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2.2. autofs

The autofs utility controls the operation of the automount daemon. The automount daemon automatically mounts file systems when you use them, and unmounts them when they are not busy.
  • When using NFSv4 with a global root, autofs has no way to know which server export path corresponds to the global root. Consequently, the internal hosts map fails to mount server exports. For detailed information on this problem, refer the following Knowledge Base article:
  • Starting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, behavior of the umount -l autofs command has changed. For more information, refer to BZ#452122.
    Previously, the umount -l would unmount all autofs-managed mounts and autofs internal mounts at start-up, and then mounted all autofs mounts again as a part of the start-up procedure. As a result, the execution of the external umount -l command was not needed.
    The previous autofs behavior can be used via the following commands:
    ~]# service autofs forcerestart
    or
    ~]# service autofs forcestart