samba - Jun 2007 - directory list is not alphabetically sorted

Hi,

Created some files and directories on a Samba 3.0.22 Linux server  from an 
Windows Samba client using this chronological order :
cc
aa
zz
bb
yy
ww
rr
ss
tt (directory)
mm (directory)
oo (directory)
jj (directory)

The directory list on Windows Samba client (via dir command without any 
options) shows the following:

Y:\toto>dir
 Volume in drive Y is MXX
 Volume Serial Number is 12E4-00F3

 Directory of Y:\toto

11/06/2007  15:18    <DIR>          .
11/06/2007  15:01    <DIR>          ..
11/06/2007  15:01                12 zz
11/06/2007  15:18    <DIR>          oo
11/06/2007  15:00                11 cc
11/06/2007  15:18    <DIR>          jj
11/06/2007  15:04                 9 rr
11/06/2007  15:18    <DIR>          mm
11/06/2007  15:04                12 ss
11/06/2007  15:03                11 ww
11/06/2007  15:01                13 aa
11/06/2007  15:03                16 yy
11/06/2007  15:01                 9 bb
11/06/2007  15:18    <DIR>          tt
               8 File(s)             93 bytes
               6 Dir(s)   2 609 844 224 bytes free

Same behaviour with an OS2 Samba client.

Using an OS2 Lan server instead Linux Samba server, the dir command 
without any option, show an alphabetically sorted list across files and 
directories.
Some applications rely on this alphabetical order. (for good or bad 
reasons...)
Is there a way to recover the same behaviour ?

Using the ls -l command on the linux fileserver, the directory list is 
alphabetically sorted : (just what we want)

[B2:fsetssd1l1:root] > ls -l
total 48
-rwxrwxr-x  1 ADMINOCS shetssgrp   13 jun 11 15:01 aa
-rwxrwxr-x  1 ADMINOCS shetssgrp    9 jun 11 15:01 bb
-rwxrwxr-x  1 ADMINOCS shetssgrp   11 jun 11 15:00 cc
drwxrwxr-x  2 ADMINOCS shetssgrp 4096 jun 11 15:18 jj
drwxrwxr-x  2 ADMINOCS shetssgrp 4096 jun 11 15:18 mm
drwxrwxr-x  2 ADMINOCS shetssgrp 4096 jun 11 15:18 oo
-rwxrwxr-x  1 ADMINOCS shetssgrp    9 jun 11 15:04 rr
-rwxrwxr-x  1 ADMINOCS shetssgrp   12 jun 11 15:04 ss
drwxrwxr-x  2 ADMINOCS shetssgrp 4096 jun 11 15:18 tt
-rwxrwxr-x  1 ADMINOCS shetssgrp   11 jun 11 15:03 ww
-rwxrwxr-x  1 ADMINOCS shetssgrp   16 jun 11 15:03 yy
-rwxrwxr-x  1 ADMINOCS shetssgrp   12 jun 11 15:01 zz

Why does Samba & Linux not show the same order ?

Regards,

No idea on this point ?

On Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 05:42:06PM +0200, Alain.Gorlier@altissemiconductor.com
wrote:
> No idea on this point ?
Not really. Samba just does not sort the directory before
shipping it to the client. For huge directories this would
be way too expensive. We could certainly implement this, but
so far we have viewed directory sorting to be a client task,
and we got away with it pretty well. If critical
applications change under that behaviour, our view might
change though.

Volker
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> Not really. Samba just does not sort the directory before
shipping it to the client. For huge directories this would
be way too expensive. We could certainly implement this, but
so far we have viewed directory sorting to be a client task,
and we got away with it pretty well. If critical
applications change under that behaviour, our view might
change though.

Since we have Windows and OS2 application viewers of huge directories, it 
impacts our users.
They have now to scroll big number of pages or use search functions with 
patterns multiple times.
There are not critical applications, but it is a bit of pain for users.

Anyway, is there a rule of the way samba server lists filenames ? 
If we stop/start samba server, the directory list order is kept, so it 
sounds like there is a rule, but which ?

Thanks,