Enhanced AutoFS Administrator's Guide

An Introduction to AutoFS
Overview of AutoFS
Chapter 1 5
The automountd daemon is completely independent from the automount
command. Because of this separation, it is possible to add, delete, or
change the AutoFS map information without having to stop and restart
the automountd daemon.
After system startup, when the AutoFS mount points are set up, you can
modify the set of mount points by modifying AutoFS maps and running
the automount command to read them and modify the mount table
accordingly. You do not have to stop and restart AutoFS.
If an automounted file system has been idle for a configured period of
time (the default is 10 minutes), AutoFS unmounts it.
For more information on AutoFS, see the following man pages:
automount (1M) and automountd (1M).
WARNING File systems under the management of AutoFS must always be
maintained through AutoFS utilities, automountd and automount.
Manually mounting and unmounting AutoFS managed file
systems can lead to disruptive or unpredictable results,
including but not limited to the following:
• Commands hang or do not return expected results.
• Applications fail due to their dependencies on these mounted
file systems.