Automount problem

[Mark Ferraretto]

Setup:
        Sun 4/280 automounting files from Sun 3/60s all running 4.0.3

Problem:
        Some users' home directories are automounted.  They can't access ..
in their home directory but if they work their way down the path they have no
protection problem.  It seems to be the .. inode that gives problems.  If the
directories are NFS mounted normally they don't have any problems.

Automount setup:
auto.master:
#
#Mount point            Map name                Mount options
#
/remote                 /etc/auto.remote        -rw

auto.remote:
#
#mount point            mount           map name
#                       options
home.mferraretto        -rw             flare:/home/mferraretto
home.dlesicar           -rw             photon:/home/dlesicar
home.dbird              -rw             corona:/home/dbird
home.bvandepeer         -rw             strato:/home/bvandepeer
home.dlow               -rw             meso:/home/dlow

ls -l /home:
total 11
...
   1 lrwxrwxrwx  1 root     daemon         23 May 14 10:57 bvandepeer ->
 /remote/home.bvandepeer/
   1 lrwxrwxrwx  1 root     wheel          18 Apr 19 12:41 dbird ->
/remote/home.dbird/
   1 lrwxrwxrwx  1 root     wheel          24 Apr 19 12:37 mferraretto ->
/remote/home.mferraretto/

All relevant directories (/remote, tmp_mnt/* etc) have global read and execute
permissions set.  There are no setuid or setgid bits set in these directories
and /usr/etc/automount has mode 755 set (again no setuid or gid).

For a period these users could get around this problem if they were in the
daemon group but this bombed out today as well.

Coincedentally or otherwise I also got this message today.
--
A serious error has occurred that prevents further messages being routed,
please "tail /usr/spool/MHSnet/_route/log"
and fix the problem as soon as possible.


Mail generated by network program "router" [6968]
--
This is what the tail /usr... produced

stderr << EOF
91/05/16 10:34:43 badhandler: error -- Network group id "daemon" does not exist!
EOF >> stderr
        15 messages in
         7 messages out
Usages:    user + sys = tot  io(i+o)   pf(min+maj)  nswp   sigs cs(iv+v)
Daemon:      30    41    71    43+217   12926+44       0  12319  7160+12638
Children:     4     3     7   101+439    1255+173      0      0     0+661
Totals:      34    44    79   144+656   14181+217      0  12319  7160+13299
91/05/16 10:34:43 router: report -- Vn="1.1 #105 90/10/19 Sun3/4.0.3/static {700000}" [6968] ERROR
--

So for some reason daemon doesn't exist.
But it is in the /etc/group file.
And in the yp maps.
And it has these users in it.

Also does automount do anything to /etc/mtab.  Lately its protection is
continually being changed from 644 660.  Root owns it and it is in the wheel
group.

Thanks in anticipation
--
       _             Name  : Mark Ferraretto	   Title: Computing Officer
      \  \           Place : Department of Physics and Mathematical Physics
 ||     \  \                 University of Adelaide
==========>==>==--   Aarnet: mferrare at physics.adelaide.edu.au