autofs will not automatically check NIS for an auto.master map if there is an auto.master file that already exists in /etc. So, when I deploy a RH workstation that autofs mounts it's homedirectories off of an NFS server it comes up in a basic way ready to log in (with NIS already working, etc) except that autofs isn't seeing the NIS maps because there is a sample auto.master file that gets installed. it would be wonderful if that file could be renamed to auto.master.example or put in a separate RPM that didn't have to be installed. Then autofs would "just work" on the first boot of the workstation. (or, I guess another option would be to modify autofs such that it always checks for an NIS-supplied auto.master map regardless of the existance of an auto.master file)
This is fixed in Raw Hide, where autofs(18) starts after ypbind(17). *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 9925 ***
Whoops, 9985 is the duplicate.
We generally don't split configuration files from the packages they go with, because the defaults are correct for most cases. The behavior you're seeing is the result of a fix for an earlier bug report, where conflicting entries in the file and NIS caused problems. If you're deploying workstations using kickstart, you can add: rm -f /etc/auto.master to your %post section, and that will solve your problem.
I've just put autofs-3.1.4-6 into Raw Hide (ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/rawhide/i386/RedHat/RPMS/), which backs out the change that ignores NIS auto.master in favor of merging the two. Please let me know if switching to this version solves the problem.
I haven't heard anything in about six weeks, so I'm closing this bug out.