"Failed to issue method call: Unit name autofs is not valid"

[FiableDotBiz]

Hello.

I get this error message:

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# service autofs restart
Restarting autofs (via systemctl):  Job failed. See system journal and 'systemctl status' for details.
                                                                                                                                     [FAILED]
# systemctl status autofs
Failed to issue method call: Unit name autofs is not valid.

In my auto.master file, I have the line

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/-   /etc/autofs/auto.nfs

and, in the file auto.nfs:

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/mnt/Dell101   -fstype=nfs4   Dell101:/
/mnt/Dell-OptiPlex-390   -fstype=nfs4   Dell-OptiPlex-390:/
/mnt/Dell-graphist   -fstype=nfs4   Dell-graphist:/
/mnt/Fiable   -fstype=nfs4   Fiable:/


Some of these computers are turned off. Specially one of them which is a notebook. This is precisely the reason why I use autofs: so that they be mounted when they are turned on, while using fstab would only mount the file systems which would be on before the NFS client. Usually this method works. Sometimes, I don't know why, autofs doesn't mount a file system, so I launch "service autofs restart" and usually it works. But quite often I get the above error message, and if I launch it again, I get again the same error message.
Do you have any idea?

[doktor5000]

For systemctl the syntax is a bit different, instead of systemctl status autofs try

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systemctl status autofs.service

and please show the output.

[FiableDotBiz]

Thank you. I forgot that. By the way, the message "See system journal and 'systemctl status' for details." could be more explicit: Where is the journal, exactly what command to launch?
Here is the result:

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# systemctl status autofs.service
autofs.service - Automounts filesystems on demand
          Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/autofs.service; enabled)
          Active: failed (Result: signal) since Wed, 20 Feb 2013 04:35:33 +0800; 9min ago
         Process: 5413 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/automount ${OPTIONS} --pid-file /run/autofs.pid (code=killed, signal=KILL)
        Main PID: 3681 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
          CGroup: name=systemd:/system/autofs.service

[alf]

Where is the journal, exactly what command to launch?

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journalctl

as root.
for the jounal of a specific day use

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journalctl --since <date>

(where date is in the form of yyyy-mm-dd).