Arch Linux

snack

Member

From: Italy

Registered: 2009-01-13

Posts: 866

NFS and duplicate file names

Hi, I'm facing a strange problem with NFS. Under a certain folder in a disk server I have many files, one of them is named Flux-Chi295-Fid7-070910-070910-MDREvents_130-Spillover.txt. When I try to get the content of the directory with ls from my terminal via NFS I obtain double output for this file:

$ ll *130-Spillover.txt | grep 070910
-rw-r--r-- 1 mori wizard 360  1 lug 18.47 Flux-Chi295-Fid7-070910-070910-MDREvents_130-Spillover.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 mori wizard 360  1 lug 18.47 Flux-Chi295-Fid7-070910-070910-MDREvents_130-Spillover.txt

I did many checks to see what is the origin of this behaviour. Renaming the file, the output of il correctly reported only once, but restoring the original name the problem is back. Same result for moving the file in another folder and then back. If I pass the complete name as argument with no wildcard, everything works correctly:

$ ll Flux-Chi295-Fid7-070910-070910-MDREvents_130-Spillover.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 mori wizard 360  1 lug 18.47 Flux-Chi295-Fid7-070910-070910-MDREvents_130-Spillover.txt

I don't think it is a problem with wildcard expansion in bash, since I see the same behaviour when I search for files using boost::filesystem libraries in a C++ program. Perhaps the most significant check is that if I give the ll command from the disk server (where the disk is accessed locally and not via NFS) the output is correct:

$ ll *130-Spillover.txt | grep 070910
-rw-r--r--  1 mori wizard 360 Jul  1 18:47 Flux-Chi295-Fid7-070910-070910-MDREvents_130-Spillover.txt

So I think it is a problem with NFS. It is very strange because it seems to depend on the file name, as if this specific name makes NFS work wrong. The folder is full of files with similar names, but only this one gives this weird behavour of ll.
I was wondering if any of you have ever faced or heard about such a problem with NFS...

Last edited by snack (2010-07-05 10:10:17)

coolacid

Member

Registered: 2010-11-26

Posts: 1

Re: NFS and duplicate file names

Normally not a big fan of cross posting, but this is a not-so-common issue and i'd like to keep as many of these instances in one place (I periodically google for this issue)

I actually started a bug report on debian for this - on debian only because that is the distro I started seeing the issue. It would be nice if you could check the ticket out and weigh in on the topic:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=599823

Regards,
Jason