mkdir "No such file or directory" within a directory that exists

Question

I have a network (samba) share mounted at /run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share:server=wdmycloud,share=family. Most activities work fine within the share - I can move stuff around, create and delete files, etc. However, if I cd into Music/Various Artists (both of which definitely exist) and try to create a specific directory, it fails:

$ mkdir "Pretty in Pink: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘Pretty in Pink: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack’: No such file or directory

mkdir -p also fails:

$ mkdir -p "Pretty in Pink: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘Pretty in Pink: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack’: No such file or directory

However, mkdir functions fine for other directory names:

$ mkdir test
# no output, directory created

What's special about the name Pretty in Pink: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack that mkdir chokes on it? How can I get around this issue?

Please don't judge me for the music, I'm doing this for someone else...

What's wrong with the music? :-) If you really want those colons have a read of the mangled names option and the catia module for Samba. samba how to display files with colon in their names? — Chris Davies, Aug 01 '20 at 16:38

Stephen Kitt · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-01T16:43:04.567

5

Colons aren’t valid characters on SMB/CIFS shares — Windows uses them for drive letters. The failing directory name contains one, which is why mkdir fails.

edited Aug 01 '20 at 16:43

answered Aug 01 '20 at 16:35

Stephen Kitt

434,908

... yep. Cool and bad. Good thing this drive has an FTP frontend as well. – c-x-berger Aug 01 '20 at 16:39
2

@c-x-berger if you create a filename containing a colon then you won't be able to see it across the Samba share unless you've either mangled names = yes (horrible) or you've enabled catia and are happy for the colon to be rewritten as a similar-but-different character – Chris Davies Aug 01 '20 at 16:40
@roaima unfortunately, the Samba share is hosted by a consumer-grade network drive that I can't really configure that much. However, it presents other frontends (FTP, NFS, etc) that actually work and I don't think these files need to be accessed by anything besides a Linux HTPC. – c-x-berger Aug 01 '20 at 16:42
Samba won't show "illegal" file names without the catia module enabled – Chris Davies Aug 01 '20 at 17:42
Right, but I can use FTP or something for accessing it instead, and since the only client(s) I expect are running Linux, the mangled names shown by Samba aren't an issue. – c-x-berger Aug 01 '20 at 19:26
3

I’d say NFS would be a better replacement, at least you could mount your storage in a similar manner to what you have now. – Stephen Kitt Aug 01 '20 at 20:31

mkdir "No such file or directory" within a directory that exists

1 Answers1