Low priority question: negative cache in autofs5

[Ondrej Valousek <webserv@s3group.cz>]

Probably to Ian:
I am just looking in the autofs5 (from RHEL5) source. I have an indirect
nis map:
auto.master:
/appli auto.appli
/proj auto.proj

Now, auto.proj contains a wildcard entry (* nfsserver:/share/&) but
auto.appli does not.

1. Every time I try to enter (shortly after each other)
/proj/nonexistent_directory, I got this:
Dec  5 12:10:45 ara automount[3101]: rmdir_path: lstat of
/proj/nonexistent_directory failed
... why did not the negative cache save us the expensive call to lstat?


2. Every time I try to enter (shortly after each other)
/appli/nonexistent_directory, I got this:
Dec  5 12:11:41 ara automount[3101]: lookup_mount: lookup(yp): key
"nonexistent" not found in map
... again, looks like the nis daemon was consulted but the negative
cache should take the place.

Maybe I do not understand the concept of negative caching well....
Many thanks,

Ondrej