Files created on Mac cannot be seen by unRAID. Solved, files on wrong disk.

[speedkills]

I'm a bit stumped, just setup my first unRAID server and am in the process of loading data onto it.  I have noticed that files I put on unRAID from my windows computer can be seen on my mac, but files created on the mac can only be seen by the mac.  The files do not show in windows, but even stranger to me, they don't show on unRAID itself when I use unMenu to browse my files.

 

Could this be permissions related?  I don't actually have any users setup but did notice that when I tried to automount my unRAID disk on my mac at login it would fail as guest so I changed it to mount the disk as the current user, with no password which oddly enough worked.  I then tried to modify my keychain to login to unraid as Guest and that still appears to work but files created from the mac still can't be seen by windows or unMenu so maybe it has nothing to do with the account used and just comes down to creating them on the mac.

 

I searched around a bit and saw references to samba config but I cannot find the samba config anywhere in unRAID 4.6 or unMenu.  Should I even be using SMB shares or should I use NFS or AFP?  

 

This is sure an eye opener for a guy coming from using WHS servers and Synology servers which just work for clients from any platform I tried.  Now that I am in the unRAID world I find myself searching for hours for gems like

Just do a "find /mnt/disk2 -type f -exec chmod 0664 {} \;" and after trying four previously examples with syntax that was mistyped it finally runs only to have it not fix anything.  In my searching I also found many references to "just do the often discussed samba mapping fixes".  I hate to be dense here but I found so many references to "the often discussed, previously posted, rehashed etc" that I didn't actually find a single example of where to fix this notorious samba mapping which near as I can tell is such an old problem anyone should no how to fix it but is not actually worth fixing in the program or putting in the faq?

 

Phew....six hours of messing around with this later I am reaching mental fatigue on searching and for the first time in recent memory my google-fu is letting me down as I have never had a harder time finding answers to how to make things work so I'm reaching out for help.  If anyone can help me I would really appreciate it.  If I'm asking a question that has been answered a hundred time before please just treat me like the village idiot and provide me with a link to a post that actually discusses a fix as I am completely unable to find it.

 

Thanks,

 

-Shane

[starcat]

Are you sure the files you create on your Mac are really created on a mounted volume on the unRaid server? Not that you create them in /Volumes/disk2 but that disk2 is a local directory on the Mac?

[speedkills]

Yep, I can modify files in the directory in unraid or windows and see the changes, but any files added from the mac are invisible to unraid.  That is really odd to me, how can a file be hidden from unRAID?

[starcat]

Yep, I can modify files in the directory in unraid or windows and see the changes, but any files added from the mac are invisible to unraid.  That is really odd to me, how can a file be hidden from unRAID?

 

They can't be hidden if you look on the command line! And if you don't see them on the command line then they are not there.

[speedkills]

Are you sure the files you create on your Mac are really created on a mounted volume on the unRaid server? Not that you create them in /Volumes/disk2 but that disk2 is a local directory on the Mac?

 

You are my hero today.  

 

Your post was enough to get me moving in the right direction, I figured out that my files are being created on disk2, not disk1.  Not sure how that is happening but now that I now hopefully I can get it sorted out.  I was trying to write to the disk share, not a user share but the disk share contains a user share like this...

disk1/video

disk2/video

 

I had setup video as a share on disk2 only, specifically asking it not to use disk1 but somehow it ended up there.  On top of that I then copied the files to tower/disk2/video (not tower/video) yet they still ended up going to disk1/video from my mac, but from my windows pc they correctly go to disk2/video.

 

 

[starcat]

Glad this helped!

[speedkills]

It looks like every folder I create inside disk2 gets turned into a user share for all disks with fill type set to highwater even though I did not want this to happen.  To prevent this do I just need to disable user shares entirely?  Will I lose the data I already have if I disable user shares (in other words will it delete the shares or just stop sharing them)?

[starcat]

No, actual data won't get deleted if you disable user shares. They will continue to be seen in each disk share.

[speedkills]

Thanks, got it all sorted now.  Really helps to have another set of eyes on the problem, when I thought I was writing everything to disk2 I never even thought to look at disk1.  Then I went the completely wrong direction with permissions, samba config, etc.

 

How embarassing.  Just glad it all works now

[starcat]

I usually recommend writing to disk shares and reading off user shares.

[speedkills]

I'll try that.

[lionelhutz]

If you want to use the disks then I recommend you do not write to the top level of each disk. Create a main directory for whatever you are storing and put everything inside that (for example use directories such as Movies, Music, TV_Shows, Storage, Backups etc). Then some day in the future when you want user shares again they'll work instead of being a mess like you were finding.

 

The user shares are one of the key features of unRAID. You put a "Movies" directory on each disk and unRAID combines the contents from all the disks into a single "Movies" network share for you to access. A lot of people write to the disks and have the shares as read only for their media playback devices to access. If  you set the shares properly and keep a structure to your data you can write to the user shares and it will stay structured on the disks.

 

Peter

 

[speedkills]

That is an even better idea, I'll do that.  Beats having to manually set the share properties every time I create a new folder.

 

Thanks.

[starcat]

You do not manually set the share properties every time you create a new folder. Just setup a structure that suits your needs, keep it the same on all disks and then write to disk shares and read off (virtualized) user shares.