How to Mount a File System at Boot Time

If you want to mount file systems at boot time instead of using autofs maps, follow this procedure. This procedure must be completed on every client that should have access to remote file systems.

1. Become superuser or assume an equivalent role.

   Roles contain authorizations and privileged commands. For more information about roles, see Configuring RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Security Services. To configure a role with the Primary Administrator profile, see Chapter 2, Working With the Solaris Management Console (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.

2. Add an entry for the file system to /etc/vfstab.

   Entries in the /etc/vfstab file have the following syntax:

   special  fsckdev  mountp  fstype  fsckpass  mount-at-boot  mntopts

   See the vfstab(4) man page for more information.

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   Caution –

   NFS servers that also have NFS client vfstab entries must always specify the bg option to avoid a system hang during reboot. For more information, see mount Options for NFS File Systems.

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Example 5–4 Entry in the Client's vfstab File

You want a client machine to mount the /var/mail directory from the server wasp. You want the file system to be mounted as /var/mail on the client and you want the client to have read-write access. Add the following entry to the client's vfstab file.

wasp:/var/mail - /var/mail nfs - yes rw