Unraid 5: directory names changed (messed-up in smb) through nfs mounts

Hello;

reporting another quirk - adding more details, quite interesting...

I'm exporting all my unraid server shares through nfs and samba.

I have Linux, windows, and android clients, typically connecting to the server through nfs, cifs, and/or samba. I tend to add/remove/correct content to the server from both Linux and Windows clients.

On my Linux desktop, I use the auto-mounter to attach all my shares, and from time to time I correct/adjust directory and file names, as I see fit. I didn't realize until recently that the directories I've changed this way, become a strange, unreadable  string (e.g. "_1B9ZB~O") when I explore/browse the same directories from a Windows notebook, or I switch to samba client on my Linux desktop machine.

I'm not sure if this is consistently happening for all changes, or only some.

I just noticed this behavior, and not sure when it started.

Some additional detail:

Most recently I've used Filebot to modify those directory names (movie directories), through nfs mount points. I'm not sure if all are the result of the same type of modification.

On my desktop, I'm using Dolphin file manager on Linux Mint, and from that file manager I can open a remote directory either as nfs, or as a Samba directory. I may make file and directory name changes in Dolphin as well. Now when browsing directories:

- in nfs view everything looks good. No garbled directory names.

- in smb view, I see several garbled directories. I picked one of them. Initially I thought I just can rename it properly (in smb view) and everything should get back to normal. Well... as soon as I tried to change the name as it showed under nfs, I've got a "duplicate directory" error! I scrolled further down in that view, and interesting enough, the good directory name is listed as well, and I'm able to dive in, browse, open the files etc.

Note: Dolphin allows me to open a terminal session in the directories I browse. It doesn't offer that option  if I navigated to the remote directory browsing the network, through smb. Hence I created a mount point and appended a line in fstab, so that the smb share is mounted  permanently. I was then also able to start a terminal session in that directory. 

- if in that terminal session, I ran a directory listing (ls) command, (focusing on the same directory) the only name I see is the garbled one! I can't see the duplicate (good) directory anymore.

I think there is a severe interoperability problem between environments (of which the most transparent one is the character set translation)... Anyway, I'll stop here.

Any ideas what is going on, and what can be done to avoid this issue? (aside from the obvious, to use either nfs, or cifs, but not both). I will, until some better idea comes up, stop making modifications in nfs, and use only smb for this purpose, so that I don't break windows compatibility.

Thanks for any suggestions,

hg

Did you ever get a resolution?  I'm contemplating adding NFS but surely don't want to deal with your problem

I've just had the same problem with folder names, twice!  The first time, I blamed something else.

At first I thought it was because I had a '#' in some of the folder names.

I fixed the names, without special characters, but the problem has returned.

I fixed all the directory names by hand, but they recently changed back to gibberish.

My current suspect is my Android tablet..the file browser on my tablet has a SMB capability. 

I browse the unRAID array from the tablet rarely, but it seems to be coincident with the folder names getting munged.

My next step is to test that theory..

Something is adding illegal characters to your share names.

\ / : * ? " < > |

Those characters are illegal on Windows using NTFS, and all of those plus ^ if using FAT.

In Linux the only illegal characters are the colon :  and nul byte, \0.

Note that the illegal characters can still be placed on a NTFS file system as long as an application that uses the unicode api is used. But when you view the files with an application that does NOT use the unicode api, the file names will appear screwed up.

Have either of you tried using telnet to see the file name? I believe they will appear normal with the addition of an illegal character.

In my case, the munged names show up in MC on the unRAID server running in console mode.

I used MC to fix the names.