Files named cifsxxxx (x is various numbers) suddenly appear in many directories of cif mounts

[MichaelE]

Binary package hint: samba

I using my set-up with samba shares for 2-3 years and have never noticed this before. I assume it started just some weeks or months ago.

I am using the following mount options on my Ubuntu 9.10 machine (the problem was already on 9.04, as I just upgraded a few days ago)

mount.cifs ...... -o domain=<mydomain>,credentials=/home/$USER/.smbcredentials,nobrl,iocharset=utf8

The samba server is running on a Debian 5.0 xen-DomU with samba version 3.2.5. The xen-Dom0 is Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Linux xen-samba 2.6.24-24-xen #1 SMP Tue Aug 18 18:15:39 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux).

I have not found any file corruptions on the shares yet. So I guess the cifsxxxx files are some sort of temp files. They do not do any harm except looking ugly and eating up filespace.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Nov 8 21:00:54 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: smbclient 2:3.4.0-3ubuntu5
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: samba
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic x86_64

[Thierry Carrez (ttx)]

This seems like a CIFS issue. Could you confirm you are *not* seeing those spurious files when using smbclient to connect to the share ?

[MichaelE (michael-eitelwein)]

Yes, sorry, it is package smbfs and not smbclient. How can I reassign this?

[Thierry Carrez (ttx)]

So it seems to be in the CIFS code in the kernel.

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

Hi MichaelE,

This bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 478649

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

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[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

This bug report was marked as Incomplete and has not had any updated comments for quite some time. As a result this bug is being closed. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu release http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . Also, please be sure to provide any requested information that may have been missing. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

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[Stefan Radovanovici (stefan-nektulos)]

This bug seems to affect me too, I am running Ubuntu 10.10 64bit. I see lots of those cifsXXXX files,

[Bence (bence.csokas)]

This bug is still around. Running KUbuntu 16.04 LTS (kernel 4.4.0-83-generic) with mount.cifs version: 6.4
During my research, I found this explanation from 2007 on the samba.org mailing list: https://lists.samba.org/archive/linux-cifs-client/2007-September/002214.html
But it doesn't answer the question of how to remove them. I have tried remounting, which didn't fix the problem. Then I restarted both the CIFS client and the server too, without success.