How can I utilize autofs to automount CIFS shared home directories (or other shares) hosted via Samba?
Applies to all versions of Centrify DirectControl on all platforms
Question:
How can I utilize autofs to automount CIFS shared home directories (or other shares) hosted via Samba?
Answer:
Unfortunately, this is not a supported configuration due to limitations in mount.cifs. The autofs daemon is running as root and presents the following problems:
(1) root (local user) has no Kerberos credentials of its own
(2) Because of this, the share cannot mount as the (AD) user who holds the necessary credentials
You can certainly work around the above two points by running the autofs daemon as an AD user, or migrating root to AD and this will allow the share(s) to be automounted. However, because the daemon still runs as this user and shares are mounted as this user, everyone will be mounting as the single designated user and the share will be accessed as this single user, with files created owned by the same. Thus, this workaround is not feasible.