Mounts and Shares

The Mounts/Shares tool lets you view, create, and manage several types of mounts and shares.

Share means to make a directory on one computer available to other computers.
Mount refers to the act of connecting to a shared directory.

For example, if user A shares -- that is, makes available -- a directory on system A, user B can then mount that system so it appears as a local directory on system B.

In addition to creating mounts and shares, the Mounts/Shares tool lets you view usage information about the mounts and shares in the currently active management domain (single server only). Click the Usage icon to display information about active mounts and shares. See About Management Domains for more information about management domains.

Note: Unlike other AdminSuite tools, which work with both single server and name service management domains, the Mounts/Shares tool only works with single servers. This is because it is not possible to define a share or a mount for an entire name service domain. You can create a share on a specific machine, and you can mount it on another specific machine, but you cannot mount something on a NIS or NIS+ domain.

Solaris can work with several types of file systems. See About File System Types for more information.

Solaris is also very flexible in terms of when file systems can be mounted or shared. Specifically, you can mount or share a directory Now (current), At Boot, or both Now and At Boot. Depending on how you do this, it is possible to create conflicts between the Now share or mount properties and the At Boot properties. See About Mount and Share Conflicts for more information.