samba - Jan 2004 - samba: problem in copying directories with many files

Hi,

We have setup samba share between XP and Redhat 8.0. We usually deal 
with copying directories with 1000 files over samba share. When we copy, 
we always find that few files are randomly skipped in copying and one 
has to copy few times to get all the files.
Is this a known problem and is there any fix for this?

Thanks.

Suresh

Suresh,

I am sure that you know exactly what you are doing, but from your
description it is not clear at all.

I can see that you believe that you have a problem, a pretty bad one at
that. If this is a Samba problem, we really ought to fix it, if it has not
been fixed already.

But please help us to understand what you are doing. Here are three
possible interpretations of your posting:

-------------------- Case A ----------------------------------

A. You have configured Samba. Your RH 8.0 server is used as a file server
and you have configured a directory on the hard disk storage of that Red
Hat server for which you have in your smb.conf file created a share.

In this situation, your Windows XP clients map a drive letter to the Samba
server. Users on that machine make use of the network drive.

Sometimes your users copy up to 1000 files off their local hard disk using
Microsoft Windows Explorer and copy them to the Network drive that maps to
the Samba server. When this operation completes, you find files missing.

That is a serious problem, if it is a Samba problem. We would need to
investigate that to find the cause.


-------------------- Case B ----------------------------------

B. You have shared data that resides on a Windows XP machine. The
application runs locally and stores its data on the Windows XP machine.

You have a Red Hat 8.0 machine. You log onto the Red Hat 8.0 machine
and you mount the file system resource that is on the Windows XP machine
as part of your Linux file system. In other words, you use the smbmount
tool.

You may be using:
mount -t smbfs -ousername=xxxxx,password=xxxxxxx,rw,uid=xxx,gid=xxx \
	//windowsxpmachine/share /mnt/windowsxp

_OR_ you may be using:

smbmount //windowsxpmachine/share /mnt/windowsxp -o 'options'

_OR_ you may be using:

smbmnt /mnt/windowsxp -s //windowsxpmachine/share -u xxx -g xxx


When you have mounted the Windows share unto your local Linux file system
you copy (Ipresume using the UNIX cp command) files from the
/mnt/windowsxp directory to some part of the local Linux file system.

------------------------ Case C --------------------------

C. You log onto the Red Hat Linux 8.0 machine, change into a directory you
want to copy files to, then you use the smbclient tool to copy the files
across, just like yo would if you wree using FTP.


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

So please help us to understand precisely what you are doing. I makes a
huge difference.

Case A means we possibly have a serious bug in Samba.

Case B means there is a bug in smbfs (well known). But smbfs is part of
the Linux kernel and is not Samba.

Case C means we may have a bug in the smbclient tool. One that needs to be
fixed.


I look forward to your clarification.

- John T.



On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Suresh Narayanan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We have setup samba share between XP and Redhat 8.0. We usually deal
> with copying directories with 1000 files over samba share. When we copy,
> we always find that few files are randomly skipped in copying and one
> has to copy few times to get all the files.
> Is this a known problem and is there any fix for this?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Suresh
>
>
>
>
-- 
John H Terpstra
Email: jht@samba.org

Hi,

This problem is really bad in Win98.  I would have thought MS would have that
fixed
in WinXP.  Try "XCOPY Source: Destination: /R /I /C /H /K /E /Y" from
the DOS prompt
instead.

I hope this helps.

Suresh Narayanan (sureshn@aps.anl.gov) wrote:
>
>Hi,
>
>We have setup samba share between XP and Redhat 8.0. We usually deal
>with copying directories with 1000 files over samba share. When we copy,
>we always find that few files are randomly skipped in copying and one
>has to copy few times to get all the files.
>Is this a known problem and is there any fix for this?
>
>Thanks.
>
>Suresh
>
>
>
>
--
Assured Computing
When you need to be sure.
bob@assuredcomp.com
www.assuredcomp.com
Voice - 541-868-0331
FAX - 541-463-1627
Eugene, Oregon

> We have setup samba share between XP and Redhat 8.0. We usually deal
> with copying directories with 1000 files over samba share. When we copy,
> we always find that few files are randomly skipped in copying and one
> has to copy few times to get all the files.
> Is this a known problem and is there any fix for this?
If you are mounting a share from your XP machine then yes, it's a known
problem. Though I don't recall anyone from the samba team actually
acknowledging it, I have the problem and I have seen several other reports
of this problem.