[Samba] Folder disappears on rename

[Jeremy Allison]

On Thu, Oct 03, 2013 at 11:57:21AM -0700, Brian Martin wrote:
> I have Samba 4.0.9 installed under Ubuntu 12.04.  It's configured as
> a domain member, with a Windows 2008R2 server being the DC.  All
> workstations are running Windows 7.  One of my users is reporting
> problems in the following scenario:
> 
> 1) She creates a folder in one of the Samba shares, and places a
> number of documents there.
> 2) She closes all open documents and closes Windows Explorer
> 3) Another user on another workstation subsequently renames the
> folder as part of the work flow process to indicate it has been
> reviewed.
> 4) The original user then navigates to where the renamed folder
> should be and cannot find it, either under the original name or the
> new name.  Refreshing doesn't help.
> 5) After a period of time, typically 3-5 minutes but in one case
> around 30 minutes, the folder reappears under the new name.
> 
> The window of time between steps 2 and 4 is typically fairly small,
> as in an hour or less.  The problem is intermittent.  In the
> 30-minute case I was able to get on to my own Win7 workstation and
> look at the network share, and I saw the folder under the new name.
> I then checked with the user and she reported she still couldn't see
> it after a refresh, though it appeared shortly (minutes) thereafter.
> 
> As diagnostic steps, I've asked the user to try a) logging off; b)
> rebooting; but we don't have results of those tests yet.
> 
> I considered that this might be related to bug 10174
> <https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10174>, but the original
> user is making sure she doesn't have any files or folders open
> before the rename occurs.

No, that isn't a related issue. 10174 is a correctness
issue that I'm not sure affects any real application
(although of course you never know with Windows apps. :-).

> 1) Is this a known issue?
> 2) Is anyone else experiencing this?
> 3) Does anyone have any fixes or workarounds?

It's not known to the developers. It looks like a
failure of change notify, but you'd have to drill
down much deeper with wireshark traces to look
into it.

Jeremy.