Autofs browse or ghost behavior broke beginning in SLES 15 SP3

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP4
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP5

Situation

Starting in SLES 15 SP3, the "browse" behavior of autofs indirect maps unexpectedly changed. Previously, when autofs was controlling indirect maps, the "keys" or subdirectories within the indirect map point could be seen even before they were mounted. In other words, if /auto-mounts was the location of the indirect map, and "ls /auto-mounts" was executed, the subdirectory keys below that location would be displayed but they would not yet be mounted. This is known as the "browse" option, previously also know as "--ghost".

However, beginning in SLES 15 SP3, doing a "ls" against the indirect map location causes the subdir mount points to actually be mounted.

Resolution

The change in behavior is due to changes to "ls" code, which is part of the coreutils package.

Update core-utils as follows:

SLES 15 SP3 LTSS or ESPOS: coreutils-8.32-150300.3.8.1
SLES 15 SP4 LTSS or ESPOS: coreutils-8.32-150400.9.6.1
SLES 15 SP5: coreutils-8.32-150400.9.6.1

Cause

The code for "ls" was changed to use the newer "statx" function call instead of "stat" or "lstat" in various cases. Some usages of "statx" can trigger an automount, so the usage of statx by "ls" had to be adjusted to prevent this.

Additional Information

It was also found that avoiding the "ls --color=<value>" option would prevent automounting in this situation. However, "--color=tty" option is routinely added to the "ls" command by defined aliases, so most people are using this option even if they do not specify it. If the "ls" command is executed by specifying the full path to the binary, then the aliases are avoided. For example:

/usr/sbin/ls

The above will be executed without the additional options which aliases normally add.

Disclaimer

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