[Samba] Netware CIFS nlm - linux samba

[Glen Davison]

Dear Gurus,

We're having bizarre problems/behaviour.  Admittedly we have an unusual 
set-up:

 - users on linux desktops (RedHat/KDE) mounting files over SMB using 
samba-2.2.5-10 -client and -common rpms. 
 - files are on a SAN, clustered behind 2 netware servers (6.5), wihch run the 
cifs.nlm (netware guy has gone home - can't tell you the version just now)

Files are spontaneously changing modification timestamps - anywhere between 
about 1930 and 2040 (AD, not hours).  Or more likely *presenting* those 
timestamps most of the time, though now and then the correct timestamp will 
swim into view briefly.

example:
[glen at haiku glen]$ ls -l home/test333*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 glen     users           0 Aug 12 16:44 home/test3332
-rwxr-xr-x    1 glen     users          11 Aug 12 16:43 home/test3333

[glen at haiku glen]$ ls -l home/test3333
-rwxr-xr-x    1 glen     users          11 Sep  2  1992 home/test3333

[glen at haiku glen]$ ls -l home/test3332
-rwxr-xr-x    1 glen     users           0 Oct 26  1992 home/test3332

[home is the mount-point, or rather a symlink down thru the mount a little 
way]

Most newly created files seem to have the problem straight away.  (But the 
bulk of the files were rsync'd across from a Tru64 filesystem a month ago)

We have tried versions 2.2.8a and 3.0.0beta of smbclient / smbmount; 2.2.8a 
was the same; 3.0.0 started with promising results, but it eventually did the 
same timestamp trick (maybe less frequent??) but it also dies somehow after 
about 30 mins and has to be remounted.

We believe we have narrowed this behaviour down to only linux samba clients 
talking to the netware cifs nlm.

To add to the pot: we have also had a handful of files apparently change 
filename spontaneously - so that they start with '..'  In most cases, they 
started as .xyz and became ..xyz  The only processes which touched those 
files should have been reads - no writes.  This may be a red herring - may 
not be samba-related.

The timestamp issue is wide-spread, the filename problem is rare.

So, has anyone seen anything like this?  Can you explain what causes it?  And 
is there a solution?


TIA
Glen

-- 
Glen Davison			glen at maths.unsw.edu.au
Computer System Administrator	phone: +61 2 9385 7018
Maths, UNSW			fax:   +61 2 9385 7192