Re: 2.4.20 autofs: non-toplevel mounts broken? (SOLVED!)

[bob@proulx.com (Bob Proulx)]

Rob Sims wrote:
> autofs4; the autofs module doesn't have the hierarchical support.

Yes!  Success!  Thank you very much for that answer.

Bob

Here is a summary for the archive and search engines:

Bob Proulx wrote:
>   Jul 29 22:43:52 misery automount[26757]: mount(nfs): calling mkdir_path /net/torment/mnt/a
>   Jul 29 22:43:52 misery automount[26757]: mount(nfs): mkdir_path torment/mnt/a failed: Operation not permitted

> After upgrading to 2.4.20 I seem to have lost the ability to autofs
> mount non-toplevel mounts.  This worked in 2.4.18.  Does not work in
> 2.4.20.  Has anyone else seen this?

The kernel version was a red herring.  It had nothing to do with the
kernel version.  In the intervening time I was able to reduce that the
same version the kernel worked or did not work depending upon the
kernel configuration.

Rob's answer solved the mystery.  The first kernel worked because I
had compiled everything into it and the second one did not because I
made it modular and autofs was getting loaded automatically while
autofs4 was not.

Getting to root cause, here was the different kernel configurations
which caused this behavior.  I hadn't noticed this and could see
'autofs' in the modules and did not know there was another version of
it available.

Old config:
  CONFIG_AUTOFS_FS=m
  CONFIG_AUTOFS4_FS=y  <-- y so this is compiled in the kernel
New config:
  CONFIG_AUTOFS_FS=m
  CONFIG_AUTOFS4_FS=m  <-- no longer y and so needs to be specified

The new config works fine if I included autofs4 in /etc/modules.
(Actually I just turned off nfs, 'rmmod autofs', 'modprobe autofs4'
and turned nfs back on so I did not even need to reboot.