As bigfoot65 pointed out, this is how Greyhole works.I want to know this, because I uploaded some photos today. for some reason they were suddenly made into symlinks and therefor unreachable for my window machines.
I uploaded them in
\\hda\pictures\ (on Amahi in /var/hda/files/pictures)
but they were only symlinks in there and the got to /var/hda/files/gh/pictures???
how did the /gh/ get in there?
It moves the actual files into the storage pool directories (drives) that you selected in the Storage Pool configuration page, then it just leaves a symlink behind, pointing to one of the file copies.
This is true for all shares for which you enabled Greyhole, which I'm guessing would be all, or almost all, your shares.
This happened because Greyhole includes a nightly job that will check all your Greyhole-enabled shares whenever the configuration changed in the previous 24h.this morning I started the systems and clients and the files were again changed into symlinks in the /var/hda/files/gh/pictures folder (not visible for the windows clients) and moved back to /var/hda/files/gh/pictures folder.
Thus, you manually copying real files into the shared folder got 'fixed' by Greyhole when it checked for inconsistencies.
Files being replaced by symlinks is normal, but not seeing those as regular files when accessing the shares remotely is not.those files seem to change overnight into symlinks. The next morning when I look at the shares...I do see the folders, but dont see the files anymore in there. they seem to have disappeared. when I then check on the amahi server through VNC I see the files have changed into symlinks and are linked to the /var/hda/files/gh/xxx folders...
Indeed, this is generally a bad idea(tm). First, because Greyhole will not see those files (right away). But the nightly job will see them, if it runs, and if worst comes to worst, the weekly check will see them, and handle them as if they were copied from a remote share.The only files that are causing me trouble are the the ones where I connected a USB drive FAT formatted to the amahi system and using the Amahi desktop (logged in via VNC) I copied the files from the USB device to the /var/hda/files/pictures folder.
The problem is permissions: when Greyhole work on files you have in your shared folders, it replicates the ownership and permissions of those files & folders for all copies it creates. So if you copy files into your shared folders, and leave them with innapropriate owners or permissions, when you'll try to access them remotely later, those permissions might not allow you to access those same files, because Samba will see symlinks pointing to files you don't have access to as broken, and won't present them on a remote share.
And that permission problem might still exist now, even after you removed the shared folder, and re-created it, because the permission problem might be at the root level of the storage pool directory (inside the gh folder). If you still have missing files after Greyhole is done working on your files, a simple chown/chmod of the gh folder should fix it.
Reading some of it, I see something that isn't that cool.I have added the last 100 lines of the current logfile of greyhole....maybe that helps?
You seem to be using some sort of funky app to make the copy. That app first creates the files into a share/_SYNCAPP/temp/ folder, then renames that file into the proper folder with the proper filename.
This basically creates 2 tasks for Greyhole to work on: one write, and one rename. Plus, Greyhole, working on those files later, will need to understand that the original write task used a temporary path and filename, and that it should in fact work with the new filename instead. All this logic isn't that light, and so, Greyhole handling all the files you copied will be much slower than it would be if you copied the files 'normally' (using Windows Explorer or something that just writes the files directly).
Anyway, I'm just saying that Greyhole will take time to handle all your files. It should still work, just slower than normal.
Done.can this thread be moved into the greyhole department?