[Samba] Date Changed on Read Access

Stefan Maly
Fri, 12 Sep 2003 13:09:19 -0000

Hi everyone,

I recently stumbled across something odd. When opening MS-PowerPoint
files (.ppt)
on our samba servers it seems that with certain versions of MS-Office
the file date is
being changed while just viewing the slides. There is no change involved
and
MS-PowerPoint is closed immediately after viewing without saving or
anything.

We run Samba on S.u.S.E LINUX.
We use both XFS and ReiserFS.
The effect holds true for both the versions 2.2.3a and 2.2.0a of smbd.

It should be noted that on the share concerned we work with both the
force user and
the force group option.

The change of the file date does happen if it is being accessed by
MS-Office 2000
and does not happen if it is Office XP.

The change of the file date does not happen on filetypes .XLS .DOC .TXT
.ZIP etc.

+ Have any of you encountered the same?
+ Is there a workaround/solution (except not to use the product causing
trouble of course ...)?
+ How does Samba handle the four different dates (created, last access,
last write, change)
   in a read operation (just update last access, right?)?

T.I.A.
Stefan