Hi,
We are experiencing a strange issue on one of our r200 systems. We have a volume, which is accessed from linux and windows. There is no issue with rights etc, the problem is that there are a few files, that have been created some time ago, have different versions and a different content, just from the OS that you are looking from.
I tracked this user issue on my admin host (SuSe 9.3 2.6.11.4-20a-default): (The original host is running on Solaris, both the problem occurs on every host) I mounted the volume twice, via NFS & CIFS.
SMB Mount: //nstore2/pdmmig$ on /mnt1 type smbfs (0)
NFS Mount: nstore2:/vol/pdmmig on /mnt type nfs (rw,addr=172.18.131.211)
This is one of the files that are affected by this strange issue:
ls -l /mnt1/mcad_vault/Singapore_Dev_Loc_xml/CAD_NEW_1_CAApData.xml -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2540 Jul 19 2007 /mnt1/mcad_vault/Singapore_Dev_Loc_xml/CAD_NEW_1_CAApData.xml
ls -l /mnt/mcad_vault/Singapore_Dev_Loc_xml/CAD_NEW_1_CAApData.xml -rw-rw-rw- 1 6500 6500 4136 Jul 20 2007 /mnt/mcad_vault/Singapore_Dev_Loc_xml/CAD_NEW_1_CAApData.xml
A diff on both files, proves the difference that is already indicated by the file size. There is no difference between the two paths, both mounts point to the same path and to the same file, but there is a difference in the content between them. I've already tested a little bit with caching, links etc, but this doesn't seem to point in the right way. Additionally it's not possible for me, to reproduce the problem with new files.
Do you have any ideas?
Regards Andreas
Could it be the capitalization of the file names? Windows file names are case insensitive, while on Linux they are case sensitive. (Actually, Windows preserves capitalization when storing file names, but searches for file names case insensitively.)
On Windows if you create a file called "AAA" and then later on "save to" a file named "aaa" then file "AAA" gets overwritten. Basically, Windows does not allow you to create two different files whose names differ only by capitalization.
On Unix systems such as Linux however, you can create two separate files such as AAA and aaa. Both of these files are visible on Unix. I don't recall if both files appear in folder listings on Windows (via CIFS) but I do know that if you reference "aaa" or "AAA" you always get the same file due to the case insensitive search. One of the two files cannot be accessed from Windows (CIFS) no matter which name you use.
Perhaps that is what you are seeing. NFS uses Unix file name rules while CIFS (SMB) uses Windows. On NFS look for file names that differ just by capitalization. These will cause problems when accessed via CIFS.
Steve Losen scl@virginia.edu phone: 434-924-0640
University of Virginia ITC Unix Support