/etc/init.d/autofs - Control Script for automounter

/etc/init.d/autofs start|stop|reload|status

autofs control the operation of the automount(8) daemons running on the Linux system. Usually autofs is invoked at system boot time with the start parameter and at shutdown time with the stop parameter. The autofs script can also manually be invoked by the system administrator to shut down, restart or reload the automounters.

autofs will consult a configuration file /etc/auto.master (see auto.master(5)) to find mount points on the system. For each of those mount points a automount(8) process is started with the appropriate parameters. You can check the active mount points for the automounter with the /etc/init.d/autofs status command. If the auto.master configuration file contains a line of the form

+map [options]

then the script will check for an NIS map with the same name. If such a map exists then that map will be processed in the same way as the auto.master map, with any optional arguments.

/etc/init.d/autofs reload will check the current auto.master map against running daemons. It will kill those daemons whose entries have changed and then start daemons for new or changed entries.

If a map is modified then the change will become effective immediately. If the auto.master map is modified then the autofs script must be rerun to activate the changes.

/etc/init.d/autofs status will display the current configuration and a list of currently running automount daemons.

automount(8), autofs(5), auto.master(5).

This manual page was written by Christoph Lameter <chris@waterf.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system. Edited by H. Peter Anvin <hpa@transmeta.com>.