NFS Services Administrator's Guide

Introduction
AutoFS
Chapter 1 33
AutoFS Filesystem
The AutoFS filesystem is a virtual filesystem that provides a directory
structure for automatic mounting. It includes autofskd, a kernel-based
process that periodically cleans up mounts.
The automountd Daemon
The automountd daemon is a stateless daemon that accepts RPC
requests from the AutoFS filesystem, to mount or unmount directories
and filesystems.
Figure 1-2 shows the interaction among the AutoFS components.
Figure 1-2 Interaction among AutoFS components
The automount command is invoked at 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 filesystems