From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Donald Buczek Subject: autofs linux 3.8.13 and "Too many levels of symbolic links" Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 17:02:47 +0100 Message-ID: <52E92627.9050801@molgen.mpg.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Sender: autofs-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: autofs Hello, we are trying to switch from amd to autofs. After successfully testing and rolling it out to the first several machines, from time to time we get directories stuck with "Too many levels of symbolic links" on a path which should be automounted via an indirect map. linux 3.8.13 autofs 5.0.8 As an example, here is data from a system where the path /scratch/tmp is stuck: http://www.molgen.mpg.de/~buczek/autofs-demo/ auto.master # master map auto.scratch # indirect map for /scratch autofs # from /etc/defaults typescript # shows the problem and a bit of gdb dump of kernel structures typescript.l # same with line numbers for reference gdb-macros # macros used in the gdb session From typescript.l , line 122ff it is clear, that /scratch/tmp is not currently mounted. On the other hand, the gdb session finds the dentry of /scratch/tmp which has d_flags 0x70080 (line 99,120). This is DCACHE_MANAGE_TRANSIT+DCACHE_NEED_AUTOMOUNT+DCACHE_MOUNTED+DCACHE_RCUACCESS with DCACHE_MOUNTED indicating that there should be something mounted there(?). I think, this state is faulty and necessarily leads to ELOOP during path walk. Probably the situation is known by the gurus here? Is there any known bug which can lead to this situation? Any advice? Thank you Donald -- Donald Buczek buczek@molgen.mpg.de Tel: +49 30 8413 1433