RHBA-2005:178 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated autofs package that fixes various bugs is now available.

Description

The autofs package controls the operation of the automount daemons. The
automount daemons automatically mount and unmount file systems after a
period of inactivity. File systems can include network file systems,
CD-ROMs, diskettes, and other media.

This updated package addresses the following issues:

When reading program maps, the automounter repeated the last character of
output resulting in failed mounts.

The last autofs update changed the handling of duplicate entries in maps.
The original behavior was to act upon the first occurrence of a given key.
The regression caused the automounter to act upon the last occurrence of
the key name in the map.

The automounter failed to propagate custom variable definitions to submounts.

The automounter failed to start when using ldap maps that exceeded the
server set LDAP_SIZELIMIT with ghosting enabled. The automounter now
starts successfully, but will disable ghosting for such maps.

Upon startup, autofs sources master maps from all locations specified on
the automount line of /etc/nsswitch.conf. A new variable has been
introduced that allows the user to determine whether all master maps
are sourced, or only the first master map which is found. This variable is
ONE_AUTO_MASTER, and should be set to '1' in /etc/sysconfig/autofs to
enable this new behaviour. The default setting is '0', which preserves
backwards compatibility.

The automounter implements an algorithm to select the best server from
which to mount for replicated server entries. This algorithm was being
invoked even for non-replicated server entries. This caused problems for
some customers, as the detection code issued a UDP RPC ping to the NFS
server. If the NFS server only responds to TCP, there would be no
response. As such, file systems, which were available, failed to mount.

When the automounter starts, it creates directories for the automount
points if those directories do not already exist. Upon termination, the
automount daemon then removes these directories. However, it does not
distinguish between directories it has created and directories which
already exist. This has the undesirable effect of removing directories
that had previously existed on the system.

Program maps which output greater than 4096 characters were being
truncated. This resulted in some directories not being created and mounted.

Updates to automount maps were not automatically recognized by the automounter.

Mounting many file systems in succession could result in using up all
reserved ports in the system. The automounter exacerbated this problem by
using reserved ports to check the availability of servers. This version of
autofs binds to non-reserved ports to issue the RPC pings to servers.

Automount now has support for the browse file system option when used in a
submount map. Support for the browse option in auto.master currently only
works if it is not the first option specified.

When using LDAP maps with autofs, autofs would only check for the existence
of an auto.master map. The automounter has been updated to search for an
auto_master LDAP map if an auto.master map does not exist.

When using a program map that returned SMB file systems, automount would
pass illegal arguments to the mount function. The automounter has been
updated to pass appropriate arguments to the mount function when using
smbfs program maps.

The autofs daemon automatically defaulted to yp if an autofs submount map
did not specify its maptype. The automounter has been updated to use the
order provided in /etc/nsswitch.conf to search for unspecified autofs
submount maps.

All users of autofs should upgrade to this updated package, which resolves
these issues.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.

To update all RPMs for your particular architecture, run:

rpm -Fvh [filenames]

where [filenames] is a list of the RPMs you wish to upgrade. Only those
RPMs which are currently installed will be updated. Those RPMs which are
not installed but included in the list will not be updated. Note that you
can also use wildcards (*.rpm) if your current directory *only* contains the
desired RPMs.

Please note that this update is also available via Red Hat Network. Many
people find this an easier way to apply updates. To use Red Hat Network,
launch the Red Hat Update Agent with the following command:

up2date

This will start an interactive process that will result in the appropriate
RPMs being upgraded on your system.

If up2date fails to connect to Red Hat Network due to SSL
Certificate Errors, you need to install a version of the
up2date client with an updated certificate. The latest version of
up2date is available from the Red Hat FTP site and may also be
downloaded directly from the RHN website:

https://rhn.redhat.com/help/latest-up2date.pxt

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 4 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 127457 - autofs doesn't treat # character as comment in nsswitch.conf
• BZ - 128966 - NFS access failures from fast mounting
• BZ - 134399 - autofs removes directories on shutdown
• BZ - 137220 - automount exits immediately on *any* error enumerating LDAP maps
• BZ - 138606 - autofs appending extra character when mounting SMB sharepoints
• BZ - 138994 - autofs drops mounts due to buffer overflow when using program maps
• BZ - 140108 - handling of duplicate indirect map entries has changed
• BZ - 143074 - autofs variables not passed on to submounts
• BZ - 143126 - autofs reads all auto.master maps
• BZ - 147492 - automounter does not handle smbfs properly
• BZ - 151668 - autofs-4.1.3-104 will not fall through wildcard in maps.

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)