So, I took another look at this problem. autofs5's upstart script is 'start on runlevel [2345]. This just means start on runlevel 2 in Ubuntu, because the others are not used.
Runlevel 2 is reached after all of the filesystems are mounted and any interfaces in /etc/network/interfaces are up (since 11.10 anyway, 10.04 would not wait for network interfaces). It sounds to me like there are a bunch of local autofs dependencies that need to be started before it. I'm a bit puzzled as to why this really matters, because what if the LDAP or Kerberos server are not on the same box as autofs? You can't control that order at all, so IMO autofs should do a better job of not freaking out if it can't connect to these for a few seconds. Anyway, there's a solution for this, which is to simply start the services you know you'll need in the pre-start of autofs5. I see that the debian sysvinit script does a 'Should-Start' on ypbind and nslcd. So by blocking the start until those start, if they are installed on the system, one can achieve this. For anything that is already an upstart job (ypbind is I think) you can add this: start wait-for-state WAITER=autofs5 WAIT_FOR=nslcd ** Changed in: autofs5 (Ubuntu) Status: Confirmed => Triaged -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1007273 Title: autofs does not start automatically after reboot To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/autofs5/+bug/1007273/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs