SNIP
This is truly a bad idea. That XP share should be
mounted by the workstations just like the server
shares. Move the data to the server, or use the XP box
as a server to directly serve those who need the data
on it.
Cheers,
TMS III
Why is this a bad idea? We've been running this setup
for a few years now and its been working fine until we
upgraded. The XP box only allows 10 user limit for
shares, so that's why we mounted it to the Ubuntu
server and shared it with Samba instead of having to
pay for Windows Server license.
The problem with simply moving the files over to the
Ubuntu server is that the files on the XP box are
stored on a RAID array that comes with a controller
card whose driver is really only designed to be run on
Windows, not Linux.
Is this a *real* RAID controller or a 'fake' (BIOS/Software/MB) RAID
controller? If it is a real controller are you sure there is no Linux
driver for it? (Esp. since you are using Ubuntu!) If it is a
software/BIOS/MB RAID controller the performance is going to be really
bad -- these controllers are really only meant for home systems and
not
really for true servers.
I'd have to setup mdadm on Ubuntu, which I've done
before and was not impressed. The Windows RAID system
we have is much more easier to maintain.
Oh, you mean you have to actually use your keyboard? How dreadfull...
Do you mean to say that the files local to the Ubuntu *server* are not
on
a RAID array?
I don't want to get off topic here, I just want to
know why Samba is giving me trouble browsing these
mounted directories.
This sort of 'game' (mounting files from one 'server' on another
server
and then re-exporting them), is not *specific* to Samba. See what
happens when you try to NFS export file systems mounted as nfs file
systems (although I expect nfsd/mountd would refuse to let you do that
in the first place).
There are several problems:
It tends to confuse the server(s). File serving software (Samba,
NFSD,
etc.) really expect the data they are serving to be local (yes, using
a
NAS or something like that is a little different) and are written to
optimal to work that way.
It causes lots of network traffic: every I/O operation causes two
batches of network traffic and implies two sets of network channels:
one
set between the machine with the physical disks (the XP box) and the
'server' (the Ubuntu box), and a *second* set of network channels
between the 'server' (the Ubuntu box) and the final client(s) (the
client MS-Windows machine(s)). If this is on one physical network (if
the 'server' (the Ubuntu box) only has one NIC), then the you have
lots
of network collisions, which means your network thoughput will truely
suck (eg network timeouts, dropped/lost packets, etc.).
I expect that 'before' you 'got by' by luck. What might be happening
now is that some fix to Samba is biting you or maybe you are getting
network I/O errors (timeouts?) because of what I described in the
paragraph above.
What you are doing is not really going to work in the long term. You
either need to:
1) Buy a real, supported RAID card for the Ubuntu system.
2) Live with mdadm
3) Pay for licenses for the XP system.
Couldn't agree more. One more item is that the CIFS share to the XP
box is the user that mounted the file system on Ubuntu. Bah! Just
ugly all around.
--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933
Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System
http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows
hel...@deepsoft.com --
http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/
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