[Samba] Three (Possibly Connected) Samba Issues

[Crunchy Bits]

Hello,

I am having a number of issues with a SAMBA based network. The
configuration file is appended to the end of this message. The network
has the following configuration:

1 Server: Fedora Core Linux 5, with fully up-to-date packages. The
server is one P4 2.26 GHz with one 40GB ext3 EIDE drive configured as
the boot volume. The data is stored on two 40 GB mirrored EIDE drives,
also formatted in ext3.

2 Mac OS X 10.3 clients, fully up-to-date on all updates.
1 Mac OS X 10.4 client, fully up-to-date on all updates.
1 Windows XP Professional SP-2 client, fully up-to-date on all updates.

The XP client is working as expected, but the MacOS X clients are not.
The Mac clients are having the following issues which I cannot find a
documented solution for, and it's slowly driving me NUTS:

---Samba Issue 01---

When I first brought the Linux based server up, all clients could
browse the Samba network without issue. Within 30-minutes, perhaps
less, Mac OS X clients where unable browse the Samba network shares.
Rebooting, (clients and server) and waiting the requisite 15-minutes
did nothing to restore this functionality. I can connect to the server
directly, using Finder's tool for connecting directly to a server, but
that is all. The XP client is unaffected. It is a mystery to me as to
why this issue is occurring.

---Samba Issue 02---

Clients have full read and write permissions to the share, but
intermittently attempts to save documents to the shared directory will
result in the saving application crashing and data loss. I have been
unable to determine a rhyme or reason for this occurrence. This too is
unique to files stored on the Samba share. Locally stored files do not
display this issue.

---Samba Issue 03---

On the Samba share 'data', on the Mac OS clients: files of a known
kind -- often, but not limited to MS Word (.doc) or MS Exel (.xls) --
will without determinable cause drop file extensions from their file
names. At this time they will also act _almost_ as if they have lost
MIME-type data which associates said files with the Application needed
to launch them, preventing Document Activation/Launching (as it is
variously called) from working correctly. The file _may_ open in the
previously associated application, but will actually open correctly.
According to Mac OS X Finder the files affected files (which where
once various kinds of documents) are now of the kind 'Unix
executable'. A few, lack any entry in 'Kind' but "opens with" will be
set to the correct application in those cases.

For example: an MS Word file that has begun displaying the above
symptoms _may_ open in word, and have the following appear:

"3/Applications Microsoft Office 2004 Microsoft Word
?P[Unicode Character 00C9 Here]"

Additionally, simply manually changing the file extension back to the
correct one _may_ fix the issue. But, it has also been observed that
this action _may_ cause the file to disappear from the Samba directory
listing. They are not renamed, nor are they moved from one place in
the directory listing to another: they are gone and my directory
file-count decreases by one. These apparently interconnected issues
only occur if they file originated from the Samba share; documents on
the individual local machines do not display this issue.

Below is the samba.conf, only the proper names have been changed
encased in square brackets [like this] and the comments in the file
have been dropped also.

I have RTFM-ed, but again, I cannot seem to find anything to help me
with these issues. Any assistance would be genuinely appreciated.

--Jeff

---start-samba.conf---
#=== Global Settings ===
[global]
	dns proxy = no
	log file = /usr/local/samba/var/%m.log
	netbios name = [servername]
	cups options = raw
	load printers = yes
	server string = [server name]
	workgroup = [workgroup]
	os level = 20
	security = user
	max log size = 50


#=== Share Definitions ===
[homes]
   comment = Home Directories
   browseable = no
   writable = yes

[data]
	writable = yes
	path = /data
	force directory mode = 775
	force group = [users_group]
	force create mode = 775
	public = yes
	create mode = 775
	directory mode = 775
---end-samba.conf---