CIFS storage activation errors

[Afox]

Hello,

every 10 seconds I get the following error in my logs:

pvestatd: unable to activate storage 'cifs1' - directory '/mnt/pve/cifs1' does not exist or is unreachable

Interestingly I have created a directory on that storage and I can browse it and backup on it.

PVE Manager shows the CIFS as "status unknown" but the directory as "available".

After a reboot the CIFS itself gets shown as available - but not for long.

I checked the logs of the CIFS but there is nothing unusual.

Spoiler: Versions

proxmox-ve: 7.0-2 (running kernel: 5.11.22-2-pve)
pve-manager: 7.0-10 (running version: 7.0-10/d2f465d3)
pve-kernel-5.11: 7.0-5
pve-kernel-helper: 7.0-5
pve-kernel-5.4: 6.4-4
pve-kernel-5.11.22-2-pve: 5.11.22-4
pve-kernel-5.11.22-1-pve: 5.11.22-2
pve-kernel-5.4.124-1-pve: 5.4.124-1
ceph-fuse: 14.2.21-1
corosync: 3.1.2-pve2
criu: 3.15-1+pve-1
glusterfs-client: 9.2-1
ifupdown: 0.8.36
libjs-extjs: 7.0.0-1
libknet1: 1.21-pve1
libproxmox-acme-perl: 1.2.0
libproxmox-backup-qemu0: 1.2.0-1
libpve-access-control: 7.0-4
libpve-apiclient-perl: 3.2-1
libpve-common-perl: 7.0-5
libpve-guest-common-perl: 4.0-2
libpve-http-server-perl: 4.0-2
libpve-storage-perl: 7.0-9
libspice-server1: 0.14.3-2.1
lvm2: 2.03.11-2.1
lxc-pve: 4.0.9-4
lxcfs: 4.0.8-pve2
novnc-pve: 1.2.0-3
openvswitch-switch: 2.15.0+ds1-2
proxmox-backup-client: 2.0.7-1
proxmox-backup-file-restore: 2.0.7-1
proxmox-mini-journalreader: 1.2-1
proxmox-widget-toolkit: 3.3-5
pve-cluster: 7.0-3
pve-container: 4.0-8
pve-docs: 7.0-5
pve-edk2-firmware: 3.20200531-1
pve-firewall: 4.2-2
pve-firmware: 3.2-4
pve-ha-manager: 3.3-1
pve-i18n: 2.4-1
pve-qemu-kvm: 6.0.0-2
pve-xtermjs: 4.12.0-1
qemu-server: 7.0-10
smartmontools: 7.2-pve2
spiceterm: 3.2-2
vncterm: 1.7-1
zfsutils-linux: 2.0.5-pve1

Best regards,

Afox

 

[oguz]

hi,

PVE Manager shows the CIFS as "status unknown" but the directory as "available".

what is the output from pvesm status and cat /etc/pve/storage.cfg

every 10 seconds I get the following error in my logs:

do you see any other errors in the journal around these?

 

[Afox]

Hello, there are no other errors around this besides the similar daemon error

pvedaemon: unable to activate storage 'cifs1' - directory '/mnt/pve/cifs1' does not exist or is unreachable

pvesm status

cifs1 cifs inactive 0 0 0 0.00%

The directory on the cifs storage is displayed as active.

cat /etc/pve/storage.cfg

cifs: cifs1
path /mnt/pve/cifs1
server #.#.#.#
share cifs1
content backup
prune-backups keep-all=1
username cifs1-user

# censores the IP.

 

[oguz]

nterestingly I have created a directory on that storage and I can browse it and backup on it.

what do you mean? do you have another directory storage? normally you shouldn't create another storage on top of this one, it can lead to weird issues

please post your full storage config (you can keep IP censored)

can you reach the CIFS share normally from your PVE? try running pvesm scan cifs <IP> --username foo --password bar and post the output here

 

[Afox]

I just checked the /mnt/pve/ folder and the cifs1 storage really isn´t in there.

I added a CIFS storage and on top of that i created a directory storage. This works well for another CIFS storage with multiple other directories.

Running your pvesm command does not give any output.

I will not post my full config but I add the dir part.

cifs: cifs1
path /mnt/pve/cifs1
server #.#.#.#
share cifs1
content backup
prune-backups keep-all=1
username cifs1-user

dir: dir1
path /mnt/pve/cifs1/dir1
content backup
prune-backups keep-last=1
shared 1

 

[Afox]

I have one new error:

create storage failed: mkdir /mnt/pve/cifs1: File exists at /usr/share/perl5/PVE/Storage/CIFSPlugin.pm line 225. (500)

It seems when you delete a CIFS storage from within the webinterface it doesn´t get unmounted properly.

 

[Afox]

How can I remount a CIFS storage without entering the credentials again.

 

[oguz]

I just checked the /mnt/pve/ folder and the cifs1 storage really isn´t in there.

Running your pvesm command does not give any output.

are you able to reach the cifs server?

* does it respond to ping?
* is port 445 open? nc <IP> 445 -v should return "open" if SMB port is reachable
* if above are yes, re-check your credentials to make sure

How can I remount a CIFS storage without entering the credentials again.

umount /mnt/pve/cifs1 should unmount it, and then you can just remount it. the credentials are saved in /etc/pve/priv/storage.

I added a CIFS storage and on top of that i created a directory storage.

please disable the directory storage for now to make sure this isn't interfering with mount.

 

[Afox]

Yes, I was able to ping the CIFS server and 445 returned open.

As before the CIFS share didn´t show under /mnt/pve/ when I checked via SFTP but trying to create a directory with the sharename returned that it already existed. So i unmounted it manually and it showed up immediately after that.

The problem with this share is that after rebooting the node a manual operation is needed inside the VM of the CIFS server to make the CIFS files accessible. So it might be possible that something goes wrong until that operation took place and it doesn´t get refreshed by PVE.

 

[verulian]

I am having a similar issue. When I attempt to mount a SMB (CIFS) share from a macOS file server on Proxmox 7, I get the error:

create storage failed: storage 'name_of_server_and_share' is not online

The command that produces this is:
pvesm add cifs name_of_server_and_share --server 192.168.1.71 --share name_of_share --username USERNAME --password PASSWORD --smbversion 2.1

I have tried this with --smbversion 2.0, --smbversion 2.1, and --smbversion 3.0 and get the same result.

I can authenticate fine and get a list of shares on said server with this:
pvesm scan cifs 192.168.1.71 --username USERNAME --password PASSWORD

When doing it through the web admin gui I get the same thing:

Error
create storage failed: storage 'name_of_server_and_share' is not online (500)

 

[HonderdProcent]

I have the same with macOS Big Sur. Trying to backup over smb, same error. Authenticating and getting a list of shares works fine. NFS works fine as alternative but it isn't as fast as smb 3. Is there a way to get more logging? Same error on the command line.

mounting manually works fine, so there is something wrong in the activation I think? I can get for example mount it to /mnt/mac-pro and add a directory storage in the gui.

root@pve1:/mnt/pve# mkdir mac-pro
root@pve1:/mnt/pve# mount -t cifs -o rw,vers=3.0,credentials=/root/.smbcredentials //192.168.1.2/swarm /mnt/pve/mac-pro
root@pve1:/mnt/pve# cd mac-pro
root@pve1:/mnt/pve/mac-pro# ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Aug  3 18:08 dump
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Aug  3 16:55 images
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Aug  3 11:35 private
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Aug  3 11:35 snippets
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Aug  3 11:35 template
root@pve1:/mnt/pve/mac-pro#

 

[takerukoushirou]

I ran into the same issues with a macOS Big Sur server, trying to mount a CIFS share from Proxmox 7.

The share itself works fine, manually mounting with the same parameters as Proxmox would works without any issues. Proxmox though cannot mount the share with the error message storage '...' is not online; looking at the source, the problem comes from the check_connection method in CIFSPlugin.pm, which uses smbclient to perform a SMBecho.
For some reason this does not work with the error echo failed: NT_STATUS_CONNECTION_DISCONNECTED.

So the problem isn't the actual mount but the connection check which fails with a macOS server as the target.