CIFS problem

Hello!

I was using WD My book (blue ring) for about two years happily as a backup system, using rsync on my linux slackware (using smfs), but because my server died (after 5 years) I upgradded to new one and choose openSUSE 11.1 x86. Because, smbfs is no more supported, I muste choose cifs. Here comes the problem:

if I use rsync -r to synchronize my local folder to WD book, everything seems fine… but time stamp on a files is not preserverd. OK.

If I use rsync -rt to synchornize I get many, many messages of this kind:

rsync: mkstemp “/my/local/path/etc.tar.NV1yR9” failed: Permission denied (13)

root.root is the owner of local folders and files, root.root is owner of mount point and files of WD book.

By the way, before I can make root.root to be owner of files on WD book, I MUST do this:
echo 0 > /proc/fs/cifs/LinuxExtensionsEnabled

If I don’t, the owner of folders and files on WD book was “somebody” with uid=33 and gid=33

only after I “patch” as above, root was the owner.

If I touch files that are on WD book, no complain. If I cp files from local to WD here comes something more strange:

cp: cannot create regular file `/wdbook/folder/somefilesIhavecopy.txt’: No such file or directory

This was working as a swiss clock with smbfs, now, with cifs… I can’t do much. My time stamps are VERY important.

Any help, please?

ps. I also tried to upgrade firmware on WD my Book 500TB, and succeded! Now it is version 2.somenumbers. Can’'t remember, writing this from home.

Firstly let me make clear that I’m not an expert in Linux or MyBooks so everything that follows could be wrong :slight_smile:

I’ve had what sound like similar problems to yours for the last week since I upgraded to Fedora 12 and Mandriva 2010. Whenever I try to use rsync to sync my Linux box with my MyBook (white light) I’ve had loads of

“rsync: failed to set times on “” : No such file or directory (2)”

or

“rsync: failed to set times on  “” Invalid argument (22)”

depending on what I changed in the cifs mount command or rsync command.

According to comment 56 on this page ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/samba/+bug/286828) there’s a bug in samba server prior to version 3.0.26 (my MyBook is 3.0.23) that is causing this problem for Linux cifs clients that support DFS (i.e. recent versions of Linux like yours and mine !) .

The fix is to add the option “nodfs” to the cifs mount command and (so far !) that seems to be working for me, the file and directory timestamps are being updated and I don’t get complaints that files with odd suffixs (like “.NV1yR9”) don’t exist.

Disclaimer (again) : I’ve no idea what the wider impact is of disabling DFS, all I know is that it works for me. Presumably upgrading the Samba software on the MyBook would also fix the problem but I’m not savvy enough to do that.

Cheers,

Jeremy