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4.5. autofs

Updated autofs packages that fix several bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
The autofs utility controls the operation of the automount daemon. The automount daemon automatically mounts file systems when you use them and unmounts them when they are not busy. Autofs maps describe how file systems below the mount point of the map are to be mounted.

Bug Fixes

BZ#714766
Previously, autofs maps did not refresh the list of shares exported on the NFS server. As a consequence, ESTALE error messages were returned in the NFS client. A patch has been provided to fix this bug and autofs now refreshes the list of shares as expected. Moreover, within this bug, the ability to update hosts made on receiving a HUP signal has been added to autofs.
BZ#865309
Prior to this update, the description of MOUNT_WAIT setting in the configuration file was incorrect. Wrong timeout setting could cause problems as the mount utility would wait for a server that is temporarily unavailable. The description in the configuration file has been edited, thus fixing this bug.
BZ#866337
Previously, autofs manual pages described the "nobind" autofs option incorrectly, thus it was not possible to specify different options for individual direct mount maps. The manual pages have been updated to describe the current behavior of "nobind", which fixes the bug.
BZ#909263
A change that removed code to add the current map entry caused wildcard indirect multi-mount map entries to fail to mount. A patch to fix wildcard multi-map regression has been provided and map entries now mount successfully.
BZ#918843
Previously, the autofs RPC function, used to receive the exports list from a host, did not try all potentially available mountd versions. Consequently, when certain mountd protocol versions were disabled, autofs RPC function failed to receive the exports list. A patch has been provided to fix this bug and autofs RPC function now receives the exports list successfully.
BZ#947604
When the automount utility was sent a shutdown signal, the "autofs reload" command was causing automount to stop running when multiple maps were being removed from the auto.master map. A patch has been provided to fix this bug and automount no longer stops running in the described scenario.
BZ#976592
When using autofs with LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), the code used to perform a base DN (distinguished name) search allowed a race between two threads executing the same function simultaneously to occur. As a consequence, autofs could attempt to access already freed memory and terminate unexpectedly due to a segmentation fault. With this update, the code used to perform base DN searches has been moved to the function protected by a mutex, which prevents the race from occurring. The base DN searches are now performed only when the map lookup modules settings are being refreshed.
Users of autofs are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.