AUTOFS(8)                                                                               AUTOFS(8)



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

SYNOPSIS
       /etc/rc.d/init.d/autofs start|stop|reload

DESCRIPTION
       autofs control the operation of the automount(8) daemons running on the Linux system. Usu-
       ally 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.


OPERATION
       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/rc.d/init.d/autofs status command. After the auto.master config-
       uration file is processed the autofs 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. The NIS map will be processed last.

       /etc/rc.d/init.d/autofs reload will check the current auto.master map against running dae-
       mons. 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/rc.d/init.d/autofs  status  will display the current configuration and a list of cur-
       rently running automount daemons.

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

AUTHOR
       This manual page was written by  Christoph  Lameter  <>,  for  the  Debian
       GNU/Linux system.  Edited by H. Peter Anvin <>.



                                            9 Sep 1997                                  AUTOFS(8)