[Samba] Client-side filesystem tree corruption on WinXP

Nick Barov barov at nicadd.niu.edu
Wed Dec 29 01:38:59 GMT 2004


The first symptom of this problem was that when saving a Word document to 
a samba share, the document simply disappeared.

After some debugging, I discovered that there was a peculiarity in 
navigating to the share point in WinXP. Navigating to the share point 
using the file manager, to
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Desktop\MyShare
gets me to the remote files, as it should. But if I try to "cd" into that 
directory using CommandPrompt, I see an entirely different set of files 
that are apparently stored on the local client disk, and include all the 
files I thought were lost. In other words, the filesystem object "MyShare" 
is not unique, which is a really bizarre fault.

Although my gut instinct tells me that this is a Windows problem, I am 
wondiering if the use of Samba could have in any way been a contributing 
factor.

Details:
I am using samba-3.0.10 as packaged for Fedora Core 2, and a pretty 
standard conf file with user-level security. On the Windows side of things 
I am using WinXp-sp2.

Most applications (Open Office, etc.) correctly save and retrieve files to 
the share; MS Word and CommandPropmt are the exception.

Things worked correctly for several months before the problem started. The 
problem persists across both server and client reboots. I have been able 
to duplicate the problem on more than one WinXP box.

The folder in question is not a short cut, but the actual folder from "My 
Network Places" that's been dragged to the desktop. Using a short cut 
fixes the problem.

Thanks,

Nick Barov


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