[Freeipa-devel] automount in LDAP

[Rob Crittenden]

I'm trying to wrap my head around automount over LDAP and how we would 
want an API over XML-RPC to support it.

At its core there are 2 types of objects we'll deal with: maps and keys

That part is easy enough. I can implement add-map and add-key methods. 
The problem is producing something actually usable to a client.

The thing is, the admin will need a certain amount of automount 
knowledge to create a usable setup. Do we want to mirror the LDAP 
objects or provide an interface to be useful, or both?

So an example is in order. Here is an example of a simple non-home 
shared directory. It creates the maps auto.master and auto.share and 
exports the NFS share /share/builds.

dn: automountmapname=auto.master,cn=accounts,dc=example,dc=com
objectClass: automountMap
objectClass: top
automountMapName: auto.master

dn: 
automountkey=/share,automountmapname=auto.master,cn=accounts,dc=example,dc
  =com
objectClass: automount
objectClass: top
automountKey: /share
automountInformation: ldap:automountmapname=auto.share, 
cn=accounts,dc=example
  ,dc=com

dn: automountmapname=auto.share,cn=accounts,dc=example,dc=com
objectClass: automountMap
objectClass: top
automountMapName: auto.share

dn: 
automountkey=builds,automountmapname=auto.share,cn=accounts,dc=example,dc=
  com
automountInformation: somehost:/share/builds
objectClass: automount
objectClass: top
automountKey: builds

So assuming I'm reading this right, and that is a bit of a leap, this 
shows there are two kinds of keys. One defines a search point (/share) 
and one defines a mount point (builds). And it requires knowledge of how 
  automount wants to format shares.

And also, this assumes we use a schema with automountkey/automountmap 
instead of cn and ou.

Adding shares can be left as an exercise to the user by just exporting a 
way to add maps and keys, or we can try to impose some sort of order on 
this. What that might look like I don't know.

Feedback welcome.

rob