Connected USB disk: problem with SMB and folders

[mikkelnl]

Hello,

Maybe someone knows how to solve this, it's been bugging me for quite some time now:

• I have a RT-AC68U which runs te latest Merlin firmware (stable) though I also have this issue with the original Asus firmware.
• I have a USB disks (2TB) connected to the USB3 port, I tried two different disks.
• I tried different filesystems/types, like NTFS and EXT3.

My goal is to share this disk via 'USB Application' > 'Network Place (Samba) Share' in my network. This will initially work fine; other computers (linux, mac and windows clients) are able to use the disk.

However, after some time - probably 1-2 days - the smb share stops working. The clients are suddenly unable to connect or even find the share.

HOWEVER... and this is the stranges part... not all folders in that share are 'gone'. If I directly open the share I can still see 1 or maybe 2 folders instead of the 6 folders that are present.

And no matter what I tried; these 'lost' folders won't come back. The weird thing is: connecting via SSH still shows all folders just fine, but the clients won't see them.

I'm lost how to get this working stable, for now I've given up but maybe some of you know what to try?

Thanks!

 

[ColinTaylor]

There seems to be a contradiction here that I'm not understanding:

1) The clients are suddenly unable to connect or even find the share.

2) If I directly open the share I can still see 1 or maybe 2 folders instead of the 6 folders that are present.

Also, when you're connected with SSH, if you do a "ls -l" what is the ownership and permissions on the missing folders?

 

[mikkelnl]

There seems to be a contradiction here that I'm not understanding:

1) The clients are suddenly unable to connect or even find the share.

2) If I directly open the share I can still see 1 or maybe 2 folders instead of the 6 folders that are present.

Also, when you're connected with SSH, if you do a "ls -l" what is the ownership and permissions on the missing folders?

Yeah, sorry, my bad...

I'll try to explain: in the Asus web interface, I set a 'share' named 'RouterShare', like this:

In this 'RouterShare', I have 6 folders. Clients can connect fine via SMB protocol and browse the 6 folders in RouterShare, as long as I login with my router username/password of course.

Then, after some time, I have one of these issues:

1. Clients are unable to connect at all to 'RouterShare' with errors like 'Network path invalig or missing', or:
2. Clients are able to connect to 'RouterShare' but only see 1 folder inside (and the other 5 folders are missing).

 

[mikkelnl]

Found some more info...!

I found again that one (it seems random) client can't connect to a random folder on the share. Just like before. Other folders work fine, but at random one of the folders will fail eventually.

The client reports this error when trying to connect:

0xC000009A

After some google'ing, this means: NT_STATUS_INSUFFICIENT_RESOURCES

So, it seems I'm asking too much from my trusty Asus?

Weird, cause I really am not pushing its limits I'd think.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Do you have lots of files being shared, i.e. 1000+? I think I remember seeing a similar error where either the client or the server (can't remember which) didn't have enough RAM to hold the directory list.

 

[mikkelnl]

Do you have lots of files being shared, i.e. 1000+? I think I remember seeing a similar error where either the client or the server (can't remember which) didn't have enough RAM to hold the directory list.

Yes, there are many files, though not in one folder, I'd say that in the RouterShare there are 8 folders, each holds a few subfolders, the biggest is holds 20 subfolders, inside are files, in total the RouterSHare indeed holds 1000s of files.

The 'out of resources' issue is related to the router for sure, cause I have the exact same USB disk shared through a simple raspberry pi 2, from which all clients can easily access the files.

I'm surprised this issue doesn't occur with other ASUS users, I may have lots of files, but nothing too special... I thought