Samba caching directory handles? (Writes to incorrect home dir)

[James Sutherland]

On Tue, 15 May 2001, Andrew Tridgell wrote:

> > What I am wondering is if samba does any caching of directory handles or
> > the like, and whether samba could be mis-translating //servername/homes
> > to the wrong user, using the directory from a previous user.  Is this at
> > all possible?
>
> don't use \\server\homes, use \\server\USERNAME instead. NT caches
> connections by share name. It does this even *after* the user logs off
> the client. You can only tell its happening by looking in smbstatus
> and seeing that the client has kept the connection open.
>
> I wonder, should we bight the bullet and finally get rid of
> \\server\homes ? It will break a lot of systems, but it will also save
> a lot of anguish.

Yes - having this "feature" present but (subtly) broken is MUCH worse than
not having it in the first place, IMO. Unless there is a way to make it
work PROPERLY, it shouldn't be available: it's just a pitfall for the
unwary, as the other Andrew just discovered....


James.

-- 
"Our attitude with TCP/IP is, `Hey, we'll do it, but don't make a big
system, because we can't fix it if it breaks -- nobody can.'"

"TCP/IP is OK if you've got a little informal club, and it doesn't make
any difference if it takes a while to fix it."
		-- Ken Olson, in Digital News, 1988