AutoFS Mount Ownership Changes

Issue

A direct AutoFS map has the desired user and group ownerships when it is active (mounted), but the wrong ownerships when inactive (unmounted).

Example

A direct AutoFS map has been setup under /autofs_controlled; it is /autofs_controlled/special_mnt_point.  That mount point is for a file system owned by spuser:spgroup.

When the mount is active, the ownership is correct.  When the mount is inactive, the ownership is root:root.

1. Show what the system looks like before AutoFS is started.

   # ls -aFl /autofs_controlled
   total 2
   drwxr-xr-x.  4 root root   48 Aug 31 08:52 ./
   dr-xr-xr-x. 21 root root 4096 Aug 31 09:01 ../
   

2. Start AutoFS and see that the direct map mount point has the wrong ownerships.

   # systemctl start autofs.service
   
   # ls -aFl /autofs_controlled
   total 3
   drwxr-xr-x.  4 root root   48 Aug 31 08:52 ./
   dr-xr-xr-x. 21 root root 4096 Aug 31 09:01 ../
   drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root    0 Aug 31 09:01 special_mnt_point/
   

3. List the contents of the mount point to trigger AutoFS into mounting it.

   # ls -aFl /autofs_controlled/special_mnt_point
   total 0
   drwxr-xr-x. 2 spuser spgroup 18 Aug 31 07:05 ./
   drwxr-xr-x. 4 root   root    48 Aug 31 08:52 ../
   -rw-r--r--. 1 spuser spgroup  0 Aug 31 07:05 testfile
   

4. Note the ownership of the mount point has changed to the desired ownerships.

   # ls -aFl /autofs_controlled
   total 3
   drwxr-xr-x.  4 root   root       48 Aug 31 08:52 ./
   dr-xr-xr-x. 21 root   root     4096 Aug 31 09:01 ../
   drwxr-xr-x.  2 spuser spgroup    18 Aug 31 07:05 special_mnt_point/
   

One can change the ownerships after AutoFS is started (chown spuser:spgroup /autofs_controlled/special_mnt_point), but those ownerships do not survive a restart of the AutoFS service.