Interesting problem. Server using Samba version 3.0.25b-1.el5_1.4 on RHEL5 providing file services to XP and 2000 clients. I am migrating shares over to the new server and have noticed that if a user was previously in a SAMBA directory that was just migrated, the parent is duplicated in the child folder. For example in XP:

\\athena\archives

shows a number of files and subdirs. If I go into a specific subdir, the same listing as the parent and the path shows as follows, even though there is no archives subdir:

\\athena\archives\archives


When I drill down into the child archives, I then see the actual and proper dir listing.

This is happening on what seems to be a random basis. Only a hard reboot removes the problem. Logging off and on does not solve the problem. It seems as if the listing is cached on XP? and then somehow gets confused.

Ideas?

Further info:

I am using dfs and it seems this is where the problem lies. If I map directly to the share, I do not receive any ghost dir listings.

Investigating further,

t starting to look like MS dfs client caching problem. When I get the erroneous dir listing e.g.

/storeimage/dwg/dwg

If I use dfsutil from MS W2K3 Support Tools to flush the cache as follows;

dfsutil /pktflush
dfsutil /purgemupcache

and within XP Windows Explorer I stay at the root of the symlink i.e. /storeimage then everything shows correctly. However if I am in the symlink share i.e. /storeimage/dwg and the dfs cache is purged [when expires, I am forcing the purge], the problem surfaces!

So I can recreate problem at any time!

However the XP registry change

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Mup\ProviderCacheTimeoutInMinutes

goes only to 720min ... problem is people leave their machines on and stay within a certain dir then the problem resurfaces!

Ideas how to prevent?