Q: Possible to automount AEBS HD

My configuration includes an iMac running Mac OS 10.7.5, an Apple Extreme Base Station

with a partitioned USB hard drive connected to it, and various other machines wirelessy connected. I am

trying to configure the hard drive so that its volumes are accessible with different permissions

depending on the user. I want this configuration to survive a restart and wake scenario.

It appears to me that the only configuration workable with Lion and networked drives is for open

(Read Write access) access for all users that mount the drive (or any of its volumes). This involves

simply accessing the server via command-K and supplying the password.

A permanent configuration via some automount solution has been raised in a number of queries

and I have tried all the solutions to no avail. An example of a more comprehensive thread is:-

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3221944?start=0&tstart=0

I have tried using the fstab and automount solutions (using a mount map file) but they both result in

root mounted volumes. It seems some regression was introduced in Lion that has broken the auto-mounting of

networked drives (note, mounting the drives using mount_afp works fine).

I wonder is anyone aware of a solution and more importantly, for Mountain Lion users, does this problem still exist ?

If I upgrade to ML will this allow an auto-mount configuration?

Notes

====

For anyone with the time to try on ML, the fstab mods are of the form (man fstab):-

<Id of Vol. to mount> <Mount Point> <fstype> <options> <dump param> <fsck pass no.>

192.168.0.3:/Iomega-100GB /Volumes/myIomega-100GB url rw,auto,automounted,url=="afp://username:password@192.168.0.3/Iomega-100GB/" 0 0

Where username is login name and password is the disk password set via AirPort Utility.

Mods to fstab can be tested via sudo automount -vc (avoids reboot etc.). Can then delete/reset fstab and re-run this command to

get system back to previous state.

Console application will show some errors and info.

From man documentation and console output, the above fstab mod leads to the invocation of mount_afp.

I can see that there are potential issues with this approach. Such as, how does the username/pw apply to other users?

Given this mount will take place during a boot then volumes could at most be potentially available to users

with the final stage of credential checking only taking place at the point of use of volumes. This would explain

why mount_afp works (there are no ambiguities of who the user is).

From the automount documentation I have noticed that there is an 'executable map' option that allows conditional

mounting of volumes. I have not explored this as I don't understand the root mount behaviour (where this executable

option is likely to lead!).