[Samba] Share root directory appears in subdirectories. (Well, can't actually see it but can cd into it, even if its not there.) (Serious bug?)

[Wiesner Thomas]

I had some private EMail exchange with Mark Adams and it seems like I  
really hit a bug in cifs.
The remaining text of this message is our correspondence so that everybody  
can read what was going on:
(In chronological order. Thank you for your help, Mark.)

Mark:

Check your filesystem.
Reminder, unmount then fsck.ext3 /my/dev/path
Mark.

---------------------

I:

Well. I already knew, that the filesystem was ok, but I checked:

# fsck.ext3 -f -v /dev/md0
e2fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information

   100103 inodes used (0.08%)
      446 non-contiguous inodes (0.4%)
          # of inodes with ind/dind/tind blocks: 8675/1222/0
  8694820 blocks used (3.56%)
        0 bad blocks
        1 large file

    93225 regular files
     6848 directories
        0 character device files
        0 block device files
        0 fifos
        0 links
       21 symbolic links (21 fast symbolic links)
        0 sockets
--------
   100094 files

No problems as far as I can see. As I wrote, from Win2k clients and on the  
server itself,
everything is ok. But if I mount it on a Linux client, i experience the  
problem.

    mfg Thomas

------------------------

Mark:

have you tried using smbfs drivers instead of what you have compiled?
there is a deb for this. You could also then put your mounts in fstab,
if required.

seems as though a hardlink has been created somehow, either with
mount.cifs or on the server or host.


 From the sound of things there is a hardlink somewhere pointing back to
the higher level directory?

------------------------

have you tried using smbfs drivers instead of what you have compiled?
there is a deb for this. You could also then put your mounts in fstab,
if required.

Ok. I've just tried mouting the share with cifs without the mount.cifs  
helper
(with which it works from fstab, too). Same problem.

I've also tried smbfs. It seems to work correctly.
(I think this should be the proof, that the problem is on the client side.)

seems as though a hardlink has been created somehow, either with
mount.cifs or on the server or host.
 From the sound of things there is a hardlink somewhere pointing back to
the higher level directory?

Hm.
find . -links +1 -type f
executed from the root of all shares finds nothing. The find command  
executed on the client on the mounted share
finds nothing, too, but spills out the cited hard-link-count-error.

It seems like I will have to use smbfs, as cifs seems to be too buggy.
(I experience occasional hangs with it, too as you may have read on the  
mailing list.)

    cheers Thomas

------------------------

Yes if smbfs works fine then it definatly appears like a bug in cifs.. You  
should report the findings here to the samba list for future reference by  
others.

Mark.

=================================================

I hope this helps.

   Greetings Thomas