Howto: Fix Windows share browsing issues

[MATilley]

Hello,

I currently have some windows (Win7 Ultimate 64-bit) shares automounted to my Ubuntu 10.04 laptop whenever I am on my home wireless network. I have this functionality set up using autofs/CIFS and it works well, except for one issue:

The directory listings for the mounted windows shares are incomplete, i.e. when listing the directories on the linux machine, it only lists a fraction of what is available in the actual share. One directory returns 28 of 51 files present, for example, and another 33 of 60.

I have disabled Homegroup on the Win7 box and have followed steps in both this guide and the CIFS guide. Any ideas?

Thank you.

[dmizer]

Hello,

I currently have some windows (Win7 Ultimate 64-bit) shares automounted to my Ubuntu 10.04 laptop whenever I am on my home wireless network. I have this functionality set up using autofs/CIFS and it works well, except for one issue:

The directory listings for the mounted windows shares are incomplete, i.e. when listing the directories on the linux machine, it only lists a fraction of what is available in the actual share. One directory returns 28 of 51 files present, for example, and another 33 of 60.

I have disabled Homegroup on the Win7 box and have followed steps in both this guide and the CIFS guide. Any ideas?

Thank you.

Since some directories work, and some do not, this is a directory permission problem on the Windows computer. I suggest you carefully check the folder permissions on your Windows computer. Compare directories that work to directories that do not work.

Also note that if you are trying to share your entire C: hard drive, this will be expected behavior.

[MATilley]

Since some directories work, and some do not, this is a directory permission problem on the Windows computer. I suggest you carefully check the folder permissions on your Windows computer. Compare directories that work to directories that do not work.

Also note that if you are trying to share your entire C: hard drive, this will be expected behavior.

Thanks for the comment, DMizer.

I'm sorry if I was not clear -- all the directories I automount with CIFS do work and are accessible, but only a fraction of the files within are shown when browsing the shares from the Ubuntu machine.

For example, if I have a share, MyShare1, from windows it looks like the following:

 
D:\MyShare1>dir
file1
file2
file3
file4
file5
file6

But when browsing the CIFS mounted share on the Ubuntu machine, I see the following:

me@laptop:/net/MyShare1$ ls 
file1
file3
file4

In other words, an incomplete set of files is returned when browsing the share from the Ubuntu machine. However, I *can* access the files that are not listed, if I know they are there.

Also, this is not from the c: drive, all shared folders are on an additional drive (marked d I have installed.

Is that more clear?

Thanks!

[dmizer]

Is that more clear?

Either way (files or directories), if some of the files can be viewed and some cannot, the problem is with permissions on the Windows machine, not with the mount.

If the problem was on the Linux side of things, you would not be able to view any files at all.

That said, out of curiosity does this command list all of the files?

sudo ls -a /net/MyShare1

[MATilley]

Either way (files or directories), if some of the files can be viewed and some cannot, the problem is with permissions on the Windows machine, not with the mount.

If the problem was on the Linux side of things, you would not be able to view any files at all.

That said, out of curiosity does this command list all of the files?

sudo ls -a /net/MyShare1

I see; I was afraid it might be on the Windows side of the equation.

The sudo-ed line above does nothing more than a non-sudo-ed command.

I did hunt down something interesting on the net involving inodes:

If I add the following option - noserverino - to the CIFS mount line in my auto.foo file, more files become visible but not every file, still.

That could lead the investigation in the right direction but it seems to be getting pretty complex with regards to filesystem organization.

[jamesisin]

Approximately how many items per directory are we discussing?

[MATilley]

Approximately how many items per directory are we discussing?

From my first post above:

One directory returns 28 of 51 files present, for example, and another 33 of 60.

[jamesisin]

I can access directories with hundreds of items in various configurations. Can you link to the article you found which discusses noserverino?

(My inclination, like dmizer's, has been that this was a permissions issue on the server machine. But the fact that noserverino changed the number of items displayed/accessible intrigues me.)

[MATilley]

I can access directories with hundreds of items in various configurations. Can you link to the article you found which discusses noserverino?

(My inclination, like dmizer's, has been that this was a permissions issue on the server machine. But the fact that noserverino changed the number of items displayed/accessible intrigues me.)

Unfortunately what I found wasn't an explanatory, technical article. In my frenetic search for a solution, I came across this bug entry:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ka...ux/+bug/406466

It was a one-off kind of attempt to work around the problem, but it's not the same issue, apparently.

[jamesisin]

Have you tried forcing the permissions to inherit downward on the Windows box?