[Samba] Files Received by Samba v3.5.8 Time (atime) Incorrect

[Roome, David M (USA)]

We have Samba v3.5.8 packages installed on Solaris 10 which is used for an enterprise print service.  Jobs arrive in a directory patch on the Solaris 10 system when they are dropped on an SMB share from Windows.  Our observer application uses mtime on Solaris 10 to sort jobs so that we achieve FIFO job order for printing.  When dropping 5 1k byte files onto the SMB share one at a time or serially they are listed in reverse order using mtime, so the file dropped on the SMB folder first is listed with the newest time stamp.  For example, the files were dropped by the SMB share in the order below:


1.     test-05.txt

2.     test-04.txt

3.     test-03.txt

4.     test-02.txt

5.     test-01.txt

When listing these files according to mtime on Solaris it displays the following:

mtime: time of last modification or last write (ls -lE)

WRONG


1.     23:32:56.302696000 -0400          test-01.txt

2.     23:33:14.571522000 -0400          test-02.txt

3.     23:33:26.465712000 -0400          test-03.txt

4.     23:33:36.484713000 -0400          test-04.txt

5.     23:33:50.489114000 -0400          test-05.txt

They these same jobs are listed using ctime and atime they are listed in FIFO order.  See the times below:

ctime: time of last status change (ls -cE)

CORRECT


5.     10:10:58.843811277 -0400          test-01.txt

4.     10:10:51.901894803 -0400          test-02.txt

3.     10:10:45.277597003 -0400          test-03.txt

2.     10:10:36.989560430 -0400          test-04.txt

1.     10:10:30.227691255 -0400          test-05.txt

atime: time of last access (ls -uE)

CORRECT


5.     10:10:58.059458000 -0400          test-01.txt

4.     10:10:51.165835000 -0400          test-02.txt

3.     10:10:44.554571000 -0400          test-03.txt

2.     10:10:36.202515000 -0400          test-04.txt

1.     10:10:29.498047000 -0400          test-05.txt

When these same jobs are batch submitted using SFTP in the same order they do show up in FIFO order for mtime.  There must be something quirky about the way that SMB works.  Can anyone explain this, or is there some way that this information can be reviewed by those that implement and support Samba?  Thanks!

David