Drink Beer and Geek Out

What is autofsd? Why is it running?

If like me, you keep an eye on the Mac OSX activity monitor, then you’ve likely seen autofsd and wonder what the heck it is.

According to Apple:

autofsd

runs automount, and then waits for network configuration change events and, when such an event occurs, re-runs automount to update the mounts to reflect the current automounter maps. It can also be signalled byautomount_reread to run automount.

More simply – it monitors for changes on the network. Let’s say you come home and connect to your home network, autofsd would be responsible for saying “Oh look, I can mount my home server’s hard drive on this network!” and take care of business.

Leave a Reply