A "strictexpire" mount option has been added to the autofs file system. It is meant to be used in cases where a GUI continually accesses or an application frquently scans an automount directory tree causing an accumulation of otherwise unused mounts. Signed-off-by: Ian Kent <raven@xxxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/filesystems/autofs.txt | 17 ++++++++++++----- 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/autofs.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/autofs.txt index 05da806b1e88..ac50b47f02bd 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/autofs.txt +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/autofs.txt @@ -240,11 +240,18 @@ Normally the daemon only wants to remove entries which haven't been used for a while. For this purpose autofs maintains a "`last_used`" time stamp on each directory or symlink. For symlinks it genuinely does record the last time the symlink was "used" or followed to find -out where it points to. For directories the field is a slight -misnomer. It actually records the last time that autofs checked if -the directory or one of its descendants was busy and found that it -was. This is just as useful and doesn't require updating the field so -often. +out where it points to. For directories the field is used slightly +differently. The field is updated at mount time and during expire +checks if it is found to be in use (ie. open file descriptor or +process working directory) and during path walks. The update done +during path walks prevents frequent expire and immediate mount of +frequently accessed automounts. But in the case where a GUI continually +access or an application frequently scans an autofs directory tree +there can be an accumulation of mounts that aren't actually being +used. To cater for this case the "`strictexpire`" autofs mount option +can be used to avoid the "`last_used`" update on path walk thereby +preventing this apparent inability to expire mounts that aren't +really in use. The daemon is able to ask autofs if anything is due to be expired, using an `ioctl` as discussed later. For a *direct* mount, autofs
