RHBA-2009:0178 - 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 daemon. The
automount daemon automatically mounts file systems when you use them, and
unmounts them when they are not busy.

This updated package fixes the following bugs:

• autofs became unresponsive and the kernel occasionally returned incorrect

error statuses. Note: the fix for this bug requires this update to be
installed along with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 kernel update.

• a segmentation fault occurred when autofs checked map entries with

multiple servers for which none were available.

• the package documentation for replicated server selection was out-of-date

and has now been updated.

• using /dev/random on entropy-starved systems caused the automount daemon

to hang when the service started.

• a segmentation fault occurred for NIS map entries with a zero-length key.
• when autofs parsed the /etc/nsswitch.conf configuration file and a source

was not a known, pre-defined source, the parser returned an error, causing
parsing to stop. In this updated package, parsing continues even when a
source is unknown and has not been pre-defined.

• when program maps were executed, the current working directory was not

being set and was not made available in the environment for the map to use.

• the xfn map type was not recognized by the autofs master map parser.

Syntax errors caused parsing to stop, rather than the parser correctly
ignoring the errors and continuing.

• the automount daemon did not work properly in diskless environments in

which /etc was mounted read-only, and /etc/mtab consisted of a symlink to
/proc/mounts.

• when more than three network interfaces were present on a machine,

automount failed to recognize the host name of a local interface as being
local to the machine.

• when using an automount map with the LDAP NIS schema, the "%"

translation-handling for case-sensitive entries (with this case insensitive
schema) sometimes caused a segmentation fault on non-existent key lookups.

• in a multi-map configuration, autofs did not properly recognize when an

NIS map was updated.

• messages similar to the following were written to the log after using

"/net" for a prolonged period of time:

Apr 15 15:29:12 xxxx automount[1932]: expire_indirect: fstat failed: Bad
file descriptor

This issue was due to the in-kernel, Network File System version 4,
automounting conflicting with autofs expires, and has been resolved in this
updated package.

• wildcard map entry lookup was failing for nisplus maps.

All autofs users are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which
resolves these issues.

Solution

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

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red
Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 252032 - autofs does not log enough data to troubleshoot replicated server selection
• BZ - 435960 - autofs with map file auto.nis not working, error: automount master_error: syntax error while parsing map
• BZ - 439497 - autofs hang on startup
• BZ - 443933 - automount segfaults upon start
• BZ - 448036 - autofs parses /etc/nsswitch.conf incorrectly
• BZ - 448038 - expire_indirect: fstat failed: Bad file descriptor
• BZ - 448468 - Program maps do not set pwd
• BZ - 448667 - [RHEL4] autofs4 multi-map doesn't pickup NIS updates automatically
• BZ - 448674 - X/Open Federated Naming service master map entry should be handled by autofs
• BZ - 457524 - Automounter does not work in the diskless environment
• BZ - 458252 - Autofs doesn't recognize the local host as local when using many interfaces
• BZ - 458464 - AutoFS Crashes if non-alpha numerics are tried as map names (LDAP maps)

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)