surprise behavior #1: ENOENT for existing directories

i am having two intermittent problems with CIFS and am sending
separate emails to the list for each. this paragraph is identical. my
desktop runs debian and kernel 2.6.32rc7; i am mounting a filesystem
from my synology NAS, running DSM 2.2-0942 and using ext3 & RAID5
internally. the link is gigabit through cat5e and a netgear switch.
the only CIFS dmesg entry i see is a couple of: "CIFS VFS: server
10.1.1.2 of type Samba 3.2.8 returned unexpected error on SMB posix
open, disabling posix open support. Check if server update available."
(FWIW, synology hasn't released a firmware with a more recent samba.)


here, creating files within a directory sometimes fails with ENOENT as
if the parent did not exist. this generally prevents me from using the
shared filesystem for compilation. an example follows:


11:08 / > mount | grep nas
//nas/data on /data type cifs (rw,mand)
11:08 / > cd data
11:08 /data > mkdir a
11:08 /data > mkdir a/b
mkdir: cannot create directory `a/b': No such file or directory
11:08 /data > strace mkdir a/b |& grep mkdir
execve("/bin/mkdir", ["mkdir", "a/b"], [/* 22 vars */]) = 0
mkdir("a/b", 0777)                      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
write(2, "mkdir: ", 7mkdir: )                  = 7



--   aaron brick
--   [email protected]
--   http://www.lithic.org