Automounting Vagrant boxes in Mac OS 10.8

gistfile1.md

(Inspired by http://yourmacguy.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/osx-automount/)

Preface:

• I have a lot of vagrant projects
• Each of them provides an NFS-Server exporting /home/vagrant
• Since Mac OS 10.8 the handy "NFS Mounts" from Disk Util are gone
• I'd like a single place, in which I could copy'n'paste a config for a new box and/or comment a box (when I don't need it for some time)
• I'd like to make this a vagrant plugin
• Ideally, the mount will be activated/deactivated when starting/suspending a box

using "automount" and "auto_master"

1. Edit your /etc/auto_master file and add: /Users/<your_user_name>/mounts /Users/<your_user_name/etc/automounts
2. Create an empty directory /Users/<your_user_name>/mounts and file /Users/<your_user_name/etc/automounts
3. For a box create an entry like this in your automounts file:
   project_x -fstype=nfs,nosuid,browse,bg,intr,soft,nonegnamecache,deadtimeout=1 33.33.33.33:/home/vagrant
   This will configure a soft, background nfs-mount of 33.33.33.33:/home/vagrant on /Users/<your_user_name>/mounts/project_x
4. Invoke sudo automount -vc to reload (and activate) autoload config

Pros:

• Can pass all mount options (such as soft which helps Finder not to hang when the box is hanging/reloading...)
• Can tell where to mount things

Cons:

• automount is a performance killer
• Each change (adding, removing a mount point) requires a sudo which somehow eliminates the possibility to use it as a middleware

using applescript

AppleScript allows users to "Connect to Server" (pretty much the same thing as invoking cmd-K in Finder). This script will mount the same share as above on /Volumes/vagrant .

osascript -e 'try
	mount volume "nfs://33.33.33.33/home/vagrant"
end try'

Pro:

• Does not need sudo -> can be used as automated mount/unmount

Cons:

• Cannot pass any options
• slows down vagrant up when the box has not (yet) started it's nfs-server or has hiccups (suspend while changing networks)