Networking Guide
Chapter 13, Configuring the NFS automounter

The mount table

The mount table

automount uses the same kernel table (/etc/mnttab) as the conventional NFS mounting approach in which to store a record of all active mounts. When automount creates a mount, it adds a record of the mount to /etc/mnttab. When it unmounts a filesystem, it removes the record of that mount from /etc/mnttab. automount keeps an image in memory of /etc/mnttab and refreshes this image every time it performs a mounting or an automatic unmounting.

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