#598559 autofs5: Variable substitution in /etc/auto.master not working

Package:
autofs5
Source:
autofs
Submitter:
Salvatore Bonaccorso
Date:
2023-04-26 09:09:09 UTC
Severity:
wishlist
Tags:
#598559#5
Date:
2010-09-30 06:33:02 UTC
From:
To:
Hi

Under automounter of Solaris one can do Variable substitution like

/usr/$HOST      -null

in /etc/auto_master.

According to autofs(5) manpage, Variable substitution is too
implemented for map files.

This however does not seem to work here doing in /etc/auto.master.
I tried:

/usr/$HOST      -null

or

/usr/${HOST}    -null

but none of them worked here.

(Am I'm doing something wrong? If yes, please feel free to mark this
Bugreport as invalid, and close it).

The reason I would like to have this is to ship the same
/etc/auto.master via config managment to different hosts, but not
automount /usr/$HOST on $HOST.

Thank you for maintaining autofs5 in Debian!

Bests
Salvatore
#598559#16
Date:
2019-03-13 17:28:47 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

What led up to the situation?

   Upgraded debian server from squeeze (6.0.3) running autofs 4.1.4+debian-3 to stretch (9.7) running autofs 5.1.2-4.

What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or ineffective)?

   Retained existing /etc/auto* files.

What was the outcome of this action?

   Error messages in syslog:

   Mar 13 09:55:24 cronbot2 automount[701]: syntax error in map near [ -DDIR ]
   Mar 13 09:55:24 cronbot2 automount[701]: /
   Mar 13 09:55:24 cronbot2 automount[701]: syntax error in map near [ u2 ]
   Mar 13 09:55:24 cronbot2 automount[701]: /
   Mar 13 09:55:24 cronbot2 automount[701]: syntax error in map near [ u3 ]
   Mar 13 09:55:24 cronbot2 automount[701]: /
   Mar 13 09:55:24 cronbot2 automount[701]: syntax error in map near [ u4 ]
   Mar 13 09:55:24 cronbot2 automount[701]: /
   Mar 13 09:55:24 cronbot2 automount[701]: syntax error in map near [ u5 ]
   Mar 13 09:55:24 cronbot2 automount[701]: /
   Mar 13 09:55:24 cronbot2 systemd[1]: Started Automounts filesystems on demand.
   Mar 13 09:55:24 cronbot2 automount[701]: syntax error in map near [ u6 ]

   Automount does not work on login.

What outcome did you expect instead?

   I was hoping it would work and I could go home :).

I re-configured the /etc/auto.master not to use variable substitution, and automount started working again.

The man page should eventually be updated--it still includes documentation for the -D variable substitution option.

Thanks,
Bob