It is really great that work is in progress I look forward to see this bug fixed in lucid/precise! I have a small comment though: in my case the autofs startup problem is unrelated to NIS, as I use LDAP. Out of desperation 1.5 years ago I also experimented with flat map files on local fs and even with that setup I encountered periodic problems with autofs startup at boot. Either autofs is not started or needs to be restarted to pick up the shares.
It is really great that work is in progress I look forward to see this bug fixed in lucid/precise! I have a small comment though: in my case the autofs startup problem is unrelated to NIS, as I use LDAP. Out of desperation 1.5 years ago I also experimented with flat map files on local fs and even with that setup I encountered periodic problems with autofs startup at boot. Either autofs is not started or needs to be restarted to pick up the shares.