MS Excel/NT/Samba timestamp - serious problem, bug?

[Glen Gunsalus]

A rather distressing timestamp issue (to multiple users here).  Anyone
seen similar behavior or have a suggestion/solution?

Problem:

Opening and closing an excel file (no changes/keystrokes to file) on
the Samba server causes the file to be saved with time stamp of
closing.  (There is no autosave set on Excel - also see other info below)

MS Excel 97 SR-2
NT 4.0 SP5
Solaris 2.6 or 2.7 (2 different machines)
Samba 2.0.6 compiled with gcc 2.8.1 (one warning on compile:
lib/system.c: In function `sys_readdir':
lib/system.c:350: warning: return from incompatible pointer type)

Other information/observations:

The two Sun machines are running samba 2.0.6, the files (rooted in
/home) reside on one, and are NFS mounted on the other.

This does not occur when opening/closing the same file copied to a
local disk on the NT machine.

This does not occur for W95 machines with MS Excel 97 SR-2 (same Excel)
opening the same file on the same server(s).

This does not occur with NT machine opening the same file on a Redhat
6.0 server running samba 2.0.3.  (Files NFS mounted on the Redhat
machine).

I haven't yet tried to drop back to earlier version of samba on Suns so 
don't
know if it's version specific (I just tried 2.0.5a, same behavior).

When observing the files from network neighborhood: on opening the file
time is modified to opening time, when closing it's modified to closing
time.  After refresh the time reverts to original time stamp on local
disk, but stays at closing time on samba served file.

Perhaps related:  from log file on machine opening file with Excel: 

[2000/01/20 15:23:31, 0] lib/util_sock.c:write_socket_data(537)
  write_socket_data: write failure. Error = Broken pipe

This appears sometime later (maybe 5min) than close of file.  Buffer not
flushed and written to log file for some time?

-- 
Glen L. Gunsalus, Ph.D.   Telephone: (212) 327-8757 
The Population Council    Facsimile: (212) 327-8839,-7678
1230 York Avenue          E-Mail:    glen at popcbr.rockefeller.edu
New York, NY 10021             G-Gunsalus at popcbr.rockefeller.edu