RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 + CIFS shares

ColinAnderson · 05-07-2007, 04:20 PM

As RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 is next on the upgrade path, I've been testing it and getting it ready in some development and eventually production environments.

We have some network shared-space set aside that everyone can connect to and store files and that sort of thing. On all of our RHEL 4 servers, mounting it as a share of type smbfs works fine.

However, on the RHEL 5 box, I mount the shared space as cifs, and at first glance it appears to work fine. I can browse the files and folders on it. However, if I try to copy any files, the cp command just hangs and nothing happens. Most of the time Ctrl + C doesn't even cancel the copy process.

Also somewhat puzzling to me are the file and directory permissions on the mounted drive (puzzling in the sense that I don't recognize them, but perhaps they're cifs-specific?):

Code:

drwxrwxrwx 1 root root       0 May  7 10:13 PEAR
-rwxrwSrwt 1 root root 9201988 May  7 10:10 php-5.2.2.tar.gz

Every file has those permissions. The "S" just looks odd to me. Listing the same file on the RHEL 4 boxes yields permissions a bit more familiar:

Code:

drwxr-xr-x  1 root root    16384 May  7 10:13 PEAR
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  9201988 May  7 10:10 php-5.2.2.tar.gz

Eitherway, searching for answers has not yet yielded any results. Has anyone here experienced this?

Thanks,
.Colin

chrism01 · 05-09-2007, 03:12 AM

you may find this useful: http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/..._ugfilesp.html

ColinAnderson · 05-09-2007, 10:41 AM

Thanks for that. That's a very nice guide and I've bookmarked it. At least that explains the permissions I didn't recognize.

Anyway, an update:

I reformatted the box and installed RHEL 4, same settings and options I've used on all of our current development and production servers, which all run RHEL 4.

Now, however, I can't even mount the shared space! I'm using the exact_same_fstab entries that the other 5 servers use. They all mount, read, write fine, but this server complains about a permission error.

The entry on all six of the servers is:

Code:

//emc_fs_2/share_files$ /mnt/share_files2       cifs    user=xxxxx,password=xxxxx

The error on this server is:

Code:

[root@rh-php-prod ~]# mount /mnt/share_files2
mount error 13 = Permission denied
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g.man mount.cifs)

I've talked to the network guys, and there's nothing different about the network on which this server connects; it's the same as the other servers. They've double checked the EMC share settings, and there are no special permissions, just a single username/password combination.

Any ideas?

wwgkid · 02-13-2008, 09:48 PM

Colin,
Did you get any resolution on the cifs hangs? I'm having the exact same issue.

ColinAnderson · 02-14-2008, 09:33 AM

Hey there,

Well, the permission problems were corrected by adding a domain=domain to the end of the fstab entries. Why they work on one machine and not another is beyond me.

As for the other problems, the hanging, etc. I never found a concrete answer to this problem, but I've come to a point where I think the problem is caused by some as yet not officially identified bug between the cifs protocol and older samba server software providing the sharing. I fought with this problem for months, and then out of nowhere, the problems seemed to disappear.

I think the samba server software that shares these drives was upgraded at some point to a newer version, which in turn fixed this problem. But getting the network guys to remember doing such an update, much less admitting it, is something I've not yet been able to do. =(

Try checking the contents of /proc/fs/cifs/DebugData and see if there are any errors logged there. That might give you an idea of the problem!

I have much sympathy for you, and if you have the ability to update the samba server software on the side from which you want to share the drives, I would point you in that direction. I wish I had a more solid answer for you. At the very least, if that does not solve the problem, then at least it puts to bed that hypothesis of mine. =P

Best of luck!
~Colin

wwgkid · 02-15-2008, 11:13 AM

Thanks Colin for some insight. The Debug info only gives me info on server I'm connecting too. Im currently working with Redhat support on this issue and hopefully I'll be able to post a fix soon.

-Danny