[Samba] Re: [Fwd: File Locking and Permissions Issue]

[Jeremy Allison]

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 05:07:50PM +0000, Jason Arends wrote:

> Thanks for the responses so far... I am actually the tech from Lacerte who was 
> working with Jack - I'd like to clarify some things to try to help find a 
> resolution:

I appreciate the help and time you've been willing to put into this.

> - The software is designed for multiple users to access the database on a 
> network and works that way for thousands of customers (using Windows servers, 
> Linux is actually not supported by us and we don't test on it)
> - In Jack's case, each computer can access the program fine when the database is 
> local, and when the database is on the server it works fine as long as only one 
> computer accesses it
> - I have seen cases where performance degradation in our software occurs when 
> oplocks are disabled on Windows networks.  Oplocks was not disabled on Jack's 
> machines, but we did try disabling it on both the server and workstations to see 
> if it made a difference and it did not help.
> - I now realize that when a second user accesses a file, the server will break 
> the oplock the first user had on it, which is why it showed up that way in the 
> log
> - I tested our software on my home network with Samba on a Linux server and 2 
> workstations (XP and Vista) and didn't run into the same problem as Jack - I was 
> able to open the software on both workstations and access the same database 
> without the performance issue.  My smbstatus logs also appeared identical to 
> Jack's as far as the oplocks go.  The smb.conf file that Jack attached was the 
> one from my server that I had sent him to compare with his, so consider that as 
> the working one.  One difference is that I was authenticating as the same user 
> from 2 different workstations while Jack had different users.
> 
> I'd like to have Jack set up a share on one of the Windows workstations and 
> point 2 computers at that database and see if the same issue occurs, just to 
> make sure we are looking in the right direction.

That seems like a good plan. Please let the list know if you get stuck
and need further help.

> (For the record, the issue already was escalated and I am not first-level 
> support.  Unfortunately if it went higher the case would probably be dismissed 
> as "OS not supported")

How can we change that ? There are many organizations (Linux distro's,
OEM's, major vendors like IBM, HP, Sun etc.) who ship Samba as a
supported product. Is there something we can do to help change the
policy in your company ?

Thanks,

Jeremy.