I set a Mac to be backed up by our TSM server. There was an external AFP share mounted at /Volumes/Data. I wanted to back up that share, too. The problem was that, for some reason, the share got unmounted from time to time. My first attempt at solving the problem was to write a shell script to mount the AFP share. Then, I scheduled it to run before the backup job. This was not helpful either, because the share still frequently got unmounted.

I then tried many different approaches and found that this one worked pretty well. The idea is to edit the /etc/fstab file to specify the mount information so the automount service can mount the share whenever it is being accessed. Here are the steps:

1. Open Terminal application.
2. Type sudo nano /etc/fstab to edit the file.
3. Add this line.

   host_name:/share_name /Volumes/mount_name url automounted,url==afp://user_name:password@host_name/share_name 0 0

4. Press Ctrl + x to save the file and exit out.
5. Type automount -vc to restart automount.

If you want to mount a cifs share, just change afp to cifs. This is one example using cifs.

host_name:/share_name /Volumes/mount_name url automounted,url==cifs://user_name:password@host_name/share_name 0 0

Note that the host_name must resolve to the actual IP address of the host computer. You could modify /etc/hosts to add the host_name to it if the host_name cannot be resolved by the DNS server.

A user reported a problem with NFS mounting on an iMac running Snow Leopard. When he tried to create a NFS mount, the Disk Utility crashed. Afterward, the program always showed a message saying that it was unable to create a record in /Local/Default before crashing. I searched the logs and the only thing I found was this:

com.apple.autofsd[49]: automount: Mount for myserver.com:/Volumes/shared has an empty mount point path

The problem is related to automount and autofs. I suspected the configuration file(s) might be corrupted. The configuration files I know are autofs.conf, auto_master and auto_home and they reside in the /etc directory. I checked these files and they were fine. These files did not have information about NFS mount. I was puzzled at first and was wondering where the configuration files were for NFS mounts. The /Local/Default in the error message does not represent an actual directory in the file system. My quest of searching for the corrupted NFS mounts configuration files continued.

I spent a lot of time browsing through pages and pages about automount, autofs in OS X. Most of them told you how to do NFS mounts, which I already knew. None of them told you where the configuration files were for NFS mounts. Finally, I came across this post about autofs. The article mentioned this directory led me to solve the problem.

Recall that Directory Utility stores its entries as XML files in /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/mounts.

I fired up the Terminal program and checked the directory. Sure enough, I found the configuration files for NFS mounts. Each NFS mount was saved as an XML file in this directory. One of the files was corrupted. After I modified the configuration file, the share was mounted correctly.

This brings up a new way to manage NFS mounts for your Mac clients. Apple only provides you with the GUI tool to add NFS mounts. If you have quite a few mounts to add, it could become a very tedious process. What you could do to save time is to copy the NFS configurations to this directory: /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/mounts. There is no need to run the Disk Utility and mount the shares manually.

You use Directory Utility  to join a Mac to an Open Directory in Leopard. It’s convenient because you only need to use one application. When I tried to add a new iMac running Snow Leopard to our Open Directory, I found that there is no Directory Utility in /Applications/Utilities . The utility is hidden in /System/Library/CoreServices , and you cannot use it to join the computer to the Open Directory. Therefore, it’s not very useful.

The function of joining the computer to OD has been integrated into the System Preferences. To do it, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Apple icon on the menu and select System Preferences.
2. Click on Accounts -> Login Options.
3. Click on the Join button to join the computer to a Network Account Server.
   

You can open the Directory Utility from the poped up dialog. However, the ability to mount NFS shares is also stripped out from the Directory Utility. To mount NFS shares, use Disk Utility instead.

1. Invoke Disk Utility.
2. Click on File -> NFS Mounts.
   
3. Add the shares.

Snow Leopard is out today. If you are considering upgrading to it, the first thing you need to know is that all the software for PowerPC are not working any more. There are some other Intel based software which are not compatible. For a complete list of those incompatible software, please visit this link.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3258

[Update] There is an unofficial Wiki page about application compatibility under Snow Leopard. This list is much more comprehensive than the official page.

http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/