[linux-cifs-client] Re: Size Reporting

[Steve French]

> I've got several machines accessing a central server via cifs. The
> server sees each individual directory as one size, but the clients all
> see a much larger size. For instance, on a brand-new skeleton home
> directory, the size on the server is 72k, while the clients report the
> size as 500m. There are about 1000 files in there, but none over 1k in
> size. 

> I'm running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4, fully updated, and both
> exhibit the same problem.

> I'm not much of a developer, so I don't know the technical details, but
> if there's anything I should try, let me know.


Samba server fixed a similar sounding problem in late September. 
Apparently it also annoyed Linus :) 

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Revision 2637 - (view) (download) (as text) - [select for diffs] 
 Modified Sat Sep 25 22:18:46 2004 UTC (5 months, 2 weeks ago) by jra 
File length: 130074 byte(s) 
Diff to previous 2196 (colored) 
Fix the roundup problem (returning 1mb roundup) for non-Windows
clients. This upsets the smb client in the Linux kernel (and Linus :-).
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For performance reasons some servers including many versions of Samba,
report disk space allocated as 1MB minimum no matter what the filesystem
reported as the allocation size. I think Windows servers on the other
hand reported the actual allocation size that NTFS passed back.


See these two revisions in Samba's trans2.c to see what will be availabe
in Samba 3.0.12

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Revision 5636 - (view) (download) (as text) - [select for diffs] 
 Modified Thu Mar 3 03:43:57 2005 UTC (8 days, 17 hours ago) by jra 
File length: 136759 byte(s) 
Diff to previous 5548 (colored) 
Re-add the allocation size - parameterized by share as
"allocation roundup size", by default set as 1Mb. From
advice by BlueArc about Windows client behaviour. VC++
people can set this to zero to turn it off.
 	--------------------------
 Revision 5548 - (view) (download) (as text) - [select for diffs] 
 Modified Fri Feb 25 02:22:44 2005 UTC (2 weeks ago) by jra 
File length: 136063 byte(s) 
Diff to previous 5513 (colored) 
Stop lying about allocation sizes to Windows clients. It was a nice
idea, and aparently improved performance in some circumstances, but it
breaks the VC++ compiler :-(. Not cool. Fix bug #2146.