[buildd-tools-devel] Bug#688750: schroot and autofs need better integration

[Reinhard Tartler]

Package: schroot,autofs
Severity: normal

I have a setup in which the home directory is mounted via NFS with the
help of autofs. Because of #622756 and #648459, bind-mounting /home
with the rbind option is unfortunately not an option. Until this
becomes possible, the chroot needs to start its own automount
processes.

Schroot 1.6 features an option to start services. Unfortunately, this
feature does not work with the autofs init script. Upon starting a
squeeze chroot with autofs installed and enabled in the configuration,
I get this error:

>> schroot -c squeeze-amd64
I: 70services: Starting automount automount.../usr/sbin/automount
already running.
I: 70services: .
W: Failed to change to directory ‘/home/siretart’: No such file or directory

I suspect this is because the autofs init script detects that there is
already an automount instance running. Unfortunately, this is the
instance outside the chroot.

Interestingly, the service option does work with autofs in an
ubuntu/quantal chroot, which uses upstart to manage and supervise
services, just fine.

In order to solve this, I see two possibilities: a) enhance the autofs
init script to become chroot-aware. b) extend schroot to start autofs
managed mount points by itself, ideally using the host-provided autofs
programs so that autofs does not need to be installed into the chroot.

Related bugreports in Ubuntu:
http://pad.lv/744451
http://pad.lv/791908


-- 
regards,
    Reinhard