Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 6484
Autofs ignores NIS auto.master if a local /etc/auto.master exists
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:37:52 EDT
According to the manpage and the comments at the top of the script, autofs should first process the local /etc/auto.master and then any NIS auto.master. Previous versions (3.1.3-2) did this correctly. Later versions (I've seen this in 3.1.3-5 and 3.1.3-9) have an "else" after the first check, so that the NIS check isn't performed if the local /etc/auto.master exists (which it does, since the RPM installs it). I suspect this is an unintentional error introduced when the name of the lock file was changed.
*** Bug 6615 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** autofs(8) manpage says: After the auto.master configuration file is processed the autofs script will check for an NIS map with the same name. If such a map exists then that map will be processed in the same way as the auto.master map. The NIS map will be pro- cessed last. But that's not true, the autofs script only looks at the auto.master map if /etc/auto.master does not exist. The autofs-master-yp.patch patch included with the autofs SRPM mentions this behavior. I suggest that the behavior be modified to be compatible with Sun's automounter, checking for a line starting with "+" and including that map (e.g. "+auto.master"). It is useful to be able to have both local automounter configuration and to be able to pull the configuration from NIS. This would be a trivial change to the autofs script.
*** Bug 5796 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** A logic error in /etc/rc.d/init.d/autofs prevents automount from being started for maps that are received through NIS. the function 'getmounts()' in the autofs start script does the following: if[ -f /etc/auto.master ] then start automount for mount points in/etc/auto.master else search for mount points in NIS maps. fi this logic prevents maps from being loaded from _both_ /etc/auto.master and over NIS. The fix for this is quite simple: test first for /etc/auto.master and then test for NIS maps. I'd be happy to provide a patch if this explanation isn't clear. thanks! ------- Additional Comments From 10/14/99 06:01 ------- A quick fix is to use the startup script from 6.0 Although not the best of solutions, I need my system up and running. ------- Additional Comments From 10/20/99 13:44 ------- Autofs should check /etc/nsswitch.conf to determine if it should use NIS at all. In 6.0, you could say "automount: files" in /etc/nsswitch.conf, and autofs it would still check NIS. It looks like this change in 6.1 was meant to remedy the problem, but the best solution was not chosen.
*** Bug 6208 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** The init script for autofs does check for a local auto-master file in /etc before asking the NIS server. This is against the usual philosophy that NIS maps take precedence over local files. Additionally if the map from the NIS server is used the script assumes map-type 'yp' as default what makes it impossible to mix local and NIS maps. Included is a patch that moves the NIS maps to the front of the script and additionally checks if the found auto.master map contains any maps that begin with a slash, then assuming that a local map is wanted, setting the map type to 'file'. --- rc.d/init.d/autofs.orig Mon Sep 20 17:13:32 1999 +++ rc.d/init.d/autofs Sat Oct 16 19:20:35 1999 @@ -37,6 +37,36 @@ function getmounts() { # +# Next to check for YellowPage maps to be loaded +# + if [ -e /usr/bin/ypcat ] && [ `ypcat -k auto.master 2>/dev/null | wc -l` -gt 0 ] + then + ypcat -k auto.master | ( + while read dir map options + do + if [ ! -z "$dir" -a ! -z "$map" \ + -a x`echo "$map" | cut -c1` != 'x-' ] + then + map=`echo "$map" | sed -e 's/^auto_/auto./'` + if echo $options | grep -- '-t' >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then + mountoptions="--timeout $(echo $options | \ + sed 's/^.*-t\(imeout\)*[ \t]*\([0-9][0-9]*\).*$/\2/g')" + fi + options=`echo "$options" | sed -e ' + s/--*t\(imeout\)*[ \t]*[0-9][0-9]*//g + s/\(^\|[ \t]\)-/\1/g'` + if [ x`echo "$map" | grep '^\/'` != 'x' ] + then + type="file" + else + type="yp" + fi + echo "/usr/sbin/automount $mountoptions $dir $type $map $options $localoptions" + fi + done + ) +else +# # Check for local maps to be loaded # if [ -f /etc/auto.master ] ; then @@ -87,30 +117,6 @@ ;; esac unset basecommand - fi - done - ) -else -# -# Next to check for YellowPage maps to be loaded -# - if [ -e /usr/bin/ypcat ] && [ `ypcat -k auto.master 2>/dev/null | wc -l` -gt 0 ] - then - ypcat -k auto.master | ( - while read dir map options - do - if [ ! -z "$dir" -a ! -z "$map" \ - -a x`echo "$map" | cut -c1` != 'x-' ] - then - map=`echo "$map" | sed -e 's/^auto_/auto./'` - if echo $options | grep -- '-t' >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then - mountoptions="--timeout $(echo $options | \ - sed 's/^.*-t\(imeout\)*[ \t]*\([0-9][0-9]*\).*$/\2/g')" - fi - options=`echo "$options" | sed -e ' - s/--*t\(imeout\)*[ \t]*[0-9][0-9]*//g - s/\(^\|[ \t]\)-/\1/g'` - echo "/usr/sbin/automount $mountoptions $dir yp $map $options $localoptions" fi done )
I've recently upgraded to RedHat 6.1 and found the same problem and read the submitted comments regarding bug 6484. But it made me wonder about the automount entry in nsswitch.conf Is this ignored? Perhaps a good solution would be to use the NSS to determine where automount gets its map information.
The automount line in /etc/nsswitch.conf is ignored by autofs. Most other lines (passwd, group, hosts) map directly to a set of functions in libc that consult these lines, but there is no such function in libc (on any flavor that I've ever heard of) for looking up information about filesystems, so autofs implements lookups internally.
The behavior of the init script in 3.1.4-6 once again tries to merge the local and NIS auto.master maps. Entries in NIS that duplicate entries in the local file get dropped, and particular NIS maps can still be disabled by specifying a map type of '-' for the directory in the local auto.master file. This should solve the problems everyone has been having. Please respond with results (good or bad) if you upgrade to this version, which will show up in the next Raw Hide (ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/rawhide/i386/RedHat/RPMS/) release.