[Samba] Strange issues with Excel & Samba

[Bill Arlofski]

I have a client who used to have an NT server, we replaced it with 
Gentoo Linux and Samba v3.0.9 and they are now having what appears to be 
some sort of file-sharing issue with Excel.

When a user opens an Excel file on the file server it opens properly, no 
errors or warnings of any  kind. But when they try to save the file, 
Excel warns them that "the file may have changed by someone else, do you 
want to overwrite, or make new copy" (or some such similar dialog).

The file has not changed, and they were the only one with it opened. 
This happens to everyone, on any Excel file that they open.

Here is some smbstatus output when a user opens an Excel spreadsheet:

# smbstatus | grep xls
25002  DENY_NONE  0x2019f     RDWR       NONE 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls MonMar  7 11:12:16 2005

Ok, so Samba shows that the user has the file "Spreadsheet2.xls" opened 
in read-write mode. So far so good.

BUT... What is interesting is this:

# lsof -p 25002 |grep xls

smbd    25002 louis   28uw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   32rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   33rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   34rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   35rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   36rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   37rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   39rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   40rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   41rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   42rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   43rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   44rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   45rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls
smbd    25002 louis   46rw  REG       8,3     34304    705301 
/home/shared/projects/Spreadsheet2.xls


It looks like Excel opens the file ONCE with "read and write access", 
with a write lock on part of the file (28uw), then it proceeds to open 
the file 14 more times for READ access.  What the heck for?

On the good side, when someone else attempts to open this file while 
louis has it opened, they are properly told by Excel that the file is 
currently in use and that they can open it it read only mode. (or some 
such similar message)


Any thoughts on how to stop Excel from telling the user that their file 
has changed when it definitely has not?

Bill Arlofski
waa-samba at revpol.com