Bug 742630

Summary:	AutoFS: init script dependency between autofs, rpcbind, portmap and nfs
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE 12.1	Reporter:	Leonardo Chiquitto <lchiquitto>
Component:	Basesystem	Assignee:	Leonardo Chiquitto <lchiquitto>
Status:	VERIFIED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P5 - None	CC:	bruno, forgotten_-UpQBLGEK9, kletzli, lnussel, nfbrown
Version:	Final
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	openSUSE 12.1
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Community User	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Leonardo Chiquitto 2012-01-20 19:37:00 UTC

Quoting David in bug #734888:

"It does not appear that rpcbind is started automatically by autofs, nor does
rpcbind seem to be listed in the "Requires" section of the RPM. I had to
enable the rpcbind service by hand in 12.1 on an x86_64 system to get autofs to
work properly."

There are two issues reported:

1. The AutoFS package doesn't explicitly require portmap/rpcbind

I believe this is no problem. AutoFS recommends nfs-client, which requires rpcbind. I guess this is enough.

2. The AutoFS init script doesn't have a hard requirement on portmap/rpcbind

The problem here is: there are AutoFS setups that don't use NFS. Admins can use AutoFS to mount local disks, Samba volumes or other remote file systems that don't require rpcbind. Having said that, I believe that the absolute majority of AutoFS setups uses it to mount NFS volumes.

So the situation is as follows:

- To enable AutoFS today, the admin must manually enable three services:
autofs, rpcbind and nfs. When he enables "autofs", nothing tells him that
"rpcbind" and "nfs" are also required (if he's mounting NFS volumes).
The fix for this is to add "$portmap" and "nfs" to "Required-start" in
the autofs init script. However...

- ... doing so would enable unneeded services on servers that use AutoFS to
mount just local disks or Samba volumes (rpcbind, idmapd)

Since most of AutoFS users use it to mount NFS, I believe it would be better to add "$portmap" and "nfs" to "Required-start", but I'd like to collect more opinions on this. Neil, what do you think?

Comment 1 Bruno Friedmann 2012-01-23 07:34:58 UTC

Also think about the needed deps for a full systemd enabled system.

Comment 2 Neil Brown 2012-01-30 03:33:20 UTC

I think making them "Should-start" would be adequate.
Then if nfs isn't installed, autofs will still work.

But yes: I think we need this extra dependency.

I don't really know what the issues would be with systemd...

Comment 3 Leonardo Chiquitto 2012-02-02 23:04:23 UTC

(In reply to comment #2)
> I think making them "Should-start" would be adequate.
> Then if nfs isn't installed, autofs will still work.

If I understand correctly, adding to "Should-start" won't help in this case because, when nfs is not enabled in insserv, it won't be started.

I wonder if the only way out is to document this somewhere and live with it.

Comment 4 Ludwig Nussel 2012-02-10 10:41:34 UTC

/etc/init.d/autofs already has all necessary dependencies. There's nothing you can do in the autofs package.
In case the admin manually adds maps that contain nfs volumes he has to know that he also needs to manually enable the nfs service (which hard requires to enable the portmapper).
If automounter maps come through nis the yast nis module takes care of enabling the necessary services. What's missing is an autofs yast module to assist manual configuration. The existing module seem to only work with ldap.

Comment 5 Leonardo Chiquitto 2014-05-08 11:21:21 UTC

12.1 is long gone.