[Samba] Share Concurrency

[Jim Morris]

On Sunday, December 1, 2002, at 03:55  PM, Paul Ketelaar wrote:

> Samba Gurus,
>            How can the number of concurrent connections to a Samba 
> share
> be limited.
> Say for example you have an article of software for which you only have
> 5 licences. When all five seats are used and 6th connection is 
> attempted
> the user cannot connect.

You can limit the number of concurrent connections to a share using the 
'max connections' option in smb.conf, which is set on a per-share basis.

I actually use this to arbitrate access to an old DOS application in 
use at one site, which can only operate with one user at a time - if 
two run, data corruption can occur. This application is on a special 
share by itself, with the setting 'max connections = 1' for that share. 
  I use a setting of 'deadtime = 1', which is a very low setting, to 
kill clients that no longer have open files on the share. That way a 
user cannot lock other users out of the share indefinitely once they 
have closed the application and no longer have open files.  Normally 
though, a batch file is run (from an icon on the user's desktop) that 
maps the share (using 'net use'), runs the app, and then unmaps the 
share when done (net use /d).

  --
Jim Morris (Jim at Morris-World.com)