Bug 462269

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #439497 +++

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080325 Fedora/2.0.0.13-1.fc8 Firefox/2.0.0.13

Description of problem:
When I start /etc/init.d/autofs it hangs forever.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
autofs-5.0.1-0.rc2.55

How reproducible:
Always


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Boot a headless system with no keyboard or mouse and with / as tmpfs
2. Start /etc/init.d/autofs start


Actual Results:
Autofs hangs

Expected Results:
Autofs should have started and bash should have returned to the prompt.

Additional info:
I'm not sure if the fact that the system is headless or that / is tmpfs is relevant.

However, as reported in http://www.mail-archive.com/autofs@linux.kernel.org/msg06460.html, replacing /dev/random with a symlink to /dev/urandom fixes the problem.

--- Additional comment from ikent on 2008-03-29 00:50:59 EDT ---

I haven't checked into this yet, thanks for the reminder.


--- Additional comment from pm-rhel on 2008-06-02 16:11:32 EDT ---

This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release.  Product Management has requested
further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential
inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Update release for currently deployed
products.  This request is not yet committed for inclusion in an Update
release.

--- Additional comment from mi-rhbug on 2008-06-11 17:53:17 EDT ---

I am running into this as well. I believe the hangs are caused by the
calls to seed_random() which in turn tries to read /dev/random and
that hangs on entropy starved systems. Changing Patch66:
autofs-5.0.1-rc3-random-selection.patch to use /dev/urandom instead of
/dev/random is the easy fix. /dev/random is an overkill for this
anyway.