# Invisible and disappearing files on Samba



## mariourk (Mar 26, 2019)

Hi,

I'm experiencing a strange and frustrating problem on our Samba-server. People complain that files are not on the server (anymore). However, the files are in fact there, when I check via SSH/CLI. Samba just doesn't show them. I found that simply copying an invisible directory with `cp -a` solves the problem most of the time. If not, I can copy the invisible directory to a windows-PC with WinSCP and copy it back via SMB.

The frustating thing is that I can't trigger or reproduce this problem, which makes it hard to fix. The problem seems to occur when people interact with files on the server directly via software. For example, Word, Excel, Photoshop, Indesign, etc.

Does anyone have an idea what might be the issue here?

Kind regards,
Marinus ten Napel


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