Folder shares are being lost

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Guest

We've written software that records video 24/7. There is a folder, such as
e:\video, that is shared for use by external applications designed to
playback the video recording at a future time.

Our customers are complaining that once a week they are unable to play
video. They have found that if they remove the share and then add it again
the problem is resolved. The problem within this is that there are hundreds
of files so this takes a long time.

Any idea why and how to overcome this problem ?
 
I bet it is an inheritance issue. If you create a basic server-level-share
and then allow different users to write to that share, then by default, the
permissions on the files being written pertain to the owners of the file,
only. You might try to add special permissions to the share so that each
file written will inherit a set of permissions set by you.

Right-click on the share and choose the security tab. Then click the
Advanced command button. You will see a mult-tabbed Window. On the
Permissions tab, there are check boxes which pertain to inheritance and a
listview which shows the permissions that you wish to apply during
inheritance. You might experiment with those settings.

- Vinson
 
I'll look into it. It's just odd that it works perfectly for a week and then
goes unavailable.

Mal
 
It may be that nothing more than your customer looking at the files only once
per week; not noticing that the permissions were never right during the week,
either.

You can look at the permissions on the files before recreating the share,
and see if they are correct, before recreating the share. Further, you can
turn on auditing, and see what is happening in the event viewer if you
suspect someone is tinkering. Incidentally, cacls.exe may move faster at
applying permissions than the GUI.

- Vinson
 
In our situation, the folder is initially blank. We always test playback
after several minutes of recording before leaving the customer site so we
know that the share was valid.

When the files can no longer be accessed (we have confirmed that files which
were previously accessible have suddenly become unavailable), re-creating the
share brings everything back online again.

The video files are security related so the video is guaranteed to be viewed
more than once a day.

The network is purely workstation based - there are no domains and all
machines have the same login username/password.

The machines are locked away in security cabinets and have no user
interaction.

Could it have anything to do with the number of files ?

There are 16 sub-folders, one for each video channel. Each video file is 10
minutes long. This means that 30 days recording will contain approx. 69120
files (4320 per folder). Files older than 30 days are automatically deleted
by the recording service.

Mal
 
Thank you for the very complete posting.

I think anything would be in the realm of possibility if the files are
actually loosing their permissions. If the problems are happening to all
clients everywhere, I would suspect some maximum has been reached although
NTFS is supposed to support 2^32 files (or 4,294,967,296 files) per volume
before reaching a theoretical maximum.

I suppose I would review the event logs to see if the system mentions disk
or permission problems. One step you might take is to schedule a chkdisk at
boot up which would review the system security descriptors and indexes which
could directly affect NTFS permissions, and if you have time, every disk
sector for physical troubles. Other than this, I am sorry to say that I am
out of ideas.

- Vinson
 
Yes, multiple customers have the same problem. I'll look into it further
based on your input.

Thanks.

Mal
 
I just took quick look at a folder and there is no "Security" tab when I
choose the folder's "Properties" right-click menu option. There is a
"Sharing" tab but nothing about "Security" nor an "Advanced" button.

The Windows online help also mentions the "Security" tab. Why would this
tab not be visible ?

Mal
 
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