Automounter (autofs) segmentation faults

Issue:

The automounter (autofs) hangs when attempting to cd to a /net/nfs-server directory. The resulting hang produces a segmentation fault and a core file is generated.

Environment:

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3
  • autofs-5.0.5-64.el6
Resolution:

A fix is targeted for inclusion in RHEL 6.4. There are at least 2 workarounds that prevent this crash from occurring:

  • Downgrading to autofs-5.0.5-39.el6
  • Comment out /net -hosts in /etc/auto.master if it is not used (i.e. the automount maps come from another source like LDAP)
Root Cause:

This issue is directly correlated with the amount of exports being shared out by the NFS server. If the NFS server is sharing a large amount of export directories autofs cannot handle the resulting data flow in /net which results in a segmentation fault.


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