Issued:
2011-12-06
Updated:
2011-12-06

RHBA-2011:1723 - autofs bug fix and enhancement update

Synopsis

autofs bug fix and enhancement update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated autofs package that fixes several bugs and adds various enhancements is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

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.

Bug fixes:

  • The autofs utility did not reset the map entry status on a reload request. As a result, newly added map entries that had previously recorded a mount failure failed to work. With this update, autofs resets the map entry status on a reload request and map entries are mounted as expected. (BZ#704935).

  • The autofs utility could have terminated with a segmentation fault when attempting certain mounts. This occurred due to a race condition between mount handling threads for mounts that had previously recorded a mount failure. The automount cache map entry is now verified to be valid. (BZ#704939).

  • The automount(8) man page referred to a non-existent man page. This was caused by a typographical error in the code. With this update, the man page reference has been corrected and the man page is displayed as expected. (BZ#704940).

  • Due to a deadlock, autofs could stop responding when attempting to mount map entries that were nested within maps. With this update, the underlying code has been changed and, where possible, nested map entries mount correctly. (BZ#704929).

  • Prior to this update, automount could terminate unexpectedly with a pthreads error. This occurred because attempts to acquire the master map lock occasionally failed as the lock was held by another thread. With this update, the underlying code has been adapted to wait for a short time before failing. (BZ#704933).

  • When retrieving paged results from an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) server, autofs handled certain cases incorrectly, which caused the query to not obtain all results. This update adds the code that handles these additional cases. (BZ#704927, BZ#704928).

  • Prior to this update, if a key entry of an automount map began with an asterisk (*) sign, the daemon failed with a segmentation fault because the sign was not matched correctly. With this update, such asterisk signs are handled correctly. (BZ#704937).

  • When using GSSAPI authentication, the fact that an incorrect authentication host name was being used caused the connection to fail. This update now gets the correct host name for the connection. (BZ#704228).

  • automount was not performing sufficient sanity checks of server names in its configuration. This update corrects the configuration entry parsing. (BZ#692816).

  • Error reporting for invalid mount locations was unclear. This update improves the error reporting. (BZ#700136).

  • When an automount map key is present in a file map and is also present in an included map source, if the file map entry was removed and a lookup performed before a re-load was issued, the map lookup would have failed. This update corrects the logic used to determine if the lookup needs to continue into included maps. (BZ#703332).

  • When reloading maps that include a combination of direct and indirect maps, it was possible for automount to deadlock due to incorrect lock ordering. (BZ#718927).

  • There was inadvertent use of a small amount of GPLv3-licensed code from Samba in autofs. While this was permissible, it would have entailed explicitly relicensing autofs from "GPLv2 or later" to "GPLv3", which is not intended for autofs at this time. Therefore, the Samba-derived code has been replaced in order to maintain the "GPLv2 or later" licensing status of autofs.

Enhancements:

  • This update adds the "--dumpmaps" option to the automount command, which allows you to dump the maps from their source as seen by the automount daemon. (BZ#704416).

  • This update adds simple Base64 encoding for LDAP and thus allows hashing of the password entries in the /etc/autofs_ldap_auth.conf configuration file. (BZ#704932).

All autofs users are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which provides numerous bug fixes and enhancements.

Solution

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

This update is available via the Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at This content is not included.https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

ProductVersionArch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Scientific Computing6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian6ppc64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems6s390x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension6i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support Extension (for IBM z Systems)6s390x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support (for IBM z Systems)6s390x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop6x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop6i386

Updated Packages

  • autofs-5.0.5-39.el6.s390x.rpm
  • autofs-5.0.5-39.el6.src.rpm
  • autofs-debuginfo-5.0.5-39.el6.s390x.rpm
  • autofs-debuginfo-5.0.5-39.el6.x86_64.rpm
  • autofs-5.0.5-39.el6.i686.rpm
  • autofs-5.0.5-39.el6.x86_64.rpm
  • autofs-5.0.5-39.el6.ppc64.rpm
  • autofs-debuginfo-5.0.5-39.el6.i686.rpm
  • autofs-debuginfo-5.0.5-39.el6.ppc64.rpm

Fixes

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information