NAME

       autofs - Service control for the automounter

SYNOPSIS

       If a SysV init script system is being used:
       /etc/init.d/autofs start|stop|restart|reload|status

       or if the systemd init system is being used:
       systemctl start|stop|restart|reload|status autofs.service

DESCRIPTION

       autofs  controls  the operation of the automount(8) daemon(s) 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. Service control actions can also be manually invoked by the
       system administrator to shut down, restart, reload or obtain service status.

OPERATION

       autofs will consult a configuration file /etc/auto.master (see auto.master(5)) by  default
       to find mount points on the system. For each of those mount points automount(8) will mount
       and start a thread, with the appropriate parameters, to manage the mount point.

       /etc/init.d/autofs reload or  systemctl  autofs.service  reload  will  check  the  current
       auto.master  map  against  the  current  automount managed mounts. It will terminate those
       daemons or threads (depending on autofs version) whose entries have been removed,  re-read
       the  automount  maps  for  entries  that have changed and start new daemons or threads for
       entries that have been added.

       If an indirect map is modified then the change will become effective immediately.   If  an
       indirect  map  uses  the  browse  option, the master map contains direct mount maps or the
       auto.master map is modified then the autofs service control reload action must be rerun to
       activate the changes.

       However,  if  a  map entry has offsets and is currently in use the offset mounts cannot be
       updated due to potential mount dependencies. In this case the map entry offsets  will  not
       be updated until after the map entry has expired.

       /etc/init.d/autofs  status  or systemctl status autofs.service will display the status of,
       automount(8), running or not. When  using  the  systemd  init  system  the  status  output
       includes somewhat more information related to the service status.

       systemctl(1) has more functions than the actions mentioned here, see systemctl(1) for more
       information.

SEE ALSO

       automount(8),   autofs(5),   autofs.conf(5),   auto.master(5),   autofs_ldap_auth.conf(5),
       systemctl(1).

AUTHOR

       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>   and   Ian   Kent
       <raven@themaw.net>.

                                            9 Sep 1997                                  AUTOFS(8)