RHBA-2009:1010 - 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:

• autofs5 became unresponsive and the kernel occasionally returned

incorrect error statuses, mostly when using submounts. (BZ#460087)

Note: the fix for this bug requires the kernel update for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 4.8 to be installed along with this update.

• a segmentation fault occurred when autofs5 checked map entries with

multiple servers for which none were available. (BZ#462264)

• when using an automount map with the LDAP NIS (case-insensitive) schema,

the "%" translation-handling for case-sensitive entries sometimes caused a
segmentation fault when trying to look up a non-existent key. (BZ#462266)

• using the /dev/random random-number generator on entropy-starved systems

caused the automount daemon to hang when the serivce started. (BZ#462269)

• a segmentation fault occurred for NIS map entries with a zero-length key.

(BZ#462270)

• when autofs5 parsed the /etc/nsswitch.conf configuration file and a

source was not defined therein, 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. (BZ#462271)

• 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.
(BZ#462272)

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

Syntax errors caused parsing to stop, rather than to correctly ignore the
errors and continue. (BZ#462273)

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

which the /etc directory was mounted read-only and /etc/mtab consisted of a
symlink to /proc/mounts. (BZ#462274)

• 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. (BZ#462275)

• path names which included certain characters or combinations thereof

caused autofs to crash and dump core. (BZ#462276)

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

NIS map was updated. (BZ#462614)

• after using the "/net" directory for a prolonged period of time, messages

similar to the following were written to the log:

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, which conflicted with autofs expires, and has been resolved
in this updated package. (BZ#462715)

• the default configuration of autofs5 was to not start during bootup. With

this update, autofs5 now automatically starts at boot time unless the
autofs package is also installed and configured to start at boot. (BZ#471838)

• server re-connects failed because the authentication credential was

timing out but not being refreshed during the re-connection. (BZ#477245)

• wildcard map entry lookup was failing for nisplus maps. (BZ#481456)
• various typos in the autofs5(5), autofs5(8), auto.master(5), and

automount5(8) man pages have been corrected. (BZ#453027)

• the documentation provided with this updated package for replicated

server selection was out-of-date, and has therefore been updated. (BZ#462267)

• the documentation for replicated servers was out-of-date and has been

updated. For specific information on this topic, refer to the
"README.replicated-server" file after package installation. (BZ#462268)

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 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 - 460087 - AutoFS still having issues with expiration of submount maps (User space part)
• BZ - 462264 - [CRM#1837798] automount NULL pointer dereference segmentation fault
• BZ - 462266 - autofs with map file auto.nis not working, error: automount master_error: syntax error while parsing map
• BZ - 462267 - autofs does not log enough data to troubleshoot replicated server selection
• BZ - 462268 - RHEL5 autofs doesn't handle replicated server entries like Solaris
• BZ - 462269 - autofs hang on startup
• BZ - 462270 - automount segfaults upon start
• BZ - 462271 - autofs parses /etc/nsswitch.conf incorrectly
• BZ - 462272 - Program maps do not set pwd
• BZ - 462273 - X/Open Federated Naming service master map entry should be handled by autofs
• BZ - 462274 - Automounter does not work in the diskless environment
• BZ - 462275 - Autofs doesn't recognize the local host as local when using many interfaces
• BZ - 462276 - AutoFS Crashes if non-alpha numerics are tried as map names (LDAP maps)
• BZ - 462614 - [RHEL4] autofs4 multi-map doesn't pickup NIS updates automatically
• BZ - 462715 - expire_indirect: fstat failed: Bad file descriptor
• BZ - 481456 - [RHEL 5] automount issues with RHEL5 and NIS+ auto_home map containing wildcard
• BZ - 485201 - autofs5 needs to depend on an updated util-linux in RHEL-4.8

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)