[Samba] Folders in Share Grayed Out on Mac

[Hal Vaughan]

I thought this would be something I could easily find on Google, but all the hits seem unrelated to this issue.

Short version: Linux file server with Samba on it.  On a Mac, when reading a subfolder in that share, one folder is grayed out and inaccessible.

Full version: On the Linux server, I have a share set up at /share01/Library/Video.  I had a lot of files to copy over onto that hard drive, including some on an older MacMini.  I used "Connect as" from the Mac and connected as myself (same username and so on from one machine to the other).  While on the Mac, I did a drag and drop to copy the folder Animated onto the Samba share, creating /share01/Library/Video/Animated.

Here’s the share for that folder:

[MediaShares]
	comment = Non-guest share for file manipulations
	path = "/share01"
	browseable = yes
	writeable = yes
	guest ok = no
	create mask = 0644
	directory mask = 0755
	wide links = yes

When did ls -la, I got:

[hal at brandyhall:Video]$ lla
total 60
drwxr-xr-x  8 hal   4096 Mar 15 22:19 ./
drwxr-xr-x  3 hal   4096 Mar 15 20:42 ../
-rw-r--r--  1 hal   4096 Mar 15 22:19 ._Animated
drwxr-xr-x 40 hal   4096 Nov 28 23:52 Animated/
-rw-r--r--  1 hal   4096 Mar 15 20:42 ._.DS_Store
-rw-r--r--  1 hal  14340 Mar 16 23:41 .DS_Store
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root    24 Mar 15 20:40 DVR -> /share02/DVR/Channels/TV/
-rw-r--r--  1 hal   4096 Mar 15 20:44 ._Fix
drwxr-xr-x 34 hal   4096 Feb 13 16:24 Fix/
drwxr-xr-x  5 hal   4096 Mar 15 20:45 KidsStuff/
drwxr-xr-x  2 hal   4096 Mar 15 22:19 Movies/
drwxr-xr-x  2 hal   4096 Mar 15 22:15 Seasonal/
drwxr-xr-x  5 hal   4096 Mar 15 21:17 TVShows/

So the Animated folder I created with drag and drop has the same permissions as all the other folders in that directory and the same owner.  (The UID number is the same on Animated as the rest of the folders.)  Note the permissions are all the same as the other folders.  I deleted ._Animated and the ._DS_Store and .DS_Store files in Animated, since I know Apple sometimes stores info in those files.  That didn’t change anything.  I’ve also restarted Samba.

On the Linux server, on the command line (no GUI on the server - waste of resources), this directory seems to be the same as all the others.  But when I view it on any Macs on my LAN, it shows up as a grayed out folder.  I can’t open it or do anything with it.

To solve the problem, I got on the Linux computer and created another directory, moved all the files into it and renamed Animated to something else, to get it out of the way.

So why was the folder grayed out and why, on the server, does it seem to be the same (in terms of permissions and so on) as all the other folders? 

How do I fix it and, in the future, how do I keep this problem from happening again?



Hal