[Samba] Directory appears different dependent on access path

[Michael Adler]

Jeremy Allison <jra <at> samba.org> writes:

> 
> On Mon, Mar 05, 2012 at 09:50:46AM -0500, Michael Adler wrote:
> > I'm very confused by a recent home directory inconsistency and am
> > hoping someone can give me a clue where to look for the problem.  It
> > started when I used Adobe Illustrator to write a file to my home
> > directory on a Samba share.  Illustrator writes a new file by
> > creating a temporary file, completing the write, and then renaming
> > the file to the user-specified name.  What I see as the final result
> > is inconsistent:  from the Windows machine that created the file I
> > see what I would expect -- the name I specified exists.  On the
> > Samba host I see the temporary file name, with the correct contents,
> > and the rename appears never to have happened.
> 
> Does the Windows client actually request the rename ? Check the
> smbd logs.

No.  On the share with the failures I see just opening and closing the temporary
file and almost no other activity, yet from the perspective of the Windows
machine everything does complete.  On the share with no failures, resolving to
the same Unix drive, I see a lot of activity, including the file rename.  The
apparent states of \\foo\homes and \\foo\<user> when logged in as the user are
different: one has the temporary files, the other the renamed ones!  This all
from the same Windows machine.

The Windows box is behaving as though there is cached state for the directory,
when viewed as a particular share name, that is never flushed and is persistent
across reboots.  I've only seen this in the top level directory.