samba - Jan 2004 - syncing file dates between windows nt4 and samba 3.0

Hi all,...


... currently I am trying to get hold of a strange error which is 
successfully keeping me from sleeping the last week. Basically, I am 
running a DebianGNU/Linux based machine with samba 3.0.0 as a backup 
server for an amount of Windows NT4 workstations. There is an old backup 
"framework" around here, basically a collection of .bat files on the 
workstations which at night run xcopy /d to copy files from the 
workstation to the backup server (which used to be an NT4 server before, 
as well). This procedure by now was intented to only copy modified files 
from workstation to backup, which worked pretty well...

This is not the case with Samba, however. Basically, the Samba server is 
part of the local NT domain, access permissions are fine so far, yet 
xcopy each and every time is copying _all_ files to the backup server 
instead of just those which didn't change. And, by now, no matter which 
files or directories I am copying there - if they already exist on the 
samba machine, they're obviously updated, but their timestamp doesn't 
change while doing this.

After playing around with dos filetime and fake directory create 
filetimes without any success: Can anyone enlighten me in this topic?


TIA, have a fine weekend everyone!
Kris

Kristian Rink schrieb:
> workstations which at night run xcopy /d to copy files from the 
> files or directories I am copying there - if they already exist on the 
> samba machine, they're obviously updated, but their timestamp
doesn't
> After playing around with dos filetime and fake directory create 
> filetimes without any success: Can anyone enlighten me in this topic?
Hmm, no real solution but the update stops if you make a touch on the samba
server on all files. And
a system with disabled ntfslastAccess doesn't update every time with xcopy
/d.
Looks as if this behaviour comes from differences in creation, access and
changed times. (touch sets
all of them to current time)
And robocopy only picks the real changes, maybe you can use that.

    Holger

If you are just trying to backup the files from NT 
to SAMBA, I'd use xcopy /m instead.  /m copies 
files with the archive attribute set, and then 
turns off the archive attribute.  That way you 
don't have to worry about the dates. 
 
Dan 
 
>Kristian Rink schrieb: 
> 
>> workstations which at night run xcopy /d to copy 
files from the  
> 
>> files or directories I am copying there - if 
they already exist on the  
>> samba machine, they're obviously updated, but 
their timestamp doesn't  
> 
>> After playing around with dos filetime and fake 
directory create  
>> filetimes without any success: Can anyone 
enlighten me in this topic? 
>

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On 10 Jan 2004 at 19:15, Holger Krull wrote:
> Kristian Rink schrieb:
> > workstations which at night run xcopy /d to copy files from the 
> 
> > files or directories I am copying there - if they already exist
on the 
> > samba machine, they're obviously updated, but their timestamp
doesn't 
> 
> > After playing around with dos filetime and fake directory create 
> > filetimes without any success: Can anyone enlighten me in this
topic?

<Sorry for posting here, I subscribed after the first message>

What systems are in use?  I ask because I had a similar
always-updating problem when mirroring a website onto a FAT32
partition.  FAT's timestamps are only kept to 2-second precision
(IIRC), but the website was on EXT2.  The FAT system appeared to
round the timestamps *down*, so every time wget compared them it
thought my copy was old.  I found that putting a 'touch *' at the end
of that script took care of the problem.

If that really is the cause of your problem, you could put an extra
command in those BAT files ("copy C:\something .\update.now") to
signal a cron job that it needs to touch everything.  It would be
nice to have a "--plus-one-minute" option in touch...

- -- 
Through the modem, off the server, over the T1, past the frame-relay,
< < NOTHIN' BUT NET > >
 
Daniel Johnson
Progman2000@usa.net
http://dannyj.come.to/
Public PGP Keys & other info: http://dannyj.come.to/pgp/


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