[Samba] change notify or something

[Strnad Michal]

Hello all,

I hope someone could help me to find some (either Samba or Windows XP) configuration settings which would solve the following problems we ar acurrently facing or identify the below described problem being a bug eventually.

We have a production Samba 3.5.1 with CTDB clustering on top of GPFS filesystem. Samba is a Windows domain member server serving a number of SMB shares.
The strange behavior we see is as follows:
Two client systems (Win XP) have one share connected under different users' credentials.
After the shares are initialy connected (when user logs in and the share connects automatically) on both clients, we see any change done on one client (directory creation/deletion) nearly immediately on the other client also. Up till now the behavior is as expected.
After a restart of the smbd daemon the changes done on one client are not reflected on the other client anymore and manual refresh (F5) is needed. This status lasts until the share is disconnected and reconnected again (eg. Logout and log back in). Then the change notification works again on the client with the connection "renewed". The same behavior applies to both NT explorer and most application's "open dialog"
The above applies also to situation when the share is connected on the two clients using same user credentials.

There's another related problem which is actually even more annoing to us and preventing the system to become productive for some of the users.
These use application ProEngineer Wildfire 4.0. The open dialog of this particular application is never reflecting any changes in the directory done by other user connected from other client machine. Not even with refresh button clicked manually.
When the share is mounted using the same user account on both clients, then at least the refresh button works but no "change notification".

When the Samba services are restarted "under" these mounted shares, the ProE's open dialog gets refreshed after the refresh button is clicked no matter of the users used to mount the share on both clients.

The above described is tested in test environments on both clustered and non-clustered Samba servers and Samba versions of 3.5.1 and 3.5.3. Also it is tested against Samba domain member server as well as Samba with local authentification only. In all cases the behavior is just the same.

Below you can find the smb.conf used in the clustered Samba without domain membership.

Any comment and suggestions are welcome.

Kind regards

Michal Strnad

[root at smbs4p ~]# net conf list
[global]
        netbios name = SMBS4
        server string = smbs4
        passdb backend = tdbsam
        client NTLMv2 auth = Yes
        max log size = 50
        socket options = SO_KEEPALIVE IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=65536 SO_SNDBUF=65536
        ctdbd socket = /tmp/ctdb.socket
        clustering = Yes
        private dir = /nethome/ctdbSharedRoot
        dns proxy = No
        ldap ssl = no
        idmap backend = tdb2
        fileid:mapping = fsname
        nfs4:mode = special
        nfs4:chown = yes
        nfs4:acedup = merge
        force unknown acl user = Yes
        map readonly = permissions
        max xmit = 65536
        printing = bsd
        printcap name = /dev/null
        load printers = no
        deadtime = 15
        gpfs:leases = yes
        groupdb:backend = tdb
        fileid:algorithm = fsname
        gpfs:sharemodes = yes
        disable spoolss = yes
        use mmap = no
        kernel oplocks = yes
        host msdfs = no
        vfs objects = shadow_copy2 syncops gpfs fileid
        shadow:snapdir = .snapshots
        shadow:fixinodes = yes
        smbd:backgroundqueue = False
        use sendfile = yes
        strict locking = yes
        posix locking = yes
        large readwrite = yes
        smb ports = 445
        cluster addresses = 10.217.18.35 10.217.16.92
        debug pid = yes
        debug prefix timestamp = yes
        dos filemode = yes
        log file = /var/log/samba.log
        log level = 5
        security = user
        workgroup = S1-TEST
        notify:inotify = no

[proe]
        path = /nethome/proe
        read only = no
        create mask = 0665
        directory mask = 0775
        map readonly = no
        store dos attributes = yes
        force group = staff
        valid users = d350019 d346935
        browseable = no