[Samba] Combining NFS and Samaba - file locking

Simon Hobson shobson0309 at colony.com
Tue Aug 31 13:36:00 GMT 2004


I have a network where we have a main site with a PDC, and two remote 
sites with BDCs. The backend is LDAP which is slaved to the remote 
sites, Samba is 2.2.8a, the main server is part of the Suse Linux 
OpeneXchange Server, the other two servers are Suse Standard Server 8.

What I wanted to do was to have users at the various sites map one 
drive from their 'local' server. Behind the scenes, I planned to use 
NFS and some symlinks to make each site have an identical view of 
this shared folder, whilst in reality the folders are physically 
located at different sites. Specifically, the bulk of the folders are 
on the main server, and each remote site (conveniently comprising a 
more or less self contained organisation unit) has one folder.

EG :

\\slox\groupshare\sales
                  \accounts
                  \warehouse --> symlink to NFS mount from warehouse server

\\warehouse\groupshare\sales --> symlink to NFS mount from slox server
                       \accounts --> symlink to NFS mount from slox server
                       \warehouse

Obviously, permissions to see stuff in each folder is controlled by 
group memberships etc.

The whole idea is to minimise WAN traffic (slow links) whilst 
allowing a single view of everything that people need to access.

When we tried this, we found that file locking didn't work properly. 
Depending on who opened a file first, we got effects ranging from a 
fairly normal "this file is in use by xxx" to Word just locking up.

Can anyone tell me if this should work, or what I can do to make it 
(ie file locking between two Samba servers with an NFS share/mount 
involved) work properly ?

Simon

-- 

NOTE: This is a throw-away email address which will reach me for as 
long as it stays spam-free, remove date for real address.

Simon Hobson MA MIEE, Technology Specialist
Colony Gift Corporation Limited
Lindal in Furness, Ulverston, Cumbria, LA12 0LD
Tel 01229 461100, Fax 01229 461101

Registered in England No. 1499611
Regd. Office : 100 New Bridge Street, London, EC4V 6JA.


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