4.4 BSD Automounter (AMD)

Amd provides a means of separating the name of a file from the name of its storage location. It is actually quite a slick system, about which you can find all the gory details at the Am-Utils homepage.

Suffice it to say that with amd, NFS and NIS, it is possible to make a collection of files, such as /homes/someuser, universally available without having to provide static configuration information concerning the real location of that collection of files to the client machines. It is also possible to make the binding of a directory name (e.g., /usr/local/bin) to a physical location vary based on some (presumably relevant!) variable, such as machine architecture. On ECEnet, for example, Linux PCs receive their /usr/local/bin from a Linux directory tree and Suns from a Sun tree. The cool things are that all machines involved use the same amd configuration database and the directory trees can be on a server or servers of any UNIX/Linux OS platform.

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