[Bug 506798] Re: du crashes when traversing nfs mounted .snapshot directories

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** Tags added: kernel-autoclosed kernel-autoclosed-expired

** Changed in: linux (Ubuntu)
Status: Confirmed => Expired

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/506798

Title:
du crashes when traversing nfs mounted .snapshot directories

Status in coreutils package in Ubuntu:
Triaged
Status in findutils package in Ubuntu:
Triaged
Status in linux package in Ubuntu:
Expired
Status in coreutils package in Fedora:
In Progress
Status in linux package in Fedora:
Won't Fix

Bug description:
Binary package hint: coreutils

I'm getting a problem where du errors (and exits) with "du: fts_read
failed: no such file or directory" when traversing a directory with a
NetApp ".snapshot" directory.

My understanding (clarified by the discussions linked bellow) is that:

1) The device ID/inode of a directory is recorded before the submount is made.
2) The device ID of the directory changes after the directory has been read (via readdir which causes the submount)
3) After examining the contents of the directory du goes back up the tree (via '..') finds the device ID doesn't match what it has recorded and assumes things have been moved around under it and bails for safety reasons.

I've researched online and this is an upstream bug. We're using
Ubuntu 9.10 so I feel there should be a bug in the Ubuntu system.

The best information I've found is within Redhat's bugzilla:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=501848
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=533569

This bug has also been discussed on the coreutils mailing list:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2009-11/msg00027.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2009-11/msg00032.html

and LKML:

http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/11/4/451

Unfortunately none of these discussions has resulted in a widely
accepted solution.

We use NetApp .snapshots very extensively and can't afford for du to
be unreliable. At the moment we will either have to patch du or
downgrade all of coreutils to an older version.

For comparison we are upgrading from Ubunto 7.04 which works
perfectly.

There is a similar problem with find, but it has a --without-fts build
option which 'fixes' it.

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