[Samba] Problem with Office (and Windows 2000) and oplocks (and even without)

[Alexander Gretencord]

Since switching from Samba 2.2.3a-6 on Debian stable to 3.0.2a packages from 
the samba.org server (system is Debian stable too) we've had extreme problems 
with Office documents. Samba acts as a PDC and the user log onto it. The LDAP 
Authentication works great. Our clients are all Windows 2000 and Office 2000.

When opening documents word (excel) sometimes just hangs (for 30 seconds until 
on the server I get at timeout message for an oplock break request) No user 
ever has the patience to wait that long to see that it does work after the 
timeout but those timeouts really interrupt workflow. Also sometimes when the 
documents do open we get pages full of weird characters where the original 
document only had one page. After closing and reopening (if that works at 
all) these changes are mostly gone.

>From the global section of my smb.conf:

   oplocks = yes
   level2 oplocks = yes
   kernel oplocks = no
   oplock break wait time = 70


The oplock break wait time was set to 10 for some time now without any effect. 
With kernel oplocks = yes it didn't work either (which is why I tried with no 
after all). I don't know yet if the longer (70) break wait time will work 
(someone suggested it on this list or a usenet group). All oplock related 
settings were set to default on the old server.

>From the following log message I guess that the clients are also misbehaving 
but all Knowledge Base articles I found at microsoft speak of either NT4 or 
Windows XP. Very helpful indeed.

[2004/03/12 15:34:07, 0, pid=10726] smbd/oplock.c:oplock_break(879)
  oplock_break: client failure in oplock break in file ...

I also tried to disable oplocks completely (oplocks = no) but that does not 
work either. When I do that the clients get errors about locked files, 
opening nearly all documents in read only mode. I suspected some virus 
scanner or the windows explorer locking files but even without the virus 
scanner enabled I get those errors.

Disabling oplocks on the Windows 2000 clients also exhibited the problem of 
locked files which only open read only.

I've searched google (groups) now for the last three days without _any_ useful 
tips. I could live with a performance drop that oplocks = no would bring, if 
the files wouldn't be locked completely then.

I hope someone has any hints on how to solve the problem. The users are really 
getting mad.


Alex