Xfce Forum

mdlueck

Member

Registered: 2012-12-24

Posts: 7

Thunar accessing Samba mounted filesystem occasionally hangs copying

I have had an issue with Thunar in Xubuntu since upgrading from Xubuntu 16.04 to Xubuntu 20.04. I have mounted Samba shares to my desktop computer from our file server. Copying files between desktop and server, occasionally the Thunar copy progress dialog progress box gets stuck. It hangs predominately on copying small files to/from the server.

This behavior never happened while on Xubutnu 16.04, or prior LTS releases of Xubuntu.

I have confirmed it is still an issue in the beta of Xubuntu 22.04.

An official Ubuntu defect report has been filed here:
"Copying small files over CIFS doesn't close its window"
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1834203

From that original defect citation:

Here are the conditions.
1 - File is read from a samba share mounted with mount.cifs. Through GVFS, everything goes normally.
2 - File is lesser than 4096 bytes.
3 - File manager is based on GTK (Thunar, Nautilus, Caja). The bug doesn't occur when copying from Dolphin or from the commandline.

Tested both in up-to-date system and in live CD and with both a complete samba server and a fresh basic samba server.
Seen in Ubuntu 18.04. Ubuntu 16.04 doesn't have this problem.

So I see that this issue has been around since 18.04.

Suggestions how to get traction getting the defect resolved / corrected?

ruuwa

Member

Registered: 2022-02-09

Posts: 22

Re: Thunar accessing Samba mounted filesystem occasionally hangs copying

> Suggestions how to get traction getting the defect resolved / corrected?

Post on different forums/reddit/discord/irc/mailing lists/social medias looking for solution? Which probably is what you're doing now. I know it goes against esr's ask smart questions guide. But let's be real that's not a very effective guide to get answer or help.

I wonder if it's just an ubuntu/xubuntu thing. And whether a simple solution of using another file manager for now would work. Or perhaps just switch distro.

mdlueck

Member

Registered: 2012-12-24

Posts: 7

Re: Thunar accessing Samba mounted filesystem occasionally hangs copying

Post on different forums/reddit/discord/irc/mailing lists/social medias looking for solution? Which probably is what you're doing now.

bing, bing, bing....

I wonder if it's just an ubuntu/xubuntu thing. And whether a simple solution of using another file manager for now would work. Or perhaps just switch distro.

François Seguin, who had already opened the defect I located noted that Dolphin is not impacted. We could switch to that... I however prefer Thunar, so would like to get the defect resolved, not just workaround the defect. I detest known defects going unresolved... I refuse to comply with the card board sign taped to the side of the laundry machine with written on it "kick me to make me work". No! I take off the sign, open the machine, find and resolve the root cause, and the result is one more bump removed and made smooth.

I have not yet taken the time to try another distro of Linux to see if the defect is present in another distro that offers the Xfce desktop. Perhaps I will try that... as effort to insure the issue is likely tied to Thunar from Xfce.

mdlueck

Member

Registered: 2012-12-24

Posts: 7

Re: Thunar accessing Samba mounted filesystem occasionally hangs copying

I wonder if it's just an ubuntu/xubuntu thing. And whether a simple solution of using another file manager for now would work. Or perhaps just switch distro.

I have not yet taken the time to try another distro of Linux to see if the defect is present in another distro that offers the Xfce desktop. Perhaps I will try that... as effort to insure the issue is likely tied to Thunar from Xfce.

I tried Manjaro manjaro-xfce-21.2.2-220123-linux515.iso to be good and far from Debian / Ubuntu varient design, but still to be solidly Xfce desktop.

I added the package to mount Samba file systems.

I set up my usual login script of Samba mounts.

I copied down from the Samba server a 3kb file to a folder on the desktop. Copy dialog box hangs, does not close.

Reproducible on Manjaro.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: Thunar accessing Samba mounted filesystem occasionally hangs copying

Out of curiosity, what is your file server? And what mount command do you use?

Also, check the journal to see if there are any error messages posted when this happens. For example, run:

sudo journalctl -f

...and then try the copy action to see if anything is displayed in the journal log.

This sounds like a kernel or gio/gvfs bug - especially since only gio/gvfs-based file managers exhibit the problem.

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mdlueck

Member

Registered: 2012-12-24

Posts: 7

Re: Thunar accessing Samba mounted filesystem occasionally hangs copying

Out of curiosity, what is your file server?

Samba PDC

And what mount command do you use?

mount.cifs //ldslnx01/data /mnt/ldslnx01/data "-o credentials=/home/mdlueck/.smbcredentials,uid=mdlueck,gid=mdlueck,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0666,nobrl,vers=1.0"

Also, check the journal to see if there are any error messages posted when this happens. For example, run:

sudo journalctl -f

...and then try the copy action to see if anything is displayed in the journal log.

This sounds like a kernel or gio/gvfs bug - especially since only gio/gvfs-based file managers exhibit the problem.

Results on Xubuntu 20.04 of running the requested command and performing the same copy as I did earlier today on Manjaro:

Feb 26 16:53:07 jaakob systemd[1270]: Started VTE child process 312141 launched by xfce4-terminal process 309110.
Feb 26 16:53:23 jaakob sudo[312155]:  mdlueck : TTY=pts/1 ; PWD=/home/mdlueck ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/journalctl -f
Feb 26 16:53:23 jaakob sudo[312155]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Feb 26 16:53:49 jaakob dbus-daemon[1283]: [session uid=1000 pid=1283] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer1' requested by ':1.530' (uid=1000 pid=269200 comm="/usr/bin/Thunar --daemon " label="unconfined")
Feb 26 16:53:49 jaakob org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer1[312169]: Registered thumbnailer atril-thumbnailer -s %s %u %o
Feb 26 16:53:49 jaakob org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer1[312169]: Registered thumbnailer /usr/bin/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer -s %s %u %o
Feb 26 16:53:49 jaakob org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer1[312169]: Registered thumbnailer gnome-thumbnail-font --size %s %u %o
Feb 26 16:53:49 jaakob org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer1[312169]: Registered thumbnailer /usr/bin/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer -s %s %u %o
Feb 26 16:53:49 jaakob dbus-daemon[1283]: [session uid=1000 pid=1283] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer1'

And I will IPL since the copy command has hung.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: Thunar accessing Samba mounted filesystem occasionally hangs copying

Nothing in the logs. What does this return:

sudo journalctl | grep -i cifs

Any particular reason you are using SMB version 1? Are you able to test with another version (2 or 3) to see if you can replicate it?

Have a look at this bug report - it sounds similar to what you are experiencing. It references https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib/-/issues/1246 which references this kernel bug report. Some mention there of rsize/wsize and oplocks changes making a difference.

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mdlueck

Member

Registered: 2012-12-24

Posts: 7

Re: Thunar accessing Samba mounted filesystem occasionally hangs copying

Nothing in the logs. What does this return:

sudo journalctl | grep -i cifs

Presumably nothing since "cifs" did not appear in my above output.

Any particular reason you are using SMB version 1? Are you able to test with another version (2 or 3) to see if you can replicate it?

Not ready to move on from Samba running in NT4 DC mode. SMB v1 is a requirement for Samba in a NT4 DC mode.

Moving Samba beyond that, Samba insists on taking over DNS as one example. Samba is not touching our stable DNS implementation! (At least for the time being.)

Have a look at this bug report - it sounds similar to what you are experiencing. It references https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib/-/issues/1246 which references this kernel bug report. Some mention there of rsize/wsize and oplocks changes making a difference.

Great references... thank you! So I stepped through until I got to the kernel.org citation. I hope I will not need to disable OptLocks. I need that support for use by Windows database software. Steve French asks to try some "wsize and rsize on the mount" options. I will investigate that... see if I can get success and leave OptLocks alone. And Cédric Bellegarde mentions "Removing cache=none from mount.cifs". So there seems to be a couple of parameters I can tinker with, see if I end up working around the defect.