SUMMARY: Suddenly "automountd not running, retrying"

jseymour@linxnet.com (Jim Seymour) wrote:
> Message-Id: <20050920131220.34A9FE158@jimsun.linxnet.com>
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> Two mornings lately I've arrived to find our Sun E250 running Solaris 8
> all but totally "seized up."  (This morning even *I* couldn't log in,
> and had to nerve-pinch it.)  At first it seemed to be behaving like a
> NIS+ problem, but, on further examination, I suspect the problem to lie
> with the automounter.  Each time, this
> 
>     ...autofs: [ID 593912 kern.notice] automountd not running, retrying
> 
> was the last thing in /var/adm/messages, prior to rebooting the
> system.  (This was in /var/adm/messages at 05:22.  Tripwire runs at
> 05:21.)
> 
> Searching the web and SunSolve, the only thing I found that appeared
> to be relevant was:
> 
>     http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-26-55340-1
>     Title: Automountd(1M) May Stop and/or OpenSSH May Experience
> 	   Authentication Issues
> 
> Patch 108993-33 is installed.
> 
> Coincidentally (?), a week ago I built, installed and have been
> experimenting with OpenLDAP on this machine--incl. with TLS.
> 
> I don't recall whether or not I've left slapd (the OpenLDAP server
> daemon) running over-night, either time.
> 
> Could it be that whatever mechanisms support FNS are "noticing"
> OpenLDAP running (at some point) and that's getting the automounter
> all tied up in knots (under load?)?
> 
> Anyway, I've commented-out "/xfn           -xfn" in /etc/auto_master
> and restarted automountd.  I also removed the xfn entry from
> /etc/nsswitch.conf.  We'll see what happens.  Or not...

Okay, contrary to what Sun's docs say, or maybe because this is/was a
different problem with similar symptoms, the work-around in that last
paragraph didn't improve matters.

By alternately running the OpenLDAP over-night and not letting it run,
I did determine the problem was related to it running.

"That" Bill Cole :) had the answer, where he wrote:
| Another thing I found from a quick look at Sunsolve was this:
| http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-26-57786-1. That might
| actually be closer to your problem... 

Applying patch 116997 appears to have done-away with the problem.

Thanks, Bill!  Thanks also to Darren Dunham for the follow-up.

Lastly, lest they think me ungrateful, special thanks to

    "Patni, Sandeep" <Sandeep.Patni@gs.com>, 
    Juergen Waiblinger <jwaiblin@transtec.de>, 
    "Wianecki, Christopher" <Christopher.Wianecki@sothebys.com> and
    Barrett_Derek@emc.com

for being so kind as to let me know they'd be out of the office.

Regards,
Jim
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