FW: [Samba] Outlook .pst on a samba share; do or don't?

Ken Innes kinnes at ekos.com
Wed Jun 11 14:26:55 GMT 2003


I'm running a new (6 months old) fast server, with an ultra-scsi
RAID array . . . some of my workstations, however, are getting
elderly: some are 5 year old 350Mhz machines, and my users are
finding it faster to put their .pst files on their Samba-shared
Linux home directories. (50 users, .pst files from 100mb to 1.5Gb).

(yes, yes, I know, 1.5GB is WAY too big for a .pst file; its
a constant fight to get them to archive old stuff).

An added advantange, if you run WIN2K on your workstations,
is that staff can login to different workstations &
have access to a central .pst file on their home directory, without worrying
about roving profiles.

Further, since the Linux box is backed up nightly (you DO run
regular backups, YES??) if a .pst does get corrupted through
some horrible event, you can just restore from last night's
backup tape, so you only lose at most one day's worth of email.

When we had our .pst files on the local boxes, we had intermittent problems
with .pst file corruption when workstns would freeze while opening
Outlook, and moving them over to the Linux box has solved that
problem (no idea why, but I'm happy with the result!)

With VERY LARGE .pst files, on a slow workstation, Outlook could
take 6-7 minutes to open, moving the .pst to the Samba box has
reduced that to 30 seconds.

We don't have gigabit ethernet, all machines/switches are 10/100.

_________________________________________

Ken Innes
Chief Information Officer
EKOS Research Associates Inc.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: samba-bounces+kinnes=ekos.com at lists.samba.org
> [mailto:samba-bounces+kinnes=ekos.com at lists.samba.org]On Behalf Of
> Vizitiu, Ciprian
> Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 10:00 AM
> To: samba at lists.samba.org
> Subject: RE: [Samba] Outlook .pst on a samba share; do or don't?
>
>
>
> >
> > > I only would like to put into consideration that
> > > I corrupted my outlook.pst file and lost a lot of
> > > messages while I had outlook open and the client lost
> > connection due
> > > to service maintenance on the linux server.
> >
> > Are oplocks turned off?  See chapter 14 of the Samba-3 HOWTO
> > collection, "File and Record Locking".  Very good reading.
> >
>
> So to sum it up: Outlook .psts on a samba share are ok as long as
> you don't
> pull the plug (but the electricity company can do that... Not all
> my WS have
> UPSs) so to be on the safe side disable oplocks. From smb.conf
> man it looks
> like it can't be done on a per file basis so I'll have to create
> a separate
> share. Given the sizes (300 to 800MB each, 20 users) will ext3 do or I'll
> have to resort to smth more "exotic" like JVS/RieserFS?
> --
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