RHBA-2005:654 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

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

Description

The autofs utility 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 stopping the automounter using 'service autofs stop,' the init script
will wait more than 30 seconds for each unmount to succeed. Because of
this, the system may take a long time to shut down. To resolve the issue,
a new tunable was added to /etc/sysconfig/autofs which controls the amount
of time, in seconds, that the init script will wait for each unmount to
succeed.

Currently, to enable ghosting of autofs maps, the --ghost option must be
specified in the master map. In order to provide greater flexibility, a
variable was added to /etc/sysconfig/autofs which may contain a list of
autofs-controlled mount points that should be ghosted.

A bug was fixed that would cause autofs to stop performing mounts and
unmounts for a given mount point. This bug was easily triggered when
running autofs with debugging enabled.

The autofs init script may return success, even if automount startup failed.

The autofs init script would return to the user before the daemon was ready
to process mount requests. This could result in services failing later in
the boot sequence if they depended on autofs.

Support for the new LDAP automount schema was added in this version of autofs.

A bug was fixed that would cause autofs to fail to check other hosts in a
replicated map if the first host found was running nfs, but did not allow
autofs to mount the export.

A potential race condition was found which in rare cases could potentially
cause files in a mounted directory to be removed. A fix was implemented to
prevent removing files should the race condition be triggered.

If the automounter failed to resolve the DNS name for a given host, it
would errantly decide that the server was localhost and try to do a bind mount.

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 3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 3 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 3 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 3 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 3 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 3 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 3 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 3 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 3 s390
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 3 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 144897 - autofs service starts successfully even if autofs mountpoint already in use
• BZ - 151431 - automount hangs due to unsafe call in signal handler
• BZ - 155388 - Per-mount ghosting request
• BZ - 163620 - autofs removed all files in mounted directory!

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)