The Berkeley Automounter Suite of Utilities

An automounter maintains a cache of mounted file systems. File systems are mounted on demand when they are first referenced, and unmounted after a period of inactivity. This helps to centralize all file system access, provide a uniform site-wide namespace, and minimize downtimes for clients.

The Berkeley Automounter, Amd, may be used as a replacement for Sun's automounter. The choice of which file system to mount can be controlled dynamically with selectors. Selectors allow decisions of the form "hostname is this," or "architecture is not that." Selectors may be combined arbitrarily. Amd also supports a variety of file system types, including NFS, UFS and the novel program file system. The combination of selectors and multiple file system types allows identical configuration files to be used on all machines thus reducing the administrative overhead. Amd ensures that it will not hang if a remote server goes down. Moreover, Amd can determine when a remote server has become inaccessible and then mount replacement file systems as and when they become available.

Welcome to the am-utils version 6.x home page. My name is Erez Zadok and I'm the lead maintainer of am-utils. Am-utils is the "next generation" of the popular BSD Automounter, Amd. Am-utils includes many additional updates, ports, programs, features (such as Autofs support, NFS V.4 support, experimental Lustre support, and shared libraries), bug fixes, and more.

Quick Links:

Latest Stable Sources
am-utils-6.2
(autofs)
Latest Test Release

none
Daily CVS Snapshots

User Manual
(also frames version and all-in-one version)

October 30, 2014: official release of am-utils available, version am-utils-6.2.
June 26, 2012: first release candidate of am-utils available, version am-utils-6.2-rc1.
October 20, 2009: all development of am-utils move to our Git Server.
October 10, 2005: First test release, am-utils 6.2a1, includes Sun-style automount syntax maps support.
June 11, 2005: First official and stable am-utils 6.1 is released (check updated releases since then).

Software:

Latest version, 6.2: http://git.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/?p=am-utils-6.2.git
Previous version, 6.1: http://git.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/?p=am-utils-6.1.git
Older version, 6.0: http://git.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/?p=am-utils-6.0.git
Main FTP server.
Sources for latest stable version of am-utils.
All other, older stable releases of am-utils.
The latest released snapshot of the sources, all released snapshots, or a daily snapshot of the sources. These may not be as stable as the official version.
Sources for older alpha and beta versions of am-utils and amd.
Browse the Am-utils sources using LXR.
Prebuilt binaries for various platforms. Please read this README file before using any of these binaries.
Patches for am-utils software as well as system software
For maintainers, utilities (possibly modified) such as GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool.
FTP mirror sites.

Documentation and Information:

My book.
Latest user-manual (in HTML), postscript, or PDF. The distribution also includes Emacs Info and DVI formats.
An FAQ which was started in March 2005 (so its still small and evolving).
List of platforms on which am-utils builds and runs, and the level of their compatibility. Also available in text format from the distribution is the INSTALL file.
A list of known system bugs, including some very important issues concerning OS Attribute Cache limitations. If you find a new problem with Am-utils, please describe it in detail and submit a bug report via Bugzilla.
The latest NEWS file from the distribution. The ChangeLog file contains more verbose details.
Information about Autofs support.
Information about Sun-style automounter maps support.
Information about LDAP support.
Information about Mac OS-X support.
Unofficial Year-2000 Compliance information.
A list of tasks that need work on. Please volunteer to help if you can.
A list of additional research publications and journal articles relating to Amd is available later in this page.
I gave an Amd Tutorial at LISA '99 on Sunday, November 7, 1999. On Thursday, November 11, 1999, I hosted a BOF to discuss future directions for am-utils.
On 09/1999, the CERT has released an important incident note and a security advisory regarding Amd and am-utils.
Swedish translation (Tilia Kurek, and Timur, October 24, 2016).
Portuguese translation (Artur Weber and Adelina Domingos, March 8, 2018).

Mailing Lists:

Click on the list name below to access the subscription Web page. That page will also tell you how to post to the list, access the lists' archives, change your subscription status, etc.

List Name Purpose Who Can Subscribe Who Can Post Comments

am-utils For users' questions, announcements, bug reports, and general. Anyone Subscribers only This list used to be called amd-dev at cs.columbia.edu. Use new name please.

am-utils-announce For announcements only Anyone Developers only

am-utils-cvs For CVS commit logs Anyone Developers only You can access the nightly source snapshots here.

am-utils-developers For official maintainers, by invitation only No one Developers with CVS commit privileges only Listed here for completeness.

amd-workers Older users list (defunct) No one No one This older users list (which I never mainatined) no longer exists. This list was shutdown in January 2004. Use the newer am-utils list instead.

Download software.

Books:

#	Title (click for html version)	Formats	Published In	Date	Comments
1	Linux NFS and Automounter Administration	BibTeX	Sybex	May 2001	See Book home page

Journal Articles:

#	Title (click for html version)	Formats	Published In	Date	Comments
1	Using the Amd Automounter	BibTeX	Linux Journal	Oct 2003

Conference and Workshop Papers:

#	Title (click for html version)	Formats	Published In	Date	Comments
1	Overhauling Amd for the '00s: A Case Study of GNU Autotools	PS PDF BibTeX	Usenix Technical Conference, FREENIX Track	Jun 2002
2	HLFSD: Delivering Email to your $HOME	PS PDF BibTeX	Usenix Systems Administration (LISA VII) Conference	Nov 1993

Manuals:

#	Title (click for html version)	Formats	Published In	Date	Comments
1	Am-utils 6.1 (4.4 BSD Automounter Utilities) User Manual	PS PDF BibTeX		Aug 2003	See a frames version and an all-in-one version.

Past Students:

#	Name (click for home page)	Program	Period	Current Location
1	Ramya Edara	MS	Jan 2007 - Dec 2007	Member of Technical Staff, Arista Networks (Menlo Park, California)
2	Dan Ottavio	MS	Jan 2005 - Aug 2005	Senior Software Engineer, Amazon AWS (Cambridge, MA)

Sponsors:

#	Sponsor	Amount	Period	Type	Title (click for award abstract)
1	IBM		2003-2006	Sole PI	IBM AIX 5.x Automounter Maintenance
2	HP/Intel	$131,529	2002-2003	Sole PI	Linux Application Performance and File System Security
3	HP/Intel	$22,490	2001-2002	Sole PI	Linux Network Scalability and File System Reliability

List Name	Purpose	Who Can Subscribe	Who Can Post	Comments
am-utils	For users' questions, announcements, bug reports, and general.	Anyone	Subscribers only	This list used to be called amd-dev at cs.columbia.edu. Use new name please.
am-utils-announce	For announcements only	Anyone	Developers only
am-utils-cvs	For CVS commit logs	Anyone	Developers only	You can access the nightly source snapshots here.
am-utils-developers	For official maintainers, by invitation only	No one	Developers with CVS commit privileges only	Listed here for completeness.
amd-workers	Older users list (defunct)	No one	No one	This older users list (which I never mainatined) *no longer exists*. This list was shutdown in January 2004. Use the newer am-utils list instead.