I've recently just resubscribed to the mailing list so my apologies if this has been discussed in the last 4 to 5 months while I was off. And the archive search seems to be down - I get: Not Found The requested URL /search/smb-mail.shtml was not found on this server. Sorry for the long message, but I didn't want to leave any necessary details out. Anyway, my wife's office is having some computer stability problems and I'm wondering if Linux with samba might give them more stability. They've got about 3 or 4 computers that share an Access database. All the machines are running Windows 9[58] (no NT/2000). I don't know the exact setup (and my wife doesn't have the computer knowledge to tell me), but I'm assuming the database is stored on one computer and they're all shared with Network Neighborhood. A friend of a friend stopped by the office today and suggested they get an NT server with Back Office and SQL server (but that's all he knows) instead of the peer-to-peer setup they have now. Give that he doesn't know anything about Unix/Linux, I wondered if there isn't a better and less expensive solution in Linux and Samba. I'm thinking of getting a box running Linux with samba and putting the database on it and then have all the Windows clients access (no pun intended) the database off of it. I don't understand exactly how Access (I think they have the Office 97 version) works exactly as far as file/record locking, etc. when multiple computers are sharing the same database and how this might interact with samba. Will multiple Windows clients be able to change different records in the database at the same time and will samba and Access prevent two clients from trying to change the same record at the same time? It shouldn't ever happen, but it'd be nice to know I don't have to worry about it. I figure this must be a fairly common setup so someone on the list can tell me it will work fine.>From what I've gotten from the MS "paper clip guy" help, it appearsthat Access can do "record locking" and from the "Using Samba" book, it appears that this type of file locking is the default for Samba - correct? The database file is probably around 50MB in size and there will only be 2 or 3 simultaneous clients (accessing very small portions of the database) so I don't expect any performance problems. I figured a Celeron 400 with 128MB of memory should be more than enough power to do the job. I've got samba running on my Linux box at home for sharing files with my wife's Windows computer but don't have a third computer hooked up to my network to experiment with it (and of course, all I could do with that is prove it doesn't work, not prove it will will always work). I'm certainly not a samba expert, but this simple setup needed at the office (no password protections, etc.) shouldn't be any more complicated than what I've got at home. Can anyone tell me I don't have to worry about file corruption and simultaneous connections will work fine (as long as they are accessing different records in the database) with this setup? Thanks, Dave
[Dave Reed <dreed@capital.edu>]> A friend of a friend stopped by the office today and suggested they > get an NT server with Back Office and SQL server (but that's all he > knows) instead of the peer-to-peer setup they have now. Give that he > doesn't know anything about Unix/Linux, I wondered if there isn't a > better and less expensive solution in Linux and Samba.Cheaper? Not too hard. SQL Server is a couple thousand bucks if you have more than a few client machines, and NT Server is at least several hundred dollars. Better? Hard to say. There are still some things Samba can't do as well as NT, though all in all I think the balance tipped some time ago. And, of course, some people place a *huge* amount of value on the ability to point-n-click their way through system administration. I don't understand it, but I've observed it....> I'm thinking of getting a box running Linux with samba and putting > the database on it and then have all the Windows clients access (no > pun intended) the database off of it. I don't understand exactly how > Access (I think they have the Office 97 version) works exactly as far > as file/record locking, etc. when multiple computers are sharing the > same database and how this might interact with samba.There *have* been some reports of Access not getting along well with Samba servers. (Access is a lousy piece of work anyway, so quite possibly these are locking bugs that NT doesn't happen to trigger.) I don't know the status of these reports. It might help to turn off oplock support in Samba. My suggestion, if you're willing to invest a little more setup time, would be to migrate to the free, industrial-strength PostgreSQL database backend as opposed to the rather pathetic Jet Engine (the Access `*.mdb' backend). PostgreSQL comes with an ODBC driver (which you can find precompiled for Windows if you look around a bit), so if you install that on all the client machines, they can continue to use Access as the frontend. Needless to say, PostgreSQL supports record locking. The main disadvantage would be file sharing off-site.... Peter