When we mount /home using automount and xdm, users loose their configurations (.fvwmrc, .wm_syle). That happens because Xsession test for the presence of these files in a direcory that was not yet mounted. A possible solution is to add the following two lines to the beginninng of Xsession: pushd $HOME popd
The first phase of Xsession should make sure that a users home directory is properly mounted. Thank you for the suggestion.
I have been testing this, and a test of the format: if [ -f /some/path/to/file/filename.ext ]; then echo true else echo false fi Seems to produce the desired results, i.e. if the filesystem isn't mounted, the test causes the filesystem to get mounted and then the command returns true. Therefore if the system you are using is configured correctly, when we "test for files that aren't mounted yet" autofs should be mounting the filesystem and then doing the test. I can't reproduce the problem here is what I am saying.