samba - Jan 2007 - File Lock Timeout

Hi,

I've seen posts (but no answers) about clearing a file lock on a Samba
share. Presumably this kind of thing happens when the program abnormally
terminates and doesn't close its open files.

I've got a file that smbstatus reports as:

1216   DENY_WRITE 0x20089     RDONLY     NONE            
/shares/share1/Files/december.xls   Fri Jan 12 12:51:30 2007

Trying to open this in Excel says it's locked for editing by the user who
reports that they definitely don't have it open.

So I'm guessing this lock will eventually time out. But after how long? I
can't find any documentation on this. But it looks like it's longer than
2 hours!

Thanks for any help,

Leon...

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On Fri, Jan 12, 2007 at 03:21:10PM +0000, Stringer Leon (West Midlands Ambulance
Service NHS Trust) wrote:
> I've seen posts (but no answers) about clearing a file
> lock on a Samba share. Presumably this kind of thing
> happens when the program abnormally terminates and doesn't
> close its open files.
> 
> I've got a file that smbstatus reports as:
> 
> 1216   DENY_WRITE 0x20089     RDONLY     NONE            
/shares/share1/Files/december.xls   Fri Jan 12 12:51:30 2007
> 
> Trying to open this in Excel says it's locked for editing
> by the user who reports that they definitely don't have it
> open.
> 
> So I'm guessing this lock will eventually time out. But
> after how long? I can't find any documentation on this.
> But it looks like it's longer than 2 hours!
If the client who is being served by process 1216 is still
around you should ask the user sitting at that box to close
the file. If not, kill pid 1216 and the problem should solve
itself.

If this happens frequently to you, you might want to read
about the option 'reset on zero vc' in the manpage of
smb.conf.

Volker
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>From: Volker Lendecke <Volker.Lendecke@SerNet.DE>  
>On Fri, Jan 12, 2007 at 03:21:10PM +0000, Stringer Leon (West Midlands
Ambulance Service NHS Trust) wrote:
>> I've seen posts (but no answers) about clearing a file
>> lock on a Samba share. Presumably this kind of thing
>> happens when the program abnormally terminates and doesn't
>> close its open files.
>> 
>> I've got a file that smbstatus reports as:
>> 
>> 1216   DENY_WRITE 0x20089     RDONLY     NONE            
/shares/share1/Files/december.xls   Fri Jan 12 12:51:30 2007
>> 
>> So I'm guessing this lock will eventually time out. But
>> after how long? I can't find any documentation on this.
>> But it looks like it's longer than 2 hours!
>
>If the client who is being served by process 1216 is still
>around you should ask the user sitting at that box to close
>the file. If not, kill pid 1216 and the problem should solve
>itself.
Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately that doesn't help as the user is one of
many on a terminal server and all files for that box are listed with pid 1216.
So killing that would cause a lot of problems (I assume).
>If this happens frequently to you, you might want to read
>about the option 'reset on zero vc' in the manpage of
>smb.conf.
I'll check that out...

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>From: Volker Lendecke <Volker.Lendecke@SerNet.DE>  
>On Fri, Jan 12, 2007 at 04:02:37PM +0000, Stringer Leon (West Midlands
Ambulance Service NHS Trust) wrote:
>> Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately that doesn't help as
>> the user is one of many on a terminal server and all files
>> for that box are listed with pid 1216. So killing that
>> would cause a lot of problems (I assume).
>
>But then the file is still being held open by some process
>on the file server.
Yes, so either I have to wait for a timeout so the one user can edit their file
or I can kill the process removing the locks for everyone else. So I have to
wait, which was my original question, how long for?

The lock has gone now, but this problem has happened before and is bound to
happen again. If I remember correctly, Windows allows you to close the locks on
individual files, it would be nice if Samba did this too...

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On Fri, Jan 12, 2007 at 04:20:56PM +0000, Stringer Leon (West Midlands Ambulance
Service NHS Trust) wrote:
> >But then the file is still being held open by some process
> >on the file server.
> 
> Yes, so either I have to wait for a timeout so the one
> user can edit their file or I can kill the process
> removing the locks for everyone else. So I have to wait,
> which was my original question, how long for?
This particular kind of lock (a share mode) does not have a
timeout, this is completely client-driven.
> The lock has gone now, but this problem has happened
> before and is bound to happen again. If I remember
> correctly, Windows allows you to close the locks on
> individual files, it would be nice if Samba did this
> too...
Yep. Can you file a bug at bugzilla.samba.org with prio
"enhancement" so that it does not get forgotten?

Thanks,

Volker
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>From: Volker Lendecke <Volker.Lendecke@SerNet.DE>  
>On Fri, Jan 12, 2007 at 04:20:56PM +0000, Stringer Leon (West Midlands
Ambulance Service NHS Trust) wrote:
>> The lock has gone now, but this problem has happened
>> before and is bound to happen again. If I remember
>> correctly, Windows allows you to close the locks on
>> individual files, it would be nice if Samba did this
>> too...
>
>Yep. Can you file a bug at bugzilla.samba.org with prio
>"enhancement" so that it does not get forgotten?
Sure: https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4338

Many thanks for your help!

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co-operation.
 
NHSmail is used daily by over 100,000 staff in the NHS. Over a million
messages  are sent every day by the system.  To find  out why more and
more NHS personnel are  switching to  this NHS  Connecting  for Health
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