> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Kent [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 10:42 AM
> To: Stephen Biggs
> Cc: [email protected]
> Subject: RE: [autofs] Automounter losing track of mounts...
> 

-- snip --

> > Perhaps. It could even be a bug in the mount userland 
> software. But, 
> > in any case, the automounter should handle this correctly and not 
> > update its tables if the mount doesn't succeed for any reason. That 
> > seems to be the real problem here.
> 
> What tables?
> Keeping the mtab up to date in mounts' job not autofs.

Yes, it is. I apologize for my vagueness. I was talking about the
autofs's internal lists (tables?) of mounts that it must create and
maintain.

It looks like some sort of sequence where the first regular mount fails
due to this mtab issue. When 'mount -f' is invoked and succeeds, the O/S
mounts this directory but the automounter fails to update its lists to
keep this as mounted and also deletes the mount point directory
internally as well as on the autofs filesystem.

So what we have is the O/S and NFS thinking this particular export is
mounted but the automounter doesn't, and there is no mount point because
the automounter deletes the directory and any subsequent expire or 'df'
fails.  The least intrusive fix for this situation is 'umount -a'.

This looks like a definite, albeit relatively minor, bug in the autofs
daemon.

I actually misspoke above.  The problem here is the exact opposite of
what I said above previously.  The automount fails to update its
internal lists/tables to show a mounted directory even if the second
mount attempt with '-f' succeeds.  It acts like it is in complete
failure mode and also deletes the mount point out from underneath the
mounted export.

-- snip --
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