- Issued:
- 2005-05-19
- Updated:
- 2005-05-19
RHBA-2005:177 - Bug Fix Advisory
Synopsis
Normal: autofs bug fix update
Type/Severity
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 reading program maps, the automounter repeated the last character of
output. This would result in failed mounts, as the string then passed to
the mount command would contain the extra character.
The last update of autofs resulted in a regression when dealing with
duplicate entries in an indirect map. The original behavior was to act
upon the first occurrence of a given key. This 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.
When using the '--ghost' option with LDAP maps greater than the specified
LDAP_SIZELIMIT, autofs would exit immediately when attempting to cache the
maps. The automounter now recognizes when the LDAP_SIZELIMIT is exceeded
and continues to function without caching the maps.
Upon startup, autofs sources master maps from all locations specified in
/etc/nsswitch.conf on the automount line. This is non-standard behavior;
however, some users have come to rely on it. A new variable has
been introduced which 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 behavior. The default setting is '0', which preserves
backwards compatibility.
The automounter implements an algorithm to select the best server to mount
from a list of replicated server entries. This algorithm was being
invoked even for non-replicated server entries. This caused problems for
some environments, 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. Because of this, file systems that were available were failing
to mount.
When the automounter started, it created directories for the automount
points if those directories did not already exist. Upon termination, the
automount daemon removed these directories. However, it did not
distinguish between directories it had created and directories that
already existed.
Program maps that 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 updated
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:
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 - 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)
The Red Hat security contact is secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at https://access.redhat.com/security/team/contact/.