Vim detects a file on a VMS Samba share has changed when it has not

John E. Malmberg wb8tyw at qsl.net
Fri Apr 1 19:58:19 GMT 2005


BG - Ben Armstrong wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-03-31 at 21:54 -0500, John E. Malmberg wrote:
> 
>>On UNIX, the file modification date is only changed if the actual file 
>>was changed.
>>
>>On OpenVMS, the file modification date is updated because the file was 
>>opened for write.
> 
> 
> That's interesting.  I had previously thought dates weren't modified
> when I edited the file.  However, I now see that Revised date is
> changed, as you have indicated.

On the SAMBA 2.0.x stream, the date was modified by the explorer shell 
checking to see if there was an ICON in the file, which it does for 
anything with what the client considers an executable extension, or any 
action to look at the contents of the file.

This was noticed by SAMBA-VMS users as reported in this mailing list 
back in the year 2000 time frame.  It was interfering with make scripts 
as it was updating the modification date of all files.

I think Eckart Meyer may have put the same hack in as I did for the same 
reason.  I do not know if that hack is still needed in 2.2.x or if 
Jean-Yves put that in or did something else.

> Again, this is without actually writing anything to the file.  So yes,
> the Revised date is constantly updated by Vim (actualy Vim + Cream which
> turns on a bunch of features, including this business about constantly
> checking the original file for changes).
> 
> But please explain, then, if it is a Revised date artefact, why I am
> only seeing the problem when the owner of the original file is not me.
> Does that make sense?

As I have not looked at the 2.2.x code in this area, I really do not 
know what is going on now.  Jean-Yves may be able to explain more if he 
looks at the thread.

Samba may have changed their behavior since 2.0.x, or Jean-Yves may have 
put in some code to try to compensate for the bad effects of this behavior.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.net
Personal Opinion Only



More information about the samba-vms mailing list