So - following up on this in the hope it will help others. According to the help offered (thanks!), the problem is that the attributes on the directories that cannot be seen by the clients are incorrect - which is to say they are all 0sAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. Here is the pastebin URL: http://pastebin.com/yz5PWjKV In desperation, I did a: gluster volume pfs-ro1 stop and then gluster volume pfs-ro1 start ... and now the directories and their contents are visible to the clients. I'm in the process of scanning the attributes of those directories again - I'll post another list on pastebin when I get them. James Burnash -----Original Message----- From: gluster-users-bounces at gluster.org [mailto:gluster-users-bounces at gluster.org] On Behalf Of Burnash, James Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2011 3:47 PM To: 'Mohit Anchlia' Cc: gluster-users at gluster.org Subject: Re: Files present on the backend but have become invisible from clients