Directory Names Randomly Changed to Gibberish

[FishingForFishies]

Hello,

I have been running my FreeNAS server for several years now and have been encountering a strange issue I'd finally like to address. I have searched this forum and the web in general and I'm unable to see if anyone has had the same problem.

The issue: In one of my volumes, directory names keep getting changed to random strings of characters. This can either happen in my Storage > Music > directory, where artist names are changed. Or inside those artist folders, album names get changed.

When the folder names get changed, the contents of the folder are untouched and there isn't any corruption of the data, just the directory name.

The names end up looking like this:
1S8R1J~W
1P6BFB~5
MVHMK~0

There does not appear to be any sort of rhyme or reason to the new directory names. Its not affected my data, so its really just been a nuisance, going back and renaming folders. But it does make me worry.

Does anyone have any idea what would cause this to occur? Seems to be mostly just in this one dataset, but not my others.

Specs of my server:
HP Proliant ML10v2 (https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docIy d=emr_na-c04619142)
8gb ECC ram
Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-4150 CPU @ 3.50GHz (4 cores)
FreeNAS-11.2-U6 (the issue has occurred since v10 and before, I think)
1 WD Green Drive 2TB
1WD Blue Drive 2TB
1 WD Red Drive 4tb (I have two more Reds to slot in, once I have the time to open the box and do the resilver)

Any ideas or advice is greatly appreciated! Please let me know if more info is needed from me. Thanks for the help!

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

Does anyone have any idea what would cause this to occur? Seems to be mostly just in this one dataset, but not my others.

One guess would be software that you have set up to use that pool doing some sort of "cleaning" of the directory structure.

 

[FishingForFishies]

One guess would be software that you have set up to use that pool doing some sort of "cleaning" of the directory structure.

Thanks for the input!

I think the only things that get done to the pool are the scrubs and making snapshots. Most everything else that looks at this data is just reading it and doesn't have permission to write.

Would the scrub cause this? Maybe I have something else going that I've forgotten about, ill check the processes.

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

Would the scrub cause this?

very unlikely. Scrubs fix data, not mess it up. :)

 

[FishingForFishies]

very unlikely. Scrubs fix data, not mess it up. :)

Thought so. Is there a best way to see what is acting on the data? Can I somehow enable logging on that dataset to see what's making the change?

Don't see any odd processes or scripts running. Double checked my settings. Could be something external I guess...

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

External is what I though; like something managing a media library over the share and changing things.

 

[FishingForFishies]

Good to know, mostly, that I don't have something buggy going on with the NAS itself. Time to investigate.

 

[anodos]

The names end up looking like this:
1S8R1J~W
1P6BFB~5
MVHMK~0

This is samba's name mangling algorithm for file / dir names that contain invalid NTFS characters. You can disable by setting "mangled names = no" as an auxiliary parameter on the share.

 

[FishingForFishies]

This is samba's name mangling algorithm for file / dir names that contain invalid NTFS characters. You can disable by setting "mangled names = no" as an auxiliary parameter on the share.

Thanks! Interesting information. I've set that parameter on each SMB share I have setup.

Is there a similar setting for AFP shares? Would an AFP share ever cause the same thing?

Until recently I had mostly used AFP shares (though did have a samba one running on the directory where names were changed).

I guess samba didn't like my 'YEAR- Album Title' naming convention.

 

[FishingForFishies]

Can't edit my post, but posting this here: https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/samba/book/ch05_04.html

Looks to definetly be the cause of the folder renaming. Thanks so much for the help!

 

[anodos]

Thanks! Interesting information. I've set that parameter on each SMB share I have setup.

Is there a similar setting for AFP shares? Would an AFP share ever cause the same thing?

Until recently I had mostly used AFP shares (though did have a samba one running on the directory where names were changed).

I guess samba didn't like my 'YEAR- Album Title' naming convention.

What samba likes or doesn't like isn't really the issue. It's more of a matter of what the protocol supports. When Macs share over SMB they dynamically remap invalid characters into a private range.

 

[FishingForFishies]

Interesting. Have learned a bunch from this. Thanks again

 

[FishingForFishies]

What samba likes or doesn't like isn't really the issue. It's more of a matter of what the protocol supports. When Macs share over SMB they dynamically remap invalid characters into a private range.

So I have a tertiary issue. Once I set the 'mangled names = no' flag, the correct directory names were restored. However, from my Mac using the smb share, I can't see the files inside those folders that were previously mangled.

Would you know how to resolve this? I found one folder that was previously mangled, that had a trailing space in the name. But even after removing that, I cannot access the files.

EDIT: After remounting the share, I can now see the files in the folder that was previously mangled because of a trailing space. So I guess where I come across these folders now, I need to fix the broken character and then remount, should be good.