Linux allows you to mount filesystems statically in the /etc/fstab file. However, with the approach, the mount point is always mapped even when you’re not using the mapped resource.

To improve automounting of NFS/Samba shares, a tool called autofs was created. This allows automounting of NFS/Samba shares to conserve bandwidth and offer better overall performance compared to mounting statically. autofs is a program for automatically mounting directories on an as-needed basis. This is good in that it will only mount resource when needed which improves systems’ performance.

#ubuntu #ubuntu 20.04 #mount nfs filesystems #autofs