[Samba] Keeping file creation time on Samba file shares

[Jeremy Allison]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 04:29:39PM +0000, Stefan Backström wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I am managing an IT environment with a mixed populatiion of WindowsXP 
> clients, Win2000 servers and a fast growing number of Samba servers (both 
> Fedora and RedHat --- latest versions).
> I have run into a problem when applications on the XP clients store data on 
> the Samba shares and the NTFS metadata "file creation time" is lost. For 
> the applications used, this metadata is critical to keep.
> 
> Does anyone know of a way to get the Samba machines to keep this Windows 
> file metadata, in particular the "file creation time"? Are there any 
> settings one can do in the Samba environments? Are there any additional 
> products available that one can install on the Samba machines to accomplish 
> this? Any hint, tips, tricks or information about available products (both 
> freeeware/shareware/commercial) will be *greatly* appreciated.

Currently in Samba3 there is no way to store the creation time
as it doesn't exist asa a UNIX metadata attribute. Samba4 does
store this in an EA, Samba3 could be made to do this also but
would need some extra coding work not currently done. If you
want to fund someone to do this in Samba3 I can advise where
this code would need to be added.

Jeremy.