hi, I'm using a SUN Unified Storage 7410 cluster, on which we access CIFS shares from WinXP and Win2000 clients.
If we map a CIFS share on the 7410 to a drive letter on a winXP client, we observe that when we do a `dir`from a dosbox on the mapped drive, the files are shown in a seemingly random order. The files that are in the directory are scans (processed through about 20 high-speed human operated scanners) and they have filenames that could look like this: scan001.tif scan002.tif scan003.tif scan004.tif scan005.tif The numbers represent the order that they are scanned in. The directory listing that we get when we type dir, will show something like scan003.tif scan002.tif scan005.tif scan001.tif scan004.tif While if we copy the files to an NTFS or FAT32 filesystem, we will see the files in the desired order. Now, why is this a problem ? Obviously the 7410 cluster hasn't been around for long. The scanners used to scan to several Windows Storage Server with an FCAL SAN, which needed to be replaced. The data was copied from the old storage boxes to the 7410. All of the older applications that perform batch-processing on the files in these directories, rely on the order that the OS gives them the filenames, which, when using CIFS to the Windows Storage Servers, was alphabetical, but now it seems random. This frustrates the batchprocessing to an unacceptable level. We don't have the option to rewrite the legacy applications on the short term, especially since in many cases the source code is no longer available. Is there a way to force the CIFS server to serve directory listings in alphabetical order ? Or can zfs be forced to serve directory listings to the CIFS server in alphabetical order ? A similar, but not quite identical issue on ext3 was discussed in this thread: http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2009-January/071152.html which confirms that NTFS uses a B-Tree sort before it serves a directory listing. Also it confirms that the original poster has been able to solve the problem by setting dir_index OFF and using tune2fs. Is there a solution that will let the ZFS/CIFS server combo behave in a comparable way ? Many thanks, Frans [b]PS[/b] I'm aware that I may not alter system settings on the 7410's other than through the WebUI, but using your input I hope to be able to convince SUN Support to help us out there. I have not yet sent this problem description to SUN Support yet, but will do so shortly. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
