[Samba] MS Access and Samba

[Tim Allen]

On Fri, 18 Oct 2002, Oliver Krehan wrote:

> Hi,
>
> we still have some trouble running a MS Access-database on Samba. We now
> tried it with v.2.2.6 on RH 7.3 but still we either get no acces on the
> database simultanously or we run in problems with updating the database.
> The problem is that we make some changes on one of the clients but the
> changes are not visible to the other clients until they shut down the
> database and reopen it. We tried all lock options but there appears always
> one of the problems described above. If we disable oplocks in any way, only
> one client can open the db.
>
> We also tried to update the W2K-clients to SP3 because I read something
> about problems with oplocks on W2K-SP2 but nothing helped. A Google search
> on this problem brought up an article that MS Access has huge problems
> running on Samba or any other file-server-system than Windows.
>
> Has anyone ever get an Access-db running on more than 2 clients
> simultaneously and if yes, could you please give us some helpfull hints ?


We're running an Access database from Samba, 3 users, with no problems.
Just upgraded from Samba 2.2.5 to 2.2.6. Linux 2.4.18. Oplocks are
switched off for all shares. Access 98 and 2000 from NT4 and W2k
workstations. We migrated from NT4 server to Samba a few months ago.

Is your database split into a backend and frontends? Every machine here
has its own frontend (also located on the Samba server for convenience of
upgrading) and a shared backend. Sharing frontends can be problematic,
whatever server OS you're running, as Access saves various settings
related to the session in this.

Tim Allen