samba - Jul 2000 - Win 98 shares mounted on Linux box don't update

I'v set up my /etc/fstab on my Linux box with a line like

    //acct/public  /home/me/smb/acct  smbfs  noauto,user  0 0

where "public" is a shared directory on a Win98 machine called
"acct." When I issue a "mount //acct/public" command on my
Linux box,
the share is mounted at the appropriate point. An "ls" allows me to
see all the files and subdirectories in the share, and I can cp, rm,
mv, etc. to my heart's content. This is great; however...

The problem comes when someone else (say the user sitting at "acct")
adds files to or removes files from the "public" directory. If he adds
a file to the directory and I then issue an "ls," the newly-added file
does not get listed on my box. If he removes a file from "public" and
I
then issue an "ls," the name of the file still shows up in my listing
(if I do an "ls -l," the listing starts with an error message of the
form:

    ls: <filename>: No such file or directory

where <filename> is the name of the file that was removed). If I unmount
and then remount the share, the directory listing is correct.

This problem is only with mounted shares. If I access the share
through "smbclient" everything is fine; directory listings on the
Linux box always correctly reflect the current state of the shared
directory.

I'm running Samba 2.0.7 (things were the same with 2.0.5; I thought
an upgrade might cure the problem) on a fairly stock RedHat 6.1
(kernel 2.2.12-20). Thinking this might be a common problem, I tried
searching through the mailing list archives, but they're not
available right now. Sorry if this has been answered many times
before.

I'd appreciate any help. Please reply to my email address, as I an
not a subscriber to the list.

--
Mark Lawrence

On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Mark Lawrence wrote:
> The problem comes when someone else (say the user sitting at
"acct")
> adds files to or removes files from the "public" directory. If he
adds
> a file to the directory and I then issue an "ls," the newly-added
file
> does not get listed on my box. If he removes a file from "public"
and I
It's a caching problem in smbfs (not sure exactly which problem).

> I'm running Samba 2.0.7 (things were the same with 2.0.5; I thought
> an upgrade might cure the problem) on a fairly stock RedHat 6.1
smbmount only does the mount() call and sets up connections to the server.
After that it is mostly kernel related (smbfs). So you have been upgrading
the wrong thing (well, not a complete waste of time 2.0.7 smbmount is a
lot better and more stable than 2.0.5 :)

> (kernel 2.2.12-20). Thinking this might be a common problem, I tried
Could you try upgrading to 2.2.16? I'm sure there are rpm's for that
somewhere or compile your own. The directory caching in smbfs has been
modified and hopefully improved since 2.2.12.

It still has one known problem, but try 2.2.16 and if that doesn't work I
can send you a oneline patch that tries to make things better.


/Urban