autofs 'failed to mount autofs path' as service but not manually (selinux)

Question

I'm on CentOS 6.6 and I'm having a strange problem with autofs.

I'm trying to mount an smb share on /var/www/html/mysite/docfolder, so I created a docfolder inside the mysite folder, ran chmod 777 on it, then added:

/var/www/html/mysite/docfolder /etc/auto.docfolder --ghost

in /etc/auto.master . Then i created auto.docfolder under /etc and inside it:

pdf -fstype=cifs,rw,noperm,user=username,pass=password ://myshare/docs

When I run

sudo /sbin/service autofs restart

inside /var/log/messages I can read:

Jun 18 12:19:53 Rtmbssrv automount[30779]: do_mount_autofs_indirect: failed to mount autofs path /var/www/html/mysite/docfolder at /var/www/html/mysite/docfolder
Jun 18 12:19:53 Rtmbssrv automount[30779]: handle_mounts: mount of /var/www/html/mysite/docfolder failed!

So I tried stopping the service and running it manually:

sudo automount -vdf

And the folder got mounted correctly without errors.

Changing the mount folder to: /mnt/docfolder works correctly every time.

What's the difference of running automount instead of launching autofs as service?

Why is the service unable to mount that folder?

Edit: It's a SELinux related problem. I have to keep it enabled, so now the question is: how to give permission to autofs to mount file inside a apache folder, leaving it readable from the apache server?

Answer 1

Found this in my notes, from when I ran into this same thing:

---

Set SELinux boolean to allow Apache to access CIFS shares:

# setsebool -P httpd_use_cifs on

Answer 2

I think that Derek give the right answer. Anyway I also got that working with:

 sudo mkdir /var/wwww/html/site/pdf
 sudo chmod 755 /var/wwww/html/site/pdf

 #try to change SElinux folder tipe
 sudo chcon -t public_content_rw_t /var/www/html/site/pdf

 #i want that persistent
 sudo semanage fcontext -a -t

 #add this inside fcontext file
 public_content_rw_t "/var/www/html/site/pdf(/.*)?"

 #se if the change is definitive
 restorecon -Rv /var/www/html/site/pdf