[Samba] Questions about file system support in Samba

[Hibbard Smith]

I'm a relative newcomer to Samba, but very experienced with computers and
linux.  I'm attempting to build a file/backup server for a small shop.  I'm
using Fedora core 4 and samba on a system with a 2.1 TB RAID 50 array
formatted as 1 very large xfs partition.  I want to share directories
(folders) within the partition with a few Windows XP-Pro SP2 systems which
are our primary work-stations.  Currently I'm running samba-3.0.21b.  I
started with the 3.0.14 that was released with FC4, but upgraded to the
"latest and greatest" when I couldn't make the original work correctly. The
kernel has also been upgraded to the Fedora released 2.6.14.1-1656-FC4-SMP.

 

Our business is primarily imaging and video.  A large percentage of our
files are over 2 GB with some way over that.  Therefore, the only way this
could be useful is with very large shared file systems.

 

Here are the issues and my questions:

 

When I try to share this large partition (2.1 TB xfs) and use smbclient to
access it, the log records an error which states that "the share doesn't
exist or can't be accessed The error was access denied". I've made the share
mode 0777 just to make sure permissions wouldn't get in the way.  If I move
the share to an ext3 file system that's smaller than 2 GB it works
correctly.  Any file system over 2 GB or any size xfs file system produces
the error.  I haven't even tried to access the shares from a Windows system
yet, I'm just using smbclient on the Fedora system.  I'm pretty sure I've
got the config and permissions right because just changing the share to an
ext3 file system under 2 GB works fine.  

 

So, here's my question(s):  

 

1)       Does samba work with xfs file systems?

 

2)       Does samba work with large file systems (2 GB +)?

 

3)       If the answer to the above is yes, what might I be doing wrong?

 

I haven't been able to find limits documented anywhere.  However, I see a
great deal of discussion on the web about files over 2 GB along with
suggestions that they work fine.  This would imply that file systems of over
2 GB must work okay.  I've also seen much discussion which would suggest
that xfs works fine also.  All this discussion seems to indicate that I've
got something wrong.  I'm just not sure what it is or how to proceed.  I
have turned samba debugging up and the logs show that the correct user/group
is being used and that case is working okay. So, I'm really confused and I
sure would appreciate any help.  I really need to get this done and I don't
like the alternative (Windows Server 2003).

 

Smitty

Hibbard T. Smith, JR

smitty at essnjay.com