Re: Zero size and zero blocks mountpoint.

[Suresh Jayaraman <sjayaraman-l3A5Bk7waGM@public.gmane.org>]

On 09/24/2010 05:05 PM, Jeff Layton wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:18:45 +0200
> Alex Perez <quimicefa-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
>> I've just found this thread on google, and I subscribed to the list.
>>
>> http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-cifs/msg00951.html
>>
>> I'm experiencing the same problem. the mountpoint is showing a 4096
>> size, but when I mount a cifs resource, it shows a 0-size. Other
>> mountpoints that are not using cifs (nfs, ext2-3 ...) doesnt change
>> the size.
>>
>> The problem is that the mount point belongs to a directory structure
>> that is accesed by an apache service (2.0.54). The mount point is
>> /opt/www/dir1, while the apache's directoryRoot is /opt/www. So, the
>> problem is that when a client is trying to access to "dir1" I get a
>> error in apache logs, like:
>>
>> [Fri Sep 24 10:57:26 2010] [error] [client 192.0.2.147] (75)Value too
>> large for defined data type: access to /dir1 failed
>>
>> And the client gets a 403 - forbidden error. It's very tricky because
>> if I dismount /opt/www/dir1, the client can access without any
>> problem.
>>
>> Googling this error seem that is related to accessing files > 2Gb, but
>> I think that apache doesn't know how to handle a 0-size directory or
>> it's understanding that is a huge sized directory ...
>>
>> how can I fix the directory-size that apache is receiving?
>>
> 
> Honestly, that sounds like an apache bug. You may want to report that
> to them.
> 
> I asked Stef this question question and didn't get an answer however:
> 
> Does POSIX offer any guidance about what the size of a directory should
> represent?


The nearest I could find is:

"If the file is a character special or block special file, the size of
the file may be replaced with implementation-defined information
associated with the device in question."

   from http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/

In our case it's network file object and the Server only seem to know
the the actual size.

> For a local filesystem this is simple -- it's a representation of the
> space that the directory occupies on disk (directories are just inodes
> like any other).
> 
> NFS returns a non-zero size for a directory inode because the server
> returns one. CIFS servers however send 0 for the size of a directory.

+ 1

I think it makes sense to report what the server returns and not fake it
to cover up application bugs/ unwarranted checks. If there are other
reasons, we could consider setting a reasonable size


-- 
Suresh Jayaraman