smbfs [readdir failed problem; Win95 files skipped]

[Keith G. Murphy]

Urban Widmark wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 26 Jan 2000, Keith G. Murphy wrote:
> 
> > I am seeing a very strange and very inconsistent problem in smbfs.  It
> > happens while I am using smbmount, then afio, to back up some Win95
> > shares.
> 
> What is afio? Is it good? 

afio is just a Linux-side backup utility.  I like it vs. tar because,
while it compresses, it does it file-by-file, so corruption would
potentially affect only one file vs. the entire backup set.  It's
actually one main reason I use smbfs vs. smbclient for backups. 
(Another being that smbtar does not seem to do compression at all).

Actually, it's 'find' that is doing the directory listing, which is then
piped to afio, so afio's not involved; should have mentioned that
before.

> NT too?

No, I'm not backing up NT clients.

> (sorry for my ignorance, but I have only very recently taken an interest
> in winX -> samba client backup solutions)
> 
I'm sure we'll all benefit by your interest.  :-)

> > The problem is sporadic and generally involves different machines and
> > directories; it's not readily reproducible.
> 
> But if you retry it on the same dir without having changed the contents
> does the problem repeat then?

No.  For instance, I had a backup skip the entire contents of a gal's
Windows directory; when I ran a 'find' on her share later, it showed
everything, including the contents of 'c:\windows'.  Same 'find' command
as in the backup.  The next backup went OK, also.  I've never actually
been able to replicate the problem by hand; only happens at night, in
the backups.  :-(
> 
> > I am running Debian Linux with kernel version 2.2.10, smbmount 2.0.6
> 
> Tridge changed smbfs to use the same "infolevel" when talking to the
> server as smbclient does, that fixed a problem that sounds similar to
> yours (only not all files were skipped). It seemed to depend on the
> total length of filenames, for certain combos the NT serving the share
> would get confused (I think).
> 
> Was that in 2.2.12? Try upgrading to 2.2.14, or borrow the smbfs/*.c code
> from 2.2.14 it might work in 2.2.10 too. (I'd upgrade the kernel, but if
> you have a specific reason for not using 2.2.14/13 then ...)

Hmmm.  Might try that.  May take a look at the source to see where it
changed.  I'll report here with my findings.
> 
> > (I'm using mount -t smbfs to mount the Win95 shares).  (I am right in
> > thinking that the old Win95 bug fix option for the kernel has gone away,
> > right?  Don't see it in 'make menuconfig').
> 
> Yes.
> 
Thanks so much for your patient answers.  I apologize to list and
deja.com users for the uninformative Subject line, which I've made a
little better with this message...