autofs better document timeout option

[Jonas Rockenbauer]

Bug on Ubuntu Raring (13.04) not present with the same configuration with Precise (12.04)

Autofs fails after few seconds of mount. When i open folder in my cifs share after very fews seconds i have been redirected in my home directory.

cat /etc/auto.master
+auto.master
/home/gecko/Partage /etc/auto.cifs --timeout=3 --ghost

cat /etc/auto.cifs
Videos -fstype=cifs,rw,user=nas,password=<password>,rsize=262144,wsize=262144 ://Nas/Vidéos

Debug with automount -f -v :
Starting automounter version 5.0.7, master map /etc/auto.master
using kernel protocol version 5.02
mounted indirect on /home/gecko/Partage with timeout 3, freq 1 seconds
ghosting enabled
attempting to mount entry /home/gecko/Partage/.hidden
key ".hidden" not found in map source(s).
failed to mount /home/gecko/Partage/.hidden
attempting to mount entry /home/gecko/Partage/Bibliotheque
mounted /home/gecko/Partage/Bibliotheque
1 remaining in /home/gecko/Partage
1 remaining in /home/gecko/Partage
1 remaining in /home/gecko/Partage
1 remaining in /home/gecko/Partage
expiring path /home/gecko/Partage/Bibliotheque
expired /home/gecko/Partage/Bibliotheque
umounted indirect mount /home/gecko/Partage
shut down path /home/gecko/Partage
autofs stopped

[Jonas Rockenbauer (rockenbauerjonas)]

The bug disappear when i remove --timeout=3

[ALinuxUser (buntulongername-new)]

'The bug disappear when i remove --timeout=3'. I don't think it is a bug. For, that settings *instructs* autofs to remove the share after three seconds. What we have here, I think, is an option ('timeout') with a slightly misleading name.

[Joshua Powers (powersj)]

Agreed, marking this a wishlist bug for someone to clean up the doc.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

This is a very old bug but I can see how even in impish the man page docs could be a bit confusing:

       -t <seconds>, --timeout <seconds>
              Set the global minimum timeout, in seconds, until directories are unmounted. The default is
              10 minutes. Setting the timeout to zero disables umounts completely. The internal program
              default is 10 minutes, but the default installed configuration overrides this and sets the
              timeout to 5 minutes to be consistent with earlier autofs releases.

The issue being that what's (correctly) described in the man page isn't what's implied by the option name '--timeout'. However, given how long that option has been available in practice, renaming the option is probably not feasible at this point. And, if it should be renamed, that is better discussed and performed upstream and not diverge from standard practice.