SUMMARY: File corruption with 2.2.1a, Tru64 5.1, and Excel under Win98

[Jeff Lessem]

I am posting this to the three lists that I sent my inquiry to, so
please trim your To: line for the appropriate lists if you respond.

My original question was regarding some file corruption I was seeing
when saving a file from Excel in Office 2000 on a Windows 98 computer
to a Compaq alpha with Tru64 5.1a running Samba 2.2.1a.  The
corruption only occurs from Windows 98.  Windows 2000 does not appear
to be affected (I did not test NT, 95, or ME).  The problem is also
present in Samba 2.2.0 - 3.0-pre (HEAD).  Samba 2.0.10 works
correctly.  The problem can be reliably reproduced from four different
Windows 98 computers, including a fresh 98/Office 2000 install with
all of the patches from Microsoft's update site.

The problem persisted using three different versions of Compaq's cc
compiler, and gcc.  Disabling optimization and forcing addresses into
the lower 31 bits had no affect on the corruption problem.

I was only able to stop the corruption by adding the following to my
smb.conf:
        strict sync = yes
        sync always = yes
both are required.

I do not know if the problem is a bug in Tru64, Samba, my
configuration, or a combination of factors.  The corruption is
probably somehow related to my stupidity, but I do advise that any
administrator considering using Samba 2.2+ on a Tru64 machine attempt
to reproduce the Excel file corruption problem before putting the
server into use.  Not all .xls files trigger the problem, so I would
be happy to provide anybody with a 20k file that can reliably
reproduce the problem.

--
Jeff Lessem.