Strange Happenings in File Station

[NA9D]

Hi all,

Yesterday, I met with @londontk to go over his NAS setup. We met at a local restaurant and had some good pizza! He brought his NAS with and I connected to it from my laptop using his administrator account. I wanted to check what he had stored on the NAS.

First of all, I apologize for taking pictures instead of screenshots. Not sure why I spaced out as I was thinking I couldn’t do it as I was on his NAS, but I was on my laptop not his! Brain fart! Anyhow…

He has a directory named “Tim Kelley”

The problem is, if I click on that folder, I get a permissions error:

But the admin account has read/write access to everything. And I could access it via SSH just fine. I checked all the permissions and even recursively set them to 777 using CHMOD. Still made no difference.

But it gets more strange…I can expand this folder and see the contents of other folders. But then when I try to access those folders, it just shows the same set of folders again. Over and over and over.

What is possibly happening here??? In the SSH shell, things look fine. I can access the music he has on the NAS in the appropriate folder. But things are all mucked up in File Station.

I want to help him get his system performing at optimal but it scares me when I see something like this as I am afraid there’s some file corruption somewhere.

Any ideas? Anyone ever seen this?

[dolbyman]

First you need a sneezguard for your laptop screen

Then, when I see that cache symbol (lighting) on the volume, I first think of all the ways, cache has screwed user over in all these years. I would try to disable it and see if that helps

[NA9D]

Oh gosh, the laptop screen is a mess!

But it’s generally not even close to me when I am at my desk. It’s just a 4 year old MacBook that needs to be cleaned more often I guess! I don’t think about it as my main monitor is a 45" TV screen that sits above it…

I was wondering if the cache was messing things up. When Tim and I get together next, I’ll try disabling that.

[Becker2020]

Hello,

you have 4 x “homes” ???

and 5 x “Multimedia” , … ???

That isn’t normal.

[NA9D]

My point exactly. It only shows that way in File Station. It’s like File Station is recursively looping back on itself. I could keep clicking deeper and deeper and it would never end. When using SSH to view the directory it looks fine.

[dolbyman]

Could also be a corrupted entry in the home folder settings.

Is there another volume set in the the home folder settings ?

https://www.qnap.com/en-us/how-to/faq/article/can-i-move-the-home-folder-to-another-volume

[NA9D]

He’s only got one volume on the NAS.

I have asked him to back everything up to a local USB drive. Then we’ll reset the NAS and start over…

[Richard]

Might be able to get away with deleting the shared folder and restoring the default shared folders.

Or not.

[NA9D]

Our plan right now is to have him completely backup his files which he has done and then we’ll reset the NAS and start over…

[SteveKo]

Regarding this issue, we recommend opening a support ticket and our Support Team will be happy to assist you.

[ptimmons]

Hi. This is typical when there is a Symbolic Link that points to its (or one of its) parent directory:

[/share/Test] # ls -l 
drwxr-xr-x    2 admin    administ      4096 May 14 18:34 @Recycle/
[/share/Test] # ln -s . Test
[/share/Test] # ls -l 
drwxr-xr-x    2 admin    administ      4096 May 14 18:34 @Recycle/
lrwxrwxrwx    1 admin    administ         1 May 14 18:36 Test -> ./
[/share/Test] # cd Test
[/share/Test/Test] # ls -l 
drwxr-xr-x    2 admin    administ      4096 May 14 18:34 @Recycle/
lrwxrwxrwx    1 admin    administ         1 May 14 18:36 Test -> ./
[/share/Test/Test] # cd Test
[/share/Test/Test/Test] # ls -l
drwxr-xr-x    2 admin    administ      4096 May 14 18:34 @Recycle/
lrwxrwxrwx    1 admin    administ         1 May 14 18:36 Test -> ./
[/share/Test/Test/Test] # cd Test
[/share/Test/Test/Test/Test] # ls -l 
drwxr-xr-x    2 admin    administ      4096 May 14 18:34 @Recycle/
lrwxrwxrwx    1 admin    administ         1 May 14 18:36 Test -> ./
[/share/Test/Test/Test/Test] # 

It looks like this in FileStation:

Which looks exactly like your screen capture.

You solve this by removing the Symbolic Link:

[/share/Test/Test/Test/Test] # cd ../../..
[/share/Test] # /bin/rm -i Test
[/share/Test] # ls -l 
drwxr-xr-x    2 admin    administ      4096 May 14 18:34 @Recycle/
[/share/Test] # 

[dolbyman]

You should be able to use a program like WinSCP to do this via GUI (in case SSH is not ones forte)

If it is actually the case, where did that symbolic link come from though?

[dosborne]

Maybe stating the obvious, but be very careful with the “rm” command. It is easy to make a mistake and remove important things particularly with link files and directories. Often it is the easiest way, and quickest way, but a misplaced slash (/) could ruin your day.

[ptimmons]

Absolutely.

It is better to use :

/bin/rm -i <Symbolic Link>

in order to be prompted for confirmation.

[NA9D]

Thanks. I’ll have to look into this when I get back together with him. Good call - it could be some sort of symbolic link.

[Alfred_Kopal]

did you by chance enable acl?
In that case you can give 777 to files and dirs and get a deny when you are not listed in the ACLs

Cheers - Alfred

[NA9D]

I have not had a chance to get back with Tim. Hopefully this next week.