AIX

I am currently trying to mount a NFS share from a windows NAS using NFS Server to share the nfs folder.

When folder is mounted on my aix/unix, some folders are hidden (not . related) but i can change directory to folder even if it is not shown with "ls -l" . Anyone seen this problem before?

Welcome on board!

We are missing too much information in order to give you a reply, we have no idea how your Windows server is configured nor do we know how you mount on your linux client, then we know nothing about your current OS both sides...
Do you have a user mapping file in place on your NFS server? what about the groups?...

User mapping is not in use.

Mount is on a AIX 5.3 platform, NFS Server for unix is running on windows server 20212.
Default settings on NFS share + root access and "." hidden folder enabled.

Since all groups and users work fine on AIX, i do not need mapping since windows is "silent" here, and should not touch files. And since most files show and only random files appear hidden, together with random folders, i do not understand why. and if a rename from "MYFILE" to ".MYFILE" suddenly shows file on AIX with "ls -la" and then i rename it back and it is once again hidden, it is really strange.

--- Post updated at 06:08 AM ---

i see now, i put question in wrong section Should probably be in AIX section.

Let me say firstly that I am not an AIX expert. So what I am posting here now is just a generic Unix world response.

What have you tried already? You may already have tried this, but..................

NFS comes in 3 different currently available versions; version 2, 3 or 4.

Do you know which version the Windows hosted NFS for Unix is talking??

From the symptoms you are posting it seems likely that your issue is security based and the main differences between version 2, 3 and 4 are security performance/features.

Therefore, you need to know that each end of the NFS is talking the same language.

If you don't know the version that the Windows end is talking then no harm in trying your mount command with

Code:

-o vers=2
-o vers=3
-o vers=4

included on the command line (see your mount man page) to explore whether (a) it's the same, (b) it doesn't work at all, or (c) it fixes the issue.

There are other things we can consider but this is the first thing to try if you haven't already.

Thanks, i have not tried this and i will try it out.

The strange thing is, 2 days later, this afternoon when i checked folders that were not found 22-apr-2020 , are now suddenly found 24-apr-2020.
I suspect now that either it is a NFS v2,3,4 issue, or some cache size or something like that that is syncing.

Since i did try umount on aix, and restarting NFS server for unix on windows server, i hoped the cache would not be rememberd, but since
folders starting to appear, i do not know why and even harder to debug now.

I could see those hidden folders appear, due to 2 missing issues. 1: group sticky bit missing , and 2: ownership/group were wrong on hidden folders. and now i could run my "chmod + chown" again on all NFS folders and fix it finally

So thanks and yes, there is a "disable v3" option in NFS Server as well, so it could be it, but i believe i checked early on (mount shows it)

I am not an AIX expert, but NFS is a standard - I guess IBM even licenced it from SUN.
The NFS version is "negotiated" once, at mount time. The client simply asks the server via rpcinfo what versions are available and picks the highest version that it supports itself.
A test command:

Code:

rpcinfo servername

The client stores the version in the mount values, and sticks to it. You can view the mount values, at least some of them with the mount or mount -v (verbose) command.

In this case I suspect a problem or odd behavior on the NFS server.

I concur with MadeInGermany that the next place to look is the Windows NFS Server. Compared to our Unix world, Windows has weird and wonderful access rights settings that you will need to check out.

Read this thread and post#3 by me (hicksd8) on this issue..............
Unable to search NFS Share

And follow the MS link I provide there for more information.