AutoFS and the BSD Amd suite Remote filesystems :

1. AutoFS: Auto-autofs detects Disks, Partitions, CD-ROMs, Floppies etc. and sets up an automount configuration.
So it provides an easy access to the hardware.

Auto-autofs is a Perl script that searches the hardware for block devices using the /proc directory. It finds partitions
on harddisks via fdisk and tries to detect the filesystems. The script generates also automounter entries for all ISO
(or other loopback) files in special folders. It creates a configuration file (automounter map) or works as a
configuration program for automount. Also a HTML file with all devices will be generated, so it's possible to mount
(and umount) partitions by clicking on a link.

Features
• Finds IDE and SCSI block devices via /proc
• Finds partitions on harddisks
• Filesystem and disk size detection via fdisk
• Gives the Devices automatically a fitting name (cdrom, cdwriter, zip, part etc.)
• By more than one device the names will be numbered (cdrom, cdrom1, cdrom2 etc)
• It's possible to give devices an alias (/dev/hdd1 -> "export")
• Volume or partition label support (for ext2, ext3, udf, isofs, reiserfs, ntfs and vfat)
more filesystems can be added
• Support for Audio and Video CDROMs (see README file) (NEW)
• Support for IDE-SCSI Emulation
• Support for umount/eject
• Configurable commands
• With Icons (32x32 or 16x16) from KDE
• Support for ISO Files and other loop back files
• Add your devices as QuickBrowser to your KDE Panel
• Free configurable
• Automatically configuration
• Automatically creates symbolic links (/dev/cdrom --> /dev/scd0)
• I18n support

2. BSD Amd Suite: An automounter maintains a cache of mounted file systems. File systems are mounted on
demand when they are first referenced, and unmounted after a period of inactivity. This helps to centralize all file
system access, provide a uniform site-wide namespace, and minimize downtimes for clients.

The Berkeley Automounter, Amd, may be used as a replacement for Sun's automounter. The choice of which file
system to mount can be controlled dynamically with selectors. Selectors allow decisions of the form "hostname is
this," or "architecture is not that." Selectors may be combined arbitrarily. Amd also supports a variety of file system
types, including NFS, UFS and the novel program file system. The combination of selectors and multiple file system
types allows identical configuration files to be used on all machines thus reducing the administrative overhead. Amd
ensures that it will not hang if a remote server goes down. Moreover, Amd can determine when a remote server has
become inaccessible and then mount replacement file systems as and when they become available.