It is generally necessary to stop and restart automount when:
introducing new maps.
introducing new command line options (you want automount
to run differently).
changing the content of the master map or telling
automount to use a different master map.
changing a mount point in a direct map.
The simplest way of stopping and restarting automount
is to stop and restart NFS by issuing the commands:
nfs stop
nfs start
If you need to stop and restart automount without
interrupting NFS service:
Unmount the automounted filesystems using the
umount(ADM)
command.
Determine the process ID of automount by entering:
ps -ef | grep automount | egrep -v grep
Stop automount by entering:
kill -15pid
Here,
pid stands for the process ID you obtained
from the previous ps command.
CAUTION:
Do not use kill -9 to stop automount. Doing
so will not clear the /etc/mnttab file and may prevent
filesystems from being mounted. See also
``Unexpected automount termination''.
Complete any desired changes to your automount
configuration.
Restart automount from the command line. If
automount is usually started by default from
the NFS startup script, ensure that the command line syntax matches
the automount entry in /etc/nfs.
If you encounter problems while reconfiguring
automount, rebooting your machine is
also a reliable way of restarting automount.