Please Help with Insane File Self-Deletion

[Moof1904]

We have a shared drive on our network (attached to a Mac Mini acting as a pseudo-server). Recently I've started seeing insanely frustrating behavior with file self-deletion.

If I select a file (named "X") and choose Command-D to duplicate it, I get a message saying "The operation cannot be completed because an item with the name "X" already exists."

The only selection available is "OK." Clicking OK causes the original file "X" to disappear. It also appears that a copy of X is created and also deleted in an instant, almost too quickly to see.

To make things more maddening, because it's a shared volume, the file is truly deleted immediately and cannot be easily recovered from the trash.

Any idea WTF is going on?!?!?!?!

 

[mkrishnan]

I think we need to start with some more details?

What is the format of the shared disk?
What is the mechanism of sharing it (is it a Samba share, or is it AFP?)

I guess pretty obvious, but I wanted to start there before I assume you're using HFS+ and sharing it via the normal AFP....

Also: Does this *always* happen or only sometimes? One related suspicion is that, if you are using Samba instead of AFP, or if this is not an HFS+ partition, you may be running into problems related to the filename becoming too long by the time " copy" is amended to it? Although certainly the OS should think of a better way to deal with it.

 

[Moof1904]

It's a normally formatted Mac OSX Extended (Journaled) using Disk Tools. The volume is attached to a mini that has turned on Apple's file sharing in the control panels.

Both the Mac Mini and the G5 from which this is happening is running 10.4.8.

It's happening between 25% and 50% of the time.

To top it off, with the same frequency, if I try to simply drag a file from my local drive onto the shared drive, I get a message that says "The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for 'X' ". Which is pretty absurd considering that X in this case is on my local drive and owned by me.

 

[Moof1904]

Anyone?

Any thoughts on this?

Why would the Duplicate command cause the original file to delete itself?

Should I enable "Ignore Ownership On This Volume"?

 

[mkrishnan]

Have you repaired both disks just to be on the safe side? Well, or at least your disk, if it's the share is not on a boot disk?

 

[Moof1904]

They've been repaired in the past week or two. The behavior has happened before and after the repair, I believe. (I'll repair them both again just to be sure, though.)