NAS Symbolic Links on 12.04 loads - Anybody else with sym link issues - Resolved

[phenigma]

Cannot say I'm going to be much help here, but can you run 'ps ax | grep autofs' and pastebin the results?  If there are no results then autofs isn't mounted.  If you do have a result then I'm out of ideas.

J.

[pigdog]

Hi,

Installed the April 5 svr 28895 and am getting "failed to load PLUTO VDR" message.

Results of ps ax | grep autofs ...

8762 tty1       S+     0:00  grep  --color=auto  autofs

Cheers

[pigdog]

Hi,

I deleted the symlink from /home/public/data/videos/Windows Share-Volume_X [XX] -> /mnt/device/XX/public/data/videos

Then from /mnt/device I tried to cd into XX but got the 'too many symbolic links' message.

I couldn't rm -r or -R from /mnt/device because of 'too many - you guessed it! - symbolic links.'

Sym links get recreated on boot.

I noticed the permissions were 555 so I chmod to 777 but no luck.  They get written back to 555 on boot.

I've gone through smb.conf, dhcp stuff, other silly things but I can't see anything.

[pigdog]

Hi,

So I used the following command to count the number of symlinks ...

find $directory -type l -exec echo symlinks \; | sort | uniq -c

as root and cd .. back to main dir.

10.04 had 86242 symlinks

12.04 complained during find: ' ./mnt/device/XX' : Too many levels of symbolic links ... and reported only 53044 symlinks.

[pigdog]

Hi,

I have been spending a lot of time on this issue.  MAXSYMLINKS on 10.04 and 12.04 appears to be set @ 20.

Nothing I do seems to correct the problem.

Not being to access the content on my NAS with 12.04 is a game stopper.

I have been following the symbolic link error but could it be something else?

My NAS is being queried/accessed (there seems to be communication to the hardware controller but the HDD's don't act like they normally would when being interrogated by UpdateMedia).

Right now I'm "what the heck has changed between the 10.04 and 12.04 OS's"?

Cheers

[phenigma]

I have not seen this issue at all so I'm really at a loss as to what to suggest.  I don't know of anything that has changed in this regard and it all *just works (tm)* here.    Sorry that I cannot seem to be of much use.  Delete and recreate the device in your device tree?  You've probably done that already.  Does your NAS need a username/password to access?  That will prevent mounts.  I've not encountered the too many symlinks error, that seems fishy to me.

J.

[pigdog]

Hi phenigma,

I've downloaded many snaps, reloaded many from scratch (because I tried so many things I lost continuity) with the same results.

I run LMCE on a dedicated network without username/password access.

On 12.04 I've deleted the symlinks from Windows Shares [34 & 35] and when I go to /mnt/device/XX and try an cd or ls I get symbolic link error.

The NAS HDD's are using the LMCE directory tree, nothing is different on it from 10.04.

I can run the NAS fine under 10.04 and have even reloaded 10.04 from scratch (more than once after playing with it).

One thing is that with the  ls -l cmd file permissions on 10.04 for /mnt/device are drwxrwxrwx (777) with ownership root:root

When i go down the tree to /mnt/device/XX permissions are the same but ownership changes to 501:501 (DNS-323 ownership format)

On 12.04 the /mnt/device permissions are 555 (why?).  I chmod 777 XX but can't change them -R option because of symlink error.

On a reboot the deleted Windows Share links gets recreated and the permissions for /mnt/device/XX go back to 555.

On 10.04 & 12.04 the Windows Shares are lrwxrwxrwx (777) permission and ownership root:public.

However on 10.04 using the ls -l command on /home/public/data/videos the Windows Share is cyan with the symlink to /mnt/device/XX/public/data/videos with green background.

On 12.04 the Windows Share-Volume-X [XX] is red and symlink -> mnt/device/XX/public/data/videos as well.

Red is bad.  Why is it red?  It was autodetected and created but the drives aren't being handled the same.

So. do I look into detection scripts for 12.04 permissions/etc,  or do I look into NAS ownership?  (I don't know if I can do ownership changes on the DNS.)

There are other DNS 323 users out there but I haven't heard from any.

I've tried smb.conf follow symlinks=yes but no joy.

I could try to build NAS4Free or FreeNAS and see if that'll work.  It might give me a hint.

I don't really want to run funplug or jerk around with the DLink if I don't have to.

Cheers.

[phenigma]

This is one area where I have really little to no knowledge.  The autofs system that is used is completely foreign to me.  If you were can jump into irc we might be able to do some testing.  The dns-323 is an amazing little device, linux based, you can run your own distro on it, but that should not be required.  I do not own one so I cannot test your specific device here.  I have a QNAP NAS, very similar in many respects, and have no issues.  This seems like a permissions issue based on what you are saying and I would look into any differences there.

With autofs the links will not show in /mnt/device unless something is trying to access files through /home/public/data/*/Windows Share.  autofs will mount each mount as it is required and dynamically create and destroy links in /mnt/device.  You should not alter /mnt/device/*.  What you are describing sounds like a permission issue but I couldn't say where.  Nothing has changed in LCME configuration regarding shares, only the distro upgrade.  Check in webadmin that the proper share name is defined AND that it has the proper IP/MAC for the device.  I've had issues in the past where 1004/1204 testing back and forth and the IPs got messed up on my NAS.  That could cause what you are seeing.  Umm.  Yeah....   

J.

[pigdog]

Hi phenigma,

Even though I might not get anywhere with this, (a.k.a. get discouraged), I appreciate your feedback.

It's all about the challenge.  Thanks!

Cheers

[pigdog]

Hi phenigma,

Well...       http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=13655.0

From my earlier statement in this post.

I run LMCE on a dedicated network without username/password access.

....basically don't be lazy and not use username/password credentials on 12.04 NAS drives.

The errors in topic=13655.0 helped a bit.

But why symbolic link errors? - that throws you way off.  At least it did me.

I feel kinda silly being lazy with an unsecured NAS but I at least learned something - I hope.

Thank you very much for your time (that I wasted).

Cheers

[phenigma]

Not a waste of my time at all.  I'm glad you were able to sort things out!

J.