[Samba] Problem with Excel on a share with ACLs

[Martin Konold]

Am Montag, 20. September 2004 15:24 schrieb David Brodbeck:

Hi David,

> I don't follow; if the user belongs to a group that has read/write access,
> they should be able to modify anything except the file permission bits.

Yes, this is exactly the to be expected behavior. Unfortunately this does 
_not_ work. 

What happens is that if user B opens the file F with Excel 97, modifies it and 
then tries to save the file the following happens:

Excel does not directly write to file F on der Samba server but it creates an 
intermediate file called something like E04FF34. Immediately after the 
completion of this write Excel renames this intermediate file to the real 
filename. 

The difference with Samba and a W2K server is that W2K _preserves_ the 
original owner/group/ACLs of the destination file.

> Also, do you have a default ACL set
> on the directory?

No. All files in the directory have very different ACLs. What would the 
default ACL be good for?

> This relies on Samba knowing what exactly the program on the user's
> computer is intending to do.  I don't think there's any way of identifying
> this. Remember that these two steps may be several minutes or even several
> hours apart, and there's no reliable way for Samba to tell Excel apart from
> any other program.

From my traces it looks like W2K uses some heuristic as the renaming is 
immediately after the completion of the write and the source has these 
strange intermediate filenames. 

IMHO because W2K can it Samba should also be technically able to handle it.

Yours,
-- martin

Dipl.-Phys. Martin Konold

e r f r a k o n
Erlewein, Frank, Konold & Partner - Beratende Ingenieure und Physiker
Nobelstrasse 15, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany
fon: 0711 67400963, fax: 0711 67400959
email: martin.konold at erfrakon.de