David Dyer-Bennet
Patron
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2013
- Messages
- 286
For a change, this is an IXSystems FreeNAS Mini in use at a client site. It has one small pool (three-way mirror of 6TB), and one dataset is being shared out via SMB. Not AD or any other directory service, we authenticate using usernames configured on the FreeNAS box.
We have fewer than 10 user hitting the server; mostly reading or writing somewhat big files (some up towards 50MB, most smaller), at intervals (storing scans of historic photos or documents, loading them back to study them, etc.) The systems are a wide mix, with mostly Macintosh laptops (and not brand-new models), with at least one Linux box and my Windows-10 laptop.
We're all logged in as the same FreeNAS user, which is the owner for the dataset and files in it.
The dashboard says we're up-to-date with the 11.2-Stable train. Disk is nowhere near full (less than 1TB used).
Everybody (so every kind of computer) has seen some variation of this problem. It finally got to me, for the first time in a week, this morning. The cient came over to show me a directory structure out on the server -- and my computer couldn't see it. On her laptop "U:\work\Old and Original Stereo Scans Karen Only" (wait, she's a Mac; so it was that directory, but she expressed the path differently) had two subdirectories in it; on mine it was empty. It remained empty when I refreshed the file explorer window, and it remained empty when I started back at the desktop and navigated to that directory from scratch. I opened an SSH session to the server and examined that directory; it showed the subdirectories present and with expected owner and permissions.
It stayed the same for more than half an hour (with refreshes periodically) since I was waiting for a couple of big operations using the share to complete. At this point I unmapped the network drive U:, and re-mapped it to point to the same share and logged in with the same username and password. I could then immediately see the subdirectories (and files in them and further subdirectories, etc.), matching what her laptop showed, what LS on the actual server showed.
As I say, everybody has had something vaguely like this -- a temporary access issue to some file or directory. Some were reported as inability to create a file rather than inability to see a file or directory the way I had.
Note we're sharing via SMB. From what I read that's the only thing worth trying for a mixed group of systems like this? I read that sharing the same dataset by both SMB and AFP is not recommended; and of course the Windows and Linux boxes don't want to hear about AFP so only AFP isn't an option.
Client is a bit tetchy; we're at the "this doesn't seem stable and reliable" point (which seems entirely fair; we've spent time talking about some access issue every day for the last week, and never really found a "resolution").
Guest logins are disabled, so I'm sure nobody is accidentally coming in as guest. All the files/directories I've documented problems with so far have the protections I expect and the owner I expect.
And I don't have problems like this on my home server, running the same train; it has fewer users and just Windows most days, but it's where all my files live and I use it constantly and would notice if it suddenly couldn't see things.
Ideas?
We have fewer than 10 user hitting the server; mostly reading or writing somewhat big files (some up towards 50MB, most smaller), at intervals (storing scans of historic photos or documents, loading them back to study them, etc.) The systems are a wide mix, with mostly Macintosh laptops (and not brand-new models), with at least one Linux box and my Windows-10 laptop.
We're all logged in as the same FreeNAS user, which is the owner for the dataset and files in it.
The dashboard says we're up-to-date with the 11.2-Stable train. Disk is nowhere near full (less than 1TB used).
Everybody (so every kind of computer) has seen some variation of this problem. It finally got to me, for the first time in a week, this morning. The cient came over to show me a directory structure out on the server -- and my computer couldn't see it. On her laptop "U:\work\Old and Original Stereo Scans Karen Only" (wait, she's a Mac; so it was that directory, but she expressed the path differently) had two subdirectories in it; on mine it was empty. It remained empty when I refreshed the file explorer window, and it remained empty when I started back at the desktop and navigated to that directory from scratch. I opened an SSH session to the server and examined that directory; it showed the subdirectories present and with expected owner and permissions.
Code:
[bup@ucnas ~]$ ls -l /mnt/zpuc/uc/work/Old\ and\ Original\ Stereo\ Scans\ Karen\ Only/ total 17 drwxrwxr-x+ 2 uc uc 309 Jan 13 10:57 old SVs backs drwxrwxr-x+ 14 uc uc 15 Jan 13 11:36 old SVs fronts to spin [bup@ucnas ~]$ getfacl /mnt/zpuc/uc/work/Old\ and\ Original\ Stereo\ Scans\ Karen\ Only/ # file: /mnt/zpuc/uc/work/Old and Original Stereo Scans Karen Only/ # owner: uc # group: uc owner@:rwxpDdaARWcCos:fd----I:allow group@:rwxpDdaARWcCos:fd----I:allow everyone@:r-x---a-R-c---:fd----I:allow [bup@ucnas ~]$ getfacl /mnt/zpuc/uc/work/Old\ and\ Original\ Stereo\ Scans\ Karen\ Only/* # file: /mnt/zpuc/uc/work/Old and Original Stereo Scans Karen Only/old SVs backs # owner: uc # group: uc owner@:rwxpDdaARWcCos:fd----I:allow group@:rwxpDdaARWcCos:fd----I:allow everyone@:r-x---a-R-c---:fd----I:allow # file: /mnt/zpuc/uc/work/Old and Original Stereo Scans Karen Only/old SVs fronts to spin # owner: uc # group: uc owner@:rwxpDdaARWcCos:fd----I:allow group@:rwxpDdaARWcCos:fd----I:allow everyone@:r-x---a-R-c---:fd----I:allow
It stayed the same for more than half an hour (with refreshes periodically) since I was waiting for a couple of big operations using the share to complete. At this point I unmapped the network drive U:, and re-mapped it to point to the same share and logged in with the same username and password. I could then immediately see the subdirectories (and files in them and further subdirectories, etc.), matching what her laptop showed, what LS on the actual server showed.
As I say, everybody has had something vaguely like this -- a temporary access issue to some file or directory. Some were reported as inability to create a file rather than inability to see a file or directory the way I had.
Note we're sharing via SMB. From what I read that's the only thing worth trying for a mixed group of systems like this? I read that sharing the same dataset by both SMB and AFP is not recommended; and of course the Windows and Linux boxes don't want to hear about AFP so only AFP isn't an option.
Client is a bit tetchy; we're at the "this doesn't seem stable and reliable" point (which seems entirely fair; we've spent time talking about some access issue every day for the last week, and never really found a "resolution").
Guest logins are disabled, so I'm sure nobody is accidentally coming in as guest. All the files/directories I've documented problems with so far have the protections I expect and the owner I expect.
And I don't have problems like this on my home server, running the same train; it has fewer users and just Windows most days, but it's where all my files live and I use it constantly and would notice if it suddenly couldn't see things.
Ideas?