[Samba] Windows XP and SAMBA: "file changed" popup

[Marcello Romani]

Il 29/10/2010 09:37, Jochen Hebbrecht ha scritto:
> Following issue only occurs on a Windows XP system (it doesn't happen on
> Windows 7)
>
> I have Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) server with samba 3.5.4. The server has a
> samba share and another PC (which has Windows XP as operating system) is
> connected to that share through a network drive. On the share, there are PHP
> files which can be changed by a developer. The files are also available by
> HTTP using an Apache HTTPD VirtualHost.
>
> So, the developer has some PHP files open in PHPDesigner 7. He makes a
> change and he wants to see his change in the browser (e.g.: Firefox). He
> refreshes the page and he sees the result. Now, he returns to PHPDesigner
> ... but ... PHPDesigner is telling him: "This file has changed, do you want
> to reload it?".
>
> The problem is: the file hasn't been changed, but the access time of the
> file has. I had a look at this issue and I noticed there's no creation date
> on Unix level. So in Windows, creation date is access time ... which makes
> Windows XP thinks the file has been changed as it was accessed ...
>
> Any idea's how we can solve this?

I have a very similar issue: MPLAB IDE code editor says "source file xxx 
has changed, do you want to reload it ?" every time I build a project, 
even though no modification has been made to the source file. The entire 
project is hosted on a mapped drive on a debian system. The MPLAB IDE is 
installed on Windows XP SP3.

There are no other problems a part from this annoying popup alert.

fileserver:~# cat /etc/debian_version
5.0.6

fileserver:~# smbd --version
Version 3.2.5

I belive windows is reading file atime as if it was mtime, thus thinking 
file has changed.

Thanks for any hints.

-- 
Marcello Romani