Re: Autofs weirdness in nsswitch.conf and other stuff...

[Peter Staubach <staubach@redhat.com>]

Ian Kent wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-03-16 at 09:19 -0400, Peter Staubach wrote:
>   
>> Ian Kent wrote:
>>     
>>> On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 15:05 -0700, weiler@soe.ucsc.edu wrote:
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> Hey all-
>>>>
>>>> I'm testing out CentOS 5 (i.e. RedHat 5) and and playing around with
>>>> autofs 5.0.1 which is the version that ships with it.  I'm noticing three
>>>> odd things based on what I was seeing in RedHat 4.4 (which has autofs
>>>> 4.1.3):
>>>>
>>>> 1: Before, with autofs 4.1.3, I had in /etc/nsswitch.conf:
>>>>
>>>> automount: files ldap
>>>>
>>>> And I had some maps in /etc/auto.master that mounted AND I had some maps
>>>> in LDAP that mounted, both worked OK together.  But in Autofs 5.0.1, the
>>>> same line in nsswitch.conf only lets me use whatever is first, i.e. if
>>>> files is listed first it automounts with flat files but not LDAP, or vice
>>>> versa.  Is there any way to get them BOTH working again, or is this a
>>>> nifty feature that has been removed?
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> That's correct.
>>> That's the behavior of other industry standard automounters.
>>> Adding a plus include line at the end of /etc/auto.master (as in the
>>> default configuration) will allow the inclusion of the LDAP master map
>>> in the above example.
>>>       
>> Is this really true?  My impression was that autofs implementations such as
>> the Solaris version would use the name service switch really as a switch.
>> It would look for a map following the standard rules which apply to
>> nsswitch.conf entries.  I can remember using a combination of NIS+ and
>> flat files for map sources, without having to resort to the "+" tricks.
>>     
>
> Think so.
> I'll check again.
> But I think that the first source found (master map in this case) is
> used.

Yes, I agree, the first source found is used.  However, if some maps
are flat files and some maps are stored in other places such as ldap,
nis, or nis+, then when a reference to them occurs, they should be
looked for in the name services and directory services in the order
that the nsswitch.conf contains.

Or am I misunderstanding the situation and we are actually in
agreement?  I interpreted the situation originally described as _all_
maps having to come from the one source, instead of on a per-map
basis.

    Thanx...

       ps