Enhanced AutoFS Administrator's Guide

An Introduction to AutoFS
Overview of AutoFS
Chapter 14
Figure 1-1 illustrates the interaction among the components of AutoFS.
Figure 1-1 Interaction Among AutoFS Components
The automount command is invoked at the system startup. It reads the
AutoFS master map to create the initial set of AutoFS mount points in
the internal mount table, /etc/mnttab. The automounted file systems
are not mounted automatically at startup. The automounted file systems
are points under which file systems are mounted when users request
access to them.
When AutoFS receives a request to mount a file system that is not
mounted, it calls the automountd daemon, which actually mounts the
requested file system. Once you mount the file system, further access
does not require any action from the automountd daemon. AutoFS
mounts file systems at the configured mount points. It does not maintain
its own directory of mount points with symbolic links into it.