[Samba] Help with archive bit request

Gilbert, John jgilbert at eosbiotech.com
Fri Feb 22 11:58:31 GMT 2002


Hello Noel, David,

I haven't received any answer to this yet, I suspect it's some logic error
deep inside samba, as I can show that NT's "attrib" can change the archive
flag, just one-way only, dependent on the smb.conf flags.

The problem affects all files. Of course the in Linux space (or
Solaris space as I've also tested) files can have the flag set via chmod,
but this doesn't fix the problem of NT created or modified files.

I'm using Backup-Exec. It's incremental problems are without a doubt related
to this archive flag issue with this software. If you had a backup program
that used the last modified time, it would probably work fine.

I spoke with someone at BayLisa last night (I'm sorry I didn't catch his
name) who said that Samba was moving toward using ACL space to set these
flags.
He mentioned ext2, ext3, and xfs have room for these flags, and works today
with
heavy kernel patching. It will probably be a while before this is folded
into
distributions and is ready for production servers. Maybe someone in the
know could comment on this and how it relates to what Novanet is
doing?

The BayLisa person also mentioned that Snap servers (which do work
correctly with Backup-Exec) were using a heavily patched version of Samba.
The same is probably true with NetApp servers.

John Gilbert
jgilbert at biomail.ucsd.edu

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Brodbeck [mailto:DavidB at mail.interclean.com]
> Sent: Friday, February 22, 2002 8:20 AM
> To: 'Noel Kelly'; 'Gilbert, John'; 'samba at lists.samba.org'
> Subject: RE: [Samba] Help with archive bit request
> 
> 
> NovaNet uses some 'other' method of determining which files have been
> archived when you're backing up a Linux system with the Linux NovaNet
> client.  I asked them about it once (because it seemed inconsistant at
> times) and the person I talked to insisted it was using 
> "archive bits under
> Linux".  The fact that ext2fs has an archive bit is news to me.
> 
> Interestingly enough, I recently had a problem with NovaNet 
> causing file
> dates on recently modified files to regress.  I asked support 
> about it and
> got the response that I should add the following lines to my 
> nncfg.ini and
> restart NovaNet on all clients, then do a new full backup job:
> 
> [Svc-database service] 
> linArchiveMask=0x00000108 
> 
> I mention it here because I figure it might be related 
> somehow to exactly
> how they're managing this.  I haven't tried it yet but plan 
> to make the
> change this weekend before the usual weekly full backup job runs.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Noel Kelly [mailto:nkelly at tarsus.co.uk]
> Sent: Friday, February 22, 2002 3:26 AM
> To: 'Gilbert, John'; 'samba at lists.samba.org'
> Subject: RE: [Samba] Help with archive bit request
> 
> 
> John,
> 
> Did you ever get an answer to this ?  I think we are 
> experiencing something
> similar although the problem seems to be only with files we 
> have bought over
> from our Novell shares.  We are running RH6.2 (2.2.20 kernel 
> with ACLs) and
> Samba 2.2.3a.
> 
> The backup software (Novanet 8 Alliance SP5A running on NT) backs up
> everything up fine on full (of course) but using differential 
> it simply does
> not recognise the archive bit.
> 
> The reason I am a little confused is that new files created 
> on the Samba
> share are backed up correctly using differential and in the 
> Novanet software
> these new files do have a distinct 'A' attribute under the 
> file listings.
> This does not seem to correspond to the owner's execute bit - 
> if I toggle it
> on and off on the Samba share there is no change from 
> Novanet.  There must
> be another flag attached to these files which I cannot see inside
> Samba/Linux.
> 
> Is your backup software (?) having problems with all files or 
> does it work
> with ones created on the Samba share ?
> 
> I have emailed Novanet Support on this and hopefully they can 
> give me some
> insight as to what is going on.  I'll post their reply if it 
> might help you
> out.
> 
> Noel
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gilbert, John [mailto:jgilbert at eosbiotech.com]
> Sent: 19 February 2002 23:11
> To: 'samba at lists.samba.org'
> Subject: [Samba] Help with archive bit request
> 
> 
> Hello,
> What would be the best way to get an archive bit issue resolved. I've
> already posted twice on this list, and issued a bug report, 
> but without
> any feedback what-so-ever. I'm wondering if there is some other way to
> resolve
> this issue. I've run across at least five other people 
> reporting similar
> problems
> with samba and how it relates to NT space backups without any 
> acceptable
> answers. I'm including a few examples to back me up. See my 
> previous posts
> for details on how to replicate the problem.
> 
> http://samba.cadcamlab.org/lists/samba-ntdom/Jun2000/00137.html
> 	note: using smbclient and setmode does not fix backup issues,
> 	the backup software needs to change the archive bit itself.
> 
> http://samba.cadcamlab.org/listproc/samba/September1999/0000.html
> 	note: this looks like the exact same problem I'm seeing with
> 	2.2.3a
> 
> http://lists.samba.org/pipermail/samba/1999-April/041097.html
> 	This is a different but somewhat related problem that I 
> have seen,
> it
> 	can be fixed by creating a c$ share for backup-exec to 
> try to use. I
> 	also hit this problem before the archive bit issue but the samba
> 	logs had enough information to figure it out.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any help resolving this.
> John Gilbert
> jgilbert at eosbiotech.com
> 
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