cp -p on CIFS mount does not preserve permissions and returns a permission denied error

[Stefan]

The original mtime is not preserved after a file is copied to a mounted CIFS directory.

root@laptop:~# cp -p /etc/hosts /mnt/temp/test/
root@laptop:~# ls -la /etc/hosts /mnt/temp/test/hosts
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 354 2007-11-13 18:57 /etc/hosts
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 354 2008-09-30 21:54 /mnt/temp/test/hosts

/mnt/temp is a CIFS mount.

Description: Ubuntu 8.04.1
Release: 8.04

Linux version 2.6.24-19-generic (buildd@terranova) (gcc version 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)) #1 SMP Wed Aug 20 22:56:21 UTC 2008

[Stefan (stefanp)]

This seems to be a known bug:
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git-commits-head/2008/3/23/1230954

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for the pointer to the upstream patch. This patch is already available in the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 kernel:

ogasawara@yoji:~/ubuntu-intrepid$ git log -p 50531444fac593c8c8e3ff2e41944d9507bb4665
commit 50531444fac593c8c8e3ff2e41944d9507bb4665
Author: Steve French <email address hidden>
Date: Fri Mar 14 19:21:31 2008 +0000

    [CIFS] Fix mtime on cp -p when file data cached but written out too late

If you could test Intrepid to verify this is fixed that would be great - http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/beta . You should be able to test using a LiveCD. Once this is verified to be resolved with the Intrepid kernel we can probably attempt to get this patch through the SRU process (http://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates) if you want it backported to Hardy. Thanks.

[Stefan (stefanp)]

The bug is fixed in Ubuntu 8.10.

Tested on:
Linux version 2.6.27-4-generic (buildd@rothera) (gcc version 4.3.2 (Ubuntu 4.3.2-1ubuntu7) ) #1 SMP Wed Sep 24 01:30:51 UTC 2008

Can we have this backported to 8.04?

[Haydar Alkaduhimi (haydarlinux)]

I have installed ubuntu 8.10 beta and updated to the last version untill 16 oct 2008 and still have the same problem

haydar@haydar-desktop:/mnt/haydar/svn$ rm -rf test
haydar@haydar-desktop:/mnt/haydar/svn$ mkdir test
haydar@haydar-desktop:/mnt/haydar/svn$ cd test/
haydar@haydar-desktop:/mnt/haydar/svn/test$ touch newfile
touch: setting times of `newfile': Not a directory
haydar@haydar-desktop:/mnt/haydar/svn/test$ ls
newfile
haydar@haydar-desktop:/mnt/haydar/svn/test$ cat newfile
haydar@haydar-desktop:/mnt/haydar/svn/test$ printf "hh\n" > newfile
bash: newfile: Not a directory
haydar@haydar-desktop:/mnt/haydar/svn/test$ cat newfile
haydar@haydar-desktop:/mnt/haydar/svn/test$ rm -f newfile
haydar@haydar-desktop:/mnt/haydar/svn/test$ printf "hh\n" > newfile
haydar@haydar-desktop:/mnt/haydar/svn/test$ cat newfile
hh

I hope tha this helps, also svn does not works correctly in this directory because of this bug.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

@Stefan, I assume this is still resolved for you? I can then go ahead and open a Hardy nomination to get the patch backported.

@Haydar Alkaduhimi, please recreate the exact test case that Stefan showed in the description of this bug. No where did you prove to show a cp -p on a CIFS mount failed to preserve the timestamp/ownership. I'm not entirely convinced you have the same issue Stefan reported. Also, please include the output of 'cat /proc/version_signature' to verify which kernel you are using.

[Stefan (stefanp)]

Yes, please nominate the patch for Hardy.

[Vipo (vitus-piroutz)]

I'm also trapped and would need a backport for 8.04 LTS.
Please nominate.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Marking this Fix Released for Intrepid and will open the Hardy nomination. Thanks.

[Ethan Baldridge (ethan-superiordocumentservices)]

Not fixed in Jaunty alpha

[Ethan Baldridge (ethan-superiordocumentservices)]

Still broken in Jaunty alpha 1.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Setting this back to a "Triaged" state for Hardy. "Incomplete" implies there is not enough information to resolve the bug for Hardy which is not the case.

@Ethan, please provide evidence that this is not resolved in Jaunty. Ie I'd like to see the output of "mount" to prove you have a mounted CIFS directory and then recreate Stefan's test case he has documented in the bug description. The reason I say this is because the patch referenced here to resolve this issue is already in the Jaunty kernel. Thanks.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Per a decision made by the Ubuntu Kernel Team, bugs will longer be assigned to the ubuntu-kernel-team in Launchpad as part of the bug triage process. The ubuntu-kernel-team is being unassigned from this bug report. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies for more information. Thanks.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Just posting a response I got from Ethan:

"Actually, I just found out that doing the cp as root *will* preserve
timestamps, so my problem is in gvfs, not cifs. I've got the same
directory mounted via GNOME's "Places menu/Connect to server/Windows
Share" and I can't copy to the VFS directory while preserving
timestamps."

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

The current status on this is: there seem to be two problems:
- cifs mount
- fuse mount (done through gui)

Both seem not to be fixed in the current version. Needing further debugging. Given that I remove the milestone for the Hardy release for the time being.

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

Setting this back to triaged as the following is still failing on 2.6.30-999-generic:

#> ls -l
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 stefan stefan 6 2009-06-19 10:18 a
-rw-r--r-- 1 stefan stefan 0 2009-06-19 10:18 b

#> sudo mount -tcifs -ocredentials=../<cred> //<server>/public /mnt
#> mkdir /mnt/Test
#> cp -a * /mnt/Test/
cp: setting permissions for `/mnt/Test/a': Permission denied
cp: setting permissions for `/mnt/Test/b': Permission denied
#> ls -la /mnt/Test/
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 stefan stefan 0 2009-06-19 10:26 .
drwxr-xr-x 9 stefan users 0 2009-06-19 10:26 ..
-rwx------ 1 stefan stefan 6 2009-06-19 10:26 a
-rw------- 1 stefan stefan 0 2009-06-19 10:18 b

So, access rights seem to change (execute bit for file is set and group and other rights get dropped) and the timestamp is only used for the empy file.

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

To decide whether this is rather a server or client side problem, the same test done on a current Hardy client (the server is Jaunty in both cases):

#> ls -la
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 stefan stefan 4096 2009-06-19 10:37 .
drwxr-xr-x 99 stefan stefan 4096 2009-06-19 10:37 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 stefan stefan 6 2009-06-19 10:37 a
-rw-r--r-- 1 stefan stefan 0 2009-06-19 10:37 b
#> cp -a * /mnt/Test/
#> ls -la /mnt/Test/
total 1024
drwxr-xr-x 2 stefan stefan 0 2009-06-19 10:38 .
drwxr-xr-x 9 stefan users 0 2009-06-19 10:26 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 stefan stefan 6 2009-06-19 10:38 a
-rw-r--r-- 1 stefan stefan 0 2009-06-19 10:37 b

So at least the bad access rights and the error on cp are a regression since Hardy. The fact that the timestamp is only preserved for empty files seems to be consistent between both.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Stefan, is this still realistically a target for ubuntu 8.04.4 (the last 8.04 LTS point release that's scheduled)? It sounds like we don't have a fix even in the latest kernels, so backporting isn't an option?

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

Steve Langasek wrote:
> Stefan, is this still realistically a target for ubuntu 8.04.4 (the last
> 8.04 LTS point release that's scheduled)? It sounds like we don't have
> a fix even in the latest kernels, so backporting isn't an option?

Hm, no I think its rather unrealistic to assume we get a fix for that.
To be honest I have been distracted by other things to much to have even
checked whether the problem persists on the current Karmic or Lucid kernels.
We probably should take back the milestone.

[rduke15 (rduke15)]

Update, links and workaround:

This bug is still present on Jaunty 9.04 with the following versions:
$ uname -srvm
Linux 2.6.28-17-generic #58-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 1 18:57:07 UTC 2009 i686
$ mount.cifs -V
mount.cifs version: 1.12-3.3.2
$ dpkg -l coreutils
ii coreutils 6.10-6ubuntu1 The GNU core utilities
$ dpkg -l samba
ii samba 2:3.3.2-1ubuntu3.2 SMB/CIFS file, print, and login server for Unix

( remote Samba server is Debian version 3.0.24-6etch10 )

This bug seems to have been both a coreutils bug and a samba bug. However, both are supposed to be fixed now.
See these:
  http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6127
  http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8437
  https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6520

A workaround seems to be to disable unix extensions. I understand it can be done on the server side, but I do it only on the client side by using the "nounix" mount option ( mount -o nounix,... ).

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Milestone dropped for hardy; and targeted for lucid, we should at least try to get this resolved for the next LTS...

[Surbhi Palande (csurbhi)]

I cannot see the "The original mtime is not preserved after a file is copied to a mounted CIFS directory" in karmic/lucid (have not checked on the previous releases). However, I can still see the "permission denied" message on the cp -p. This message leads to a change in permissions. This is a bug in samba server in (set_unix_posix_default_acl() ). I will send a patch on the appropriate list soon.

[Surbhi Palande (csurbhi)]

This is a bug in the samba server. Hence changing the package from linux to samba. I have attached a samba server patch and done brief testing with it.

[Thierry Carrez (ttx)]

@Surbhi: Could you file a bug in upstream bugzilla (https://bugzilla.samba.org) to get some review on the bug and proposed patch ? If that's already done, please link the upstream bug here :)

[Surbhi Palande (csurbhi)]

Please ignore the above patch. A new resolution seems to be coming up. This was discussed on the samba-technical mailing list.

[Thierry Carrez (ttx)]

@Surbhi: any news ?

[Chuck Short (zulcss)]

any news?

[Surbhi Palande (csurbhi)]

I have kept a PPA "samba" at: https://launchpad.net/~csurbhi/+archive/ppa/
Can someone try it out and confirm if it works for them or not. If it is confirmed, I will resend this fix to the samba devel mailing list and we can get it in Ubuntu. Thanks for your help.

[john reid (reidjr)]

Surbhi,

Fix works for me. I haven't done extensive testing, so don't know if it breaks anything else, but the permissions problem is fixed.

excellent !

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package samba - 2:3.5.4~dfsg-1ubuntu3

---------------
samba (2:3.5.4~dfsg-1ubuntu3) maverick; urgency=low

  * Add the translation of Unix Error code -ENOTSUP to NT Error Code
    NT_STATUS_NOT_SUPPORTED to prevent the Permission denied error.
    (LP: #276472)
 -- Surbhi Palande <email address hidden> Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:09:30 +0300

[Stefan (stefanp)]

This is a kernel bug and it is still not fixed in the latest Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

/mnt/temp is a CIFS mount:

root@ubuntu8:~# cp -p /etc/services /mnt/temp/
root@ubuntu8:~# ls -la /etc/services /mnt/temp/services
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18274 2007-12-03 23:04 /etc/services
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18274 2011-04-13 16:00 /mnt/temp/services

root@ubuntu8:~# uname -a
Linux ubuntu8 2.6.24-29-server #1 SMP Wed Mar 16 20:29:36 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

Hardy has seen the end of its life and is no longer receiving any updates. Marking the Hardy task for this ticket as "Won't Fix".

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

lucid has seen the end of its life and is no longer receiving any updates. Marking the lucid task for this ticket as "Won't Fix".