[PATCH 0/7] Permit filesystem local caching and NFS superblock sharing [try #13]

[Trond Myklebust]

On Tue, 2006-09-05 at 10:57 +0100, David Howells wrote:
> Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust at fys.uio.no> wrote:
> 
> > Why the hell is it doing a mkdir in the first place?
> 
> I think the problems it is solving are these:
> 
>  (1) What happens if "/" is _not_ exported?
> 
>  (2) What happens if some intermediate directory (say "/usr") is not
>      accessible?
> 
> 
> In the first case, the automounter just makes "usr" and "usr/src", say, in the
> autofs filesystem, and then mounts server:/usr/src on that.

That is fine. As long as it is doing so in the _autofs_ filesystem. A
call to 'stat()' should suffice to tell if this is the case.

> In the second case, the automounter relies on NFS letting it make intervening
> directories it couldn't otherwise access to span the gap between "/" and
> "src".

If the directory isn't accessible, then autofs shouldn't be trying to
override that. It certainly shouldn't be doing so by trying to create
the directory.