[Samba] Questions about file system support in Samba

[Chris Lounsbury]

If I remember correctly from the documents I have read on samba.org the
smb client will only allow up to 2gig of information and for anything
larger than this you need to use cifs client.  Most of our shares don't
excede 2 gig so I haven't set this up myself but there is some good
documentation on how to do this and I have seen lots of postings saying
that with cifs they had no problems with large files
Chris


>>> "Hibbard Smith" <smitty at essnjay.com> 02/05/06 8:18 AM >>>
I tried to access these shares from Windows XP Pro SP2 and got identical
results.  Ext3 filesystems smaller than 2 GB work fine.  Anything bigger
than 2 GB and xfs filesystems of any size fails. 

I guess I'm going to have to resort to reading code, posting on bugzilla
as
a bug and maybe switching to a Windows based server.  I really need to
get
this system up and doing its intended job.

I'd really like to hear from someone that they are actually exporting
ext3
filesystems larger than 2 GB and xfs filesystems and it's working.  If
they're doing so with the Fedora core 4 release, that would definitely
point
to something strange here.  

Smitty
Hibbard T. Smith, JR
smitty at essnjay.com
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: samba-bounces+smitty=essnjay.com at lists.samba.org [mailto:samba-
> bounces+smitty=essnjay.com at lists.samba.org] On Behalf Of Craig White
> Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2006 12:29 PM
> To: samba at lists.samba.org
> Subject: Re: [Samba] Questions about file system support in Samba
> 
> On Sat, 2006-02-04 at 12:00 -0500, Hibbard Smith wrote:
> > 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).
> >
> ----
> I don't use smbclient much at all but am of the belief that smbclient
> application would use an smbfs type mount and my understanding is that
> an smbfs mount would error on files > 2Gb whereas the cifs mount would
> not.
> 
> samba should have no problems with filesystem of that size.
> 
> Craig
> 
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