The Automounter

For efficiency, the automounter is used to mount FNS directories on demand. The default /etc/auto_master configuration file contains the line:

/xfn -xfn

which tells the automounter that the FNS namespace is "mounted" under /xfn, as specified by XFN.

Since the automounter is used to mount directories named through FNS, the subdirectories of an FNS directory cannot be listed until they have been mounted. For example, suppose the file system of the sales organization is composed of multiple NFS file systems. The following ls command shows only two file systems that have been visited recently and are currently mounted:

% ls /xfn/org/sales/fs
customers products

To see the entire listing, use the fnlist command:

% fnlist org/sales/fs
Listing org/sales/fs:
products
goals
customers
incentives