Corrupted files with Greyhole?

[jostyposty]

Hi!

I have multiple shares using storage pooling:
Movies has extra copies: - and contains some terra bytes with MKV movies.
Videos has extra copies: 1 and contains some giga bytes with my home videos.

I have not found any destroyed files in the Movies share, but several in the Videos share. I have checked a backup of my videos and they all seem fine here. So I'm starting to getting nervous that perhaps Greyhole is corrupting my files. I hope not, because I really really like the storage pooling!

This is what I experience: Some times the video doesn't work at all. Get error in VLC or any other media player I tried. Other videos are playing, but the content is actually from another video.

Could anything else have happened? Bad file copying or something? I remember I used different methods when copying some of the files (both from a OS X and Windows 7).

[gboudreau]

Anything is possible.

Pick a file that has a problem, and use that to try to find the problem.

FYI:

Each file you see on a greyhole-managed share is in fact a symlink, and it should point to one of the real copy of the file.
You can check this on the server itself.
Go in the directory of your share, and "ls -l" to see the symlinks, and where they point to.

Example:
cd /var/hda/files/videos/
ls -l

You should see that each file points to one of the drives you added in your pool.
/var/hda/files/drives/sdX1/gh/videos/...

Knowing this, try to see where the symlink to the file you chose points to.
Go check that file: maybe copy it to a share that greyhole doesn't manage, and see if it plays or not, the same way you tested the original file in your videos share.
Then do the same thing with the other copy of the same file (look in the same folder, but on another drive...
(/var/hda/files/drives/sdY1/gh/videos/...)

Look at the file greyhole history:

Code: Select all

greyhole --debug filename

I could help further if you can give me remote access to your server (ssh, with or without vpn). PM me the details if we can continue that way.

[jostyposty]

I have now copied both files from the gh directories (in different hard disks). Both are corrupt and show the same video, wrong video though.

I'll PM you. Thanks!

[gboudreau]

I can't find any problem with Greyhole on your system. There are no old copies of the file you gave as examples in the attic, and the graveyard files look fine.

I left a "broken_files.txt" file in my home directory. Those are the files that I think are corrupt.
I used the Linux 'file' utility to check all the files on your Videos share, and I kept the file extensions I knew that were reported as something else than what they should be.

I don't think greyhole could create such a problem. It doesn't work with files at that level. It uses rsync to move files around, and create symlinks, and stuff like that. Nothing that would corrupt the content of the files.

If I'd have to guess, I'd say a Windows virus would have caused such a problem. It's the only thing I know could do such a thing (exchange parts of files with the content of other files, corrupt files etc.)
And it seems only media files (movies, jpeg, ...) have been corrupted, which is again something some virus do...
But... Greyhole didn't log any changes to the files since you copied them. So they'd have to be changed on the server itself.

What I would do: copy the complete content of your videos backup onto the share again, and monitor weekly for any corruption.
Contact me again as soon as you find something is not right.

[jostyposty]

Ok, thank you!

I am reassured regarding the use of Greyhole!