Hello,

I recently had to reboot my Redhat 4/64 linux system. After rebooting some folders on an externally mounted USB drive are missing!!! These folders were all created through Samba. Other folders, not created through samba are still there.

I'm in deep doo doo. Can anyone help??

Bob

Hmm, why use Samba to "create files on USB devices" ? Usually, Samba is a network protocol emulation layer to emulate a Windows machine's file sharing protocol so that a Linux machine can "appear" to be a Windows machine to other Windows machines on a network, as regards networked file access in Windows.

Did the "reboot" you refer to occur while you were in Windows, or in Linux?

I've only been able to see this using NTFS-3G on the same physical machine. If I was in Windows and it crashed, rebooting directly into Linux would do exactly this - it would "seem" as if the Windows partition was entirely "gone" in Linux.

This was because the NTFS partition (i. e. the Windows partition) was marked "dirty" - due to Windows having crashed "on" it - and then NTFS-3G would refuse to mount that partition on boot in Linux.

The way to fix it was to first reboot into Windows (thus fixing the "dirty" marked on the NTFS partition, as Windows will scandisk automatically on startup post a hard restart) and THEN booting into Linux, where the Windows partition would then again be available (due to having been "cleaned" by the Windows booting process). Only then would NTFS-3G once again "touch" the Windows partition and allow me access to my NTFS / Windows file from within Linux.

Note that this may also happen if, for example, your Linux machine starts up and the Windows machines certain scripted samba shares are on, if offline or the network is down, OR the Windows machine has a dirty or unmounted NTFS partition. I. e. if you created files "over there" on a Windows machine and the Windows machine is not available at boot time (and you have scripts that try to mount the remote Windows machine's shares using samba) at boot time, then once you have booted into Linux, NONE of those shares will be available, even if that Windows machine has become available in the meantime. This is because it was not available AT BOOT, when you Linux machine was "looking" for it, via samba.