samba - Apr 2008 - Strange behaviour regarding timestamps when copying files

Hi all,

we observed a strange effect when copying an file within a samba
share: Both atime an mtime of the target file are set to the mtime
of the original file. The atime of the original file is updated to
the current time.


1. Status of the original file:

# stat test.txt
    File: `test.txt'
    Size: 3               Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 811h/2065d      Inode: 58721415    Links: 1
Access: (0777/-rwxrwxrwx)  Uid: (  609/ testuser)   Gid: (  800/testgroup)
Access: 2008-04-25 11:10:38.876386411 +0200
Modify: 2008-04-24 13:31:52.554637383 +0200
Change: 2008-04-24 13:49:26.615046291 +0200

2. Copying the file using a Windows XP SP2 box:

     X:\> copy test.txt test2.txt

3. Status of the target file:

# stat test2.txt
    File: `test2.txt'
    Size: 3               Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 811h/2065d      Inode: 58721425    Links: 1
Access: (0775/-rwxrwxr-x)  Uid: (  609/ testuser)   Gid: (  800/testgroup)
Access: 2008-04-24 13:31:52.000000000 +0200
Modify: 2008-04-24 13:31:52.000000000 +0200
Change: 2008-04-25 11:10:38.881383030 +0200



When copying the same file on the server with 'cp', all timestamps
of the target file are updated.

# cp test.txt test3.txt

# stat test.txt
    File: `test.txt'
    Size: 3               Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 811h/2065d      Inode: 58721415    Links: 1
Access: (0777/-rwxrwxrwx)  Uid: (  609/ testuser)   Gid: (  800/testgroup)
Access: 2008-04-29 10:39:42.676283318 +0200
Modify: 2008-04-24 13:31:52.554637383 +0200
Change: 2008-04-24 13:49:26.615046291 +0200

# stat test3.txt
    File: `test3.txt'
    Size: 3               Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 811h/2065d      Inode: 58721426    Links: 1
Access: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
Access: 2008-04-29 10:39:42.675283834 +0200
Modify: 2008-04-29 10:39:42.675283834 +0200
Change: 2008-04-29 10:39:42.675283834 +0200



We verified this behaviour with several samba versions beginning
with 2.2.3 up to 3.0.26. This is the minimalistic smb.conf we used
for testing (with samba 3.x):

[global]
          workgroup = TEST
          passdb backend = ldapsam:ldaps://172.16.112.1
          preferred master = No
          local master = No
          domain master = No
          ldap admin dn = cn=admin,o=leistritz
          ldap suffix = o=leistritz
          printing = bsd

[data]
          comment = data
          path = /data
          read only = No


A Windows Server behaves differently:
here, only the atime of the target file is updated on copy, along
with the creation time which sadly is not available on Unix.

One of our applications appears to get confused by this behaviour,
so we are looking for a way to mimic the MS Windows handling of
timestamps (or at least how Unix does it).


Thanks,
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