What is the function of /home in Snow Leopard?

Question

I would like to mirror the directory structure that I have on my linux machine at work. There, my home directory resides in /home/emiller rather than /Users/emiller as it does on Snow Leopard.

I was intending to create /home/emiller and use it as a sshfs mount point for my files on the linux machine - thus permitting to me run all my scripts without having to change any paths.

However, when I try to mkdir /home/emiller, I get:

mkdir: /home/emiller: Operation not supported

Why is this? What is the function of /home? It appears empty of all files.

~emiller

Answer 1

It's got an NFS automounter map mounted on it, so NFS home directories will be automatically available there. Quoting man auto_master:

The auto_master file contains a list of the directories that are to be automounted. Associated with each directory is the name of a map that lists the locations of the filesystems to be automounted there. The default map looks like this:

#
# Automounter master map
#
+auto_master            # Use directory service
/net                    -hosts          -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid
/home                   auto_home       -nobrowse,hidefromfinder
/Network/Servers        -fstab
/-                      -static

The default auto_home on SL expects to get the home directory-to-machine mapping from NIS or LDAP, but you can add entries manually.

You can remove the auto_home line from /etc/auto_master and sudo killall automountd (which should cause launchd to rerun it with the new map) or reboot. Alternately, add your sshfs mount to /etc/auto_home (and again restart automountd or reboot).