samba - Oct 2013 - Folder disappears on rename

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.

Questions:

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

Thanks in advance for any advice you might have.

                              -Brian Martin

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.

Hello,

Am 03.10.2013 20:57, schrieb Brian Martin:
> 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.
this sounds a bit like something mysterious I had had today at work on 
my Samba 3.6.18 server:

- On the Linux server I downloaded a file to my home directory (was a 
simple *.txt file)
- On my Windows PC I could not see the file, but it was there on Linux side
- I renamed the file on linux and then it was visible with the new name 
on windows, too.


A different user had the following today:
- She created a file on the Samba share (same 3.6.18 server)
- But it wasn't visible from a different PC
- After about 3h it was suddenly visible without any changes.


The problem wasn't reproducable on both machines a second time.


Both workstations run W7 64-Bit. We don't use offline syncronisation here.


I haven't had this before and I thought something got confused and I 
want to restart Samba later at night. But your posting sounds similar to 
the problem I had today. So maybe it's a bug.



Regards,
Marc

Fyi... this is a known problem (with both renames and newly created 
files/folders, and even deleted foles/folders) on Windows 7, even with a 
real Windows Server... never seen it on XP, but it happens all the time 
on Windows 7 here.

Just fyi...


samba-request at lists.samba.org wrote:
> Subject:
> Re: [Samba] Folder disappears on rename
> From:
> Bernd Glueckert <bernd.glueckert at ot-soft.de>
> Date:
> 2013-10-05 12:12 AM
>
> To:
> samba at lists.samba.org
>
>
>
>> this sounds a bit like something mysterious I had had today at work 
>> on my Samba 3.6.18 server:
>>
>> - On the Linux server I downloaded a file to my home directory (was a 
>> simple *.txt file)
>> - On my Windows PC I could not see the file, but it was there on 
>> Linux side
>> - I renamed the file on linux and then it was visible with the new 
>> name on windows, too.
>>
>>
>> A different user had the following today:
>> - She created a file on the Samba share (same 3.6.18 server)
>> - But it wasn't visible from a different PC
>> - After about 3h it was suddenly visible without any changes.
>>
>>
>> The problem wasn't reproducable on both machines a second time.
>>
> We have this problem too.
>
> Samba 3.6.18 on Gentoo, W7-64-Workstations.
>
> A scanner puts his output on the samba server, but it's not visible 
> for the W7-Clients. A couple of minutes later it's visible. Refreshing 
> Explorer by pressing F5 doesnt help.
>
> Same effect happens, if user A renames a file. User B sees the old 
> filename, and few minutes later it's okay.
>
> I think, this is reproducible. I will check this next week and give 
> you the information about it.

-- 

Best regards,

*/Charles Marcus/*
I.T. Director
Media Brokers International, Inc.
*678.514.6224 | 678.514.6299 fax*