[Samba] Difference in Samba and CIFS interms of keeping the deleted files opened

[Nikhil]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Nikhil <mnikhil at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 12:12 AM, Jeremy Allison <jra at samba.org> wrote:
>
>>  On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 10:14:49PM +0530, Nikhil wrote:
>> >  Hi,
>> >
>> > We have a CIFS server running on a NetApp server and a Solaris host
>> running
>> > Samba-3.3.2.
>> >
>> > When we mount both the filesystems to a Drive on a Windows using the net
>> use
>> > command and then try to run a java program which basically does nothing
>> but
>> > continuosly writes a data chunk to a file. On a side note, these same
>> > filesystems are accessible on a Solaris (unix) host too.
>> >
>> > When the java program is run and a file is being generated, I go to my
>> unix
>> > terminal and happen to delete the file generated by the java program.
>> > Interestingly, there is an IOexception caught in the java program
>> running on
>> > the Windows machine, when the file is deleted on the CIFS based
>> filesystem
>> > (available on Solaris as a NFS filesystems) but there is no exception
>> caught
>> > when the filesystem happens to be Samba (available on Solaris as /var ,
>> a
>> > regular partition).
>> >
>> > I delete the file from Unix as the process demands, but also there is no
>> way
>> > to delete a in-use-file in Windows.
>> >
>> > I would like to understand the differences in Samba and CIFS in this
>> context
>> > especially why is that so there is an IOexception for a CIFS based
>> > filesystem but not on the samba filesystem. This is reproducible at
>> will.
>> > What could be wrong? What could be made to make samba filesystem also
>> behave
>> > the same way to throw exceptions (Exceptions are good than that not at
>> all
>> > knowing there is a file that is deleted but being still written onto.)
>>
>> Ok, I think the reason that you're having this problem is that
>> you're running Samba on Solaris in this case, sad to say.
>>
>> I don't believe Sun have exposed kernel level oplock (lease) capability
>> to user space processes, so Samba on Solaris has no way of knowing
>> that a unix user deleted the file.
>>
>> Samba running on Linux, (or SGI Irix) has kernel level oplocks,
>> so can detect access from the local filesystem. As the NetApp
>> runs a custom kernel (derived a long time ago from FreeBSD I
>> believe) then their CIFS implementation (like Samba on Linux)
>> knows when a NFS user has modified the file.
>>
>> Jeremy.
>>
>
>
> Thanks Jeremy. Appreciate your response.
>
> That actually sounds interesting... do we have this documented or
> referenced as a bug somewhere that I can lookup?
>
> What I see from the CIFS protocol:
> -----
> When client B opens the file, the server must synchronize with client A
> in case client A has any buffered locks.  Once it is synchronized,
> client B's open request may be completed.  Client B, however, is
> informed that he has a level II oplock, rather than an exclusive oplock
> to the file.
> In this case, no client that has the file open with a level II oplock
> may buffer any lock information on the local client machine.  This
> allows the server to guarantee that if any write operation is performed,
> it need only notify the level II clients that the lock should be broken
> without having to synchronize all of the accessors of the file.
> The level II oplock may be broken to none, meaning that some client that
> had the file opened has now performed a write operation to the file.
> ----
>
> I do not understand whether Solaris fails to respect the level II oplock or
> how does Samba can be made aware of the kernel level oplocks (is there a no
> way?).
>
> BTW, to check it myself on what you said I ran samba-3.0.25 on a Linux
> machine with kernel version 2.4.21-47.0.1.ELsmp and ran smbd and then did
> the same tests.
>  - Ran java program on Windows which writes to the file continuously on a
> samba exported filesystem from a Linux box
>  - on the Linux terminal, I go and delete the file
>  - Windows does NOT recognise that there is a opened file deleted and the
> Java program does NOT thrown any exception... sadly.
>
> So, I do not have a Linux box with kernel -2.6, so if that means to say
> that Linux kernel has introduced kernel level oplocks facility in the 2.6
> kernel then I would have to try that...
>
> Thanks.
>


 Jeremy,

I looked at the enabling kernel oplocks in the samba configuration file and
I have enabled "kernel oplocks = yes" in the [global] section on both of
Linux-2.6.18-92 and Linux-2.4.21-47.0.1.ELsmp kernel machines running the
samba and I notice that the behaviour is not as what is said. I still do not
see the exception being NOT caught on Windows java program when I delete the
file from a Unix terminal.

Any idea, where I could be going wrong?