Comment 17 for bug 191512

Sebastien,

autofs is a daemon that interacts with the Linux kernel automounter to mount directories when they are accessed for the first time. The volumes are mounted by "root", not by the user accessing the directory. This is especially helpful when you have thousands of home directories exported via NFS, but you don't want to mount all of them on boot, but only as needed.

Is there a particular reason that home directories need to be displayed on the desktop? I understand the need for /media, but not the need for /home/$USER. What we're trying to get at is that this behavior is a regression from Dapper and Gutsy (and also Edgy and Feisty) which causes the Gnome desktop to be somewhat at odds with very large deployments such as those found in universities or large corporations. As far as I can see, this regression poses no significant benefit to end users who already have sufficient methods of getting to their home directory.

-P