samba - Jul 2006 - corrupt files on samba server

Hello all,

I've got a strange problem on the samba servers here at my  
workingplace. The problem is that we have some files on these machines  
which seem to be corrupt. Mostly the corrupt files are images, excel  
cheets and sometimes Word documents. We have no idea why these files  
become corrupt. We have tested some things:
We copied a whole folder to the samba server. The result was that some  
of the files inside are corrupt now on the server. In the next step we  
copied not the whole folder, but one or two specific files from this  
folder to the samba server. The result was: The files wasn't corrupt.  
We have no idea why.
The real problem is, that we got know more and more users who tell us  
that some of there files are corrupt. We don't know what we should  
tell them, we don't know if the problem is on our side or on user side  
(to long filenames, to long folder names, etc) or whatever. Is it a  
known bug? Is there a known workaround? Because in this kind of state  
we could shut down the samba server. It makes not many sense with this  
kind of behavior

Now some basic infos :
- Installed OS on Server: SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9
         (I had no choice of that *gg*)
- Samba-Server Verion: 3.0.22 self compiled (standart SuSE gcc-3.3.3)
         (./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-configdir=/usr/local/etc )
- Client Software: Mac OS X 10.x, Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000 SP4
- I don't post my samba config here because I think it makes no sense.
   If you need the config anyway, please let me know.

Is that enough information? Do you need more? There is nothing special  
in the syslog or the samba log. I hope you can work with this infos.

Thx for your help

With kind regards
Julian

Hello,

> Is that enough information? Do you need more? There is nothing special  
> in the syslog or the samba log. I hope you can work with this infos.
I think it is not a problem of Samba but from your filesystem.
Samba get trouble if the filesystem isn't perfect.
I had the same problems during an upgrade from 2.2 to 3.0.22 with an  
existing ReiserFS
After reformatting with XFS the problem has gone away.

HTH
-- 
Thorsten Hamester

On Mon, Jul 10, 2006 at 03:29:20PM +0200, staublunge@ichkommnichmehrklar.de
wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I've got a strange problem on the samba servers here at my  
> workingplace. The problem is that we have some files on these machines  
> which seem to be corrupt. Mostly the corrupt files are images, excel  
> cheets and sometimes Word documents. We have no idea why these files  
> become corrupt. We have tested some things:
> We copied a whole folder to the samba server. The result was that some  
> of the files inside are corrupt now on the server. In the next step we  
> copied not the whole folder, but one or two specific files from this  
> folder to the samba server. The result was: The files wasn't corrupt.  
> We have no idea why.
> The real problem is, that we got know more and more users who tell us  
> that some of there files are corrupt. We don't know what we should  
> tell them, we don't know if the problem is on our side or on user side
Can you define corrupt?  If you copy your folder to the server, then copy back
from the server to the workstation, do you still have problems with those files?
Does the file size change? (are they receiving more or fewer bytes?),, did you
try to compare MD5 Sums?

If the files really are becomming corrupt somehow, did you check Dmesg on your
server to make sure you aren't having serious hardware problems on that end?

Rashkae wrote:
> Can you define corrupt?  If you copy your folder to the server, then 
> copy back from the server to the workstation, do you still have 
> problems with those files?  Does the file size change? (are they 
> receiving more or fewer bytes?),, did you try to compare MD5 Sums?
>
> If the files really are becomming corrupt somehow, did you check Dmesg 
> on your server to make sure you aren't having serious hardware 
> problems on that end?
>
>   
Hi and thank you for your answer,

with coruppt I mean that there aren't any missing bytes. I saw some BMP 
files which look like you have taken the original photo-image (tho photo 
came out of an microscope. we are working with a lot of images of plants 
and genes) and cut it into litle peaces. Than you take this peaces and 
put them randomly together. I don't know  how to describe it better. My 
english is not that good. Other photos in the same folder are ok. And we 
got the problem on two different systems, using thair own storage 
device. I mean they don't share the same drive or something like this.
It doesn't matter if we copy the files from the server to a workstation 
and back or if we copie the files from a workstation to the server and 
back.
We don't compare the md5 checksumes. We cheked our switches to make 
shure there is nothing  wrong with our network installation. And there 
are no hardware errors because we are having the problem on two 
different machines.

I hope that information can help you.

greetings
Julian