[linux-cifs-client] Re: multiple problems moving up from smbfs to cifs

[Steve French (smfltc)]

>updated from smbfs to cifs,
>and have encountered several new problems:
>
>1) I can have only one active process reading
>the CIFS file.  Starting another process to read the file will block,
>until the first process closes the file.
>
>  
>
That is not correct in general - this is done all the time (reading the 
same file from multiple
processes) - which application(s) are you using to access the file?  
With Windows/CIFS semantics
it is possible for an application to prevent another application reading 
(or writing) a section of a file
(but byte range locks can be disabled with "nobrl").    It is possible 
that you just ran into
something that should not have worked with smbfs either (but smbfs was 
broken in that
it was missing support for byte range locks).  Note that sending byte 
range locks can be disabled
with cifs on mount.

>2) My editor, Vim, gives lots of warnings
>"WARNING: The file has been changed since reading it ... "
>presumably Vim sees the file timestamp unexpectedly change
>after it last writes the file.  I have no other processes accessing
>the file
>
>  
>
This subtle date/time problem was fixed months ago.  Which version of 
cifs vfs are you
using ("/sbin/modinfo cifs.ko")?

>3) Listing the directory via "ls --color" shows wacky unlisted
>color schemes.  Presumably this is due to the unusual file mode
>of "-rwxrwSrwt".
>
>
>  
>
You can change the default mode on a cifs mount to a windows share.  The 
unusual mode is to note that
Windows enforces mandatory locks.