[Samba] Can Samba lock files until copy is complete?

[Whit Blauvelt]

Hi,

We've got a system where staff use Samba mounts on their Windows desktops to
drop files into a Linux directory for further processing. Some of those
files are large, and take time for the file copy across Samba to complete.

The problem is that looking at the directory from the Linux side, to see if
there are new files to process, the directory listing for the
files-copied-across-by-Samba looks the same for complete files as for
partial ones - same file name, same perms. We have been handling this by a
script which checks for files whose size hasn't increased in the last X
seconds. That's not only an ugly kludge, but fails if system load or network
congestion stalls the file transfer for too long - the partial file then
gets "recognized" as complete when its not, and taken for further processing
when it shouldn't be yet.

There's got to be a better way. Looking at the docs I see options for
different ways to lock files against being written to by two users at once.
But I don't see anything to prevent a file from being read by one user as
it's being written to by another - or in the initial process of being
written to the directory location through copying, as in our case.

I've tried, of course, googling the list archives. Maybe my search terms are
poorly chosen. This has to be a problem that's been solved before, right?

Whit