autofs Linux Service

autofs service:

Automount service. One of the several automounting of file systems on demand services i.e., it auto mount CDs and other file system-like devices and media.
Now lets see the manual of autofs service.
Manual autofs:
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. 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.
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 configuration 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 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/rc.d/init.d/autofs status will display the current configuration and a list of currently running automount daemons.
SEE ALSO
automount(8), autofs(5), auto.master(5).
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>.