samba - Mar 2014 - 'document has been locked for editing by another user' - medium latency / limited bw connection issues?

Hi,

I hope some of you have been in a similar situation and can shed some light
on this:

I have a VPN connection to a Samba 4.1.4 server and when I use Word 2010 on
a W7 client to open an existing file I often get the following error:
"document.docx has been locked for editing by another user."
I should clarify that the document is not in use by anyone (confirmed by
smbstatus), and this happens on several documents.. including ones I just
created minutes ago myself.

I get this either 1) directly before I see the document (rarely), or 2)
after I clicked on 'Enable editing' due to being in 'Secure
Display' mode
('this file is from an internet location and is possibly unsafe').

I found out that if I wait long enough after opening the document, say: 10
seconds to be safe, then I can pretty much always click on 'Enable
Editing'
and edit the document without any errors.
I then used tcpdump, and there's indeed still a lot of traffic after I see
the document (but before I click 'enable editing'). If I wait for the
traffic to settle, then I can open the document with no problems.

I disabled the 'Windows Search' (Indexing) service, I temporarily
disabled
my anti-virus software... because I suspected either of them could be
accessing the file and thus causing a locked file, but it all didn't help.

The connection itself has a ping of around 20ms (I suppose that isn't high
latency, but much higher than LAN, anyway), and a bandwidth of xxx kb/s. The
test document is just 13kB, though.

Before I realized I simply had to wait, I started playing with 'strict
locking = no', 'kernel oplocks = no', 'kernel share modes =
no', even to the
point of 'locking = no' (but that's dangerous). This all didn't
help.
Actually disabling oplocks seemingly made the issue even worse, perhaps due
to Windows no longer caching the file and thus requiring more bandwidth /
packets = longer delay before I can use the file.

My question: is there any setting I can tweak to resolve or workaround this
issue? Either on the Samba side, or the Windows client side.

I can edit .txt files with notepad without any problems, but then again
notepad doesn't do any locking..

On a LAN pc I don't have any locking issues.

I would be surprised if I were the only one with this issue, VPN to Samba
and the use of Microsoft Office should all be quite common :)

Thanks,

Bram.

-- 
Bram Matthys
Software developer/IT consultant        syzop at vulnscan.org
Website:                                  www.vulnscan.org
PGP key:                       www.vulnscan.org/pubkey.asc
PGP fp: EBCA 8977 FCA6 0AB0 6EDB  04A7 6E67 6D45 7FE1 99A6

Am Montag 17 M?rz 2014 schrieb Bram Matthys:
> Hi,
> 
> I hope some of you have been in a similar situation and can shed some
> light on this:
We have a similar situation here in the company.
> I have a VPN connection to a Samba 4.1.4 server and when I use Word 2010
We have normal LAN and users are sometimes changing some config files of 
the CAD system. That means changing plain text files with either Notepad, 
Notepad++, gvim or Wordpad. The user can open the file but is not able to 
save a changed file.
> on a W7 client to open an existing file I often get the following
also W7 clients running the CAD system and the editors for changing
> error: "document.docx has been locked for editing by another
user."
Similar message

If the user creates the file new than he can save it. But if any user in 
the same UNIX primary group changed the file, the original creator is not 
able to edit the same file any more. Nor is he able to remove or copy the 
files. He can create new files and then he is able to do everything 
(delete, copying, editing). 

The share that stores the files is on the AIX machine. When the user logs 
into this machine he can do whatever he wants with the files according to 
the UNIX file permissions. Even another user has changed this file he still 
can edit the original file, which is not possible when this is done on the 
Windos client. 

Samba version 3.5.14
OS of the samba server: AIX 6.1.0.0
OS of client: Windows 7 


-- 
Mit freundlichen Gr??en
Matthias M?ller
(Benutzer #439779 im Linux-Counter http://counter.li.org)
PS: Bitte senden Sie als Antwort auf meine E-Mails reine Text-Nachrichten!
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Hi,

First of all, thanks Matthias for your response. It does however seem like
your issue is unrelated and has to do with permissions. I saw a few others
responded, hope it helps.

On to my own issue, as I found a fix:

Bram Matthys wrote, on 17-3-2014 18:21:
> I have a VPN connection to a Samba 4.1.4 server and when I use Word 2010 on
> a W7 client to open an existing file I often get the following error:
> "document.docx has been locked for editing by another user."
> I should clarify that the document is not in use by anyone (confirmed by
> smbstatus), and this happens on several documents.. including ones I just
> created minutes ago myself.
> 
> I get this either 1) directly before I see the document (rarely), or 2)
> after I clicked on 'Enable editing' due to being in 'Secure
Display' mode
> ('this file is from an internet location and is possibly unsafe').
> 
> I found out that if I wait long enough after opening the document, say: 10
> seconds to be safe, then I can pretty much always click on 'Enable
Editing'
> and edit the document without any errors.
Apparently when the office document is displayed and the 'Enable
Editing'
button is visible, the file is still being read by Office in the background.
Even if it's a very short file..
Normally not a problem, but when you click on 'Enable Editing' it is
still
being locked by Office itself and says it is in use. Rather silly, really...

I added the IP of my \\a.b.c.d\something connection to Intranet sites (this
is configured in internet explorer) to get rid of the warning in Office.
I didn't really mind the warning so I didn't think of this earlier.
However
by doing this I also took care of the file-in-use-problem.. as the document
is opened in edit mode right away and thus the whole problem of above is
avoided.

I've had no complaints since.

Regards,

Bram.

-- 
Bram Matthys
Software developer/IT consultant        syzop at vulnscan.org
Website:                                  www.vulnscan.org
PGP key:                       www.vulnscan.org/pubkey.asc
PGP fp: EBCA 8977 FCA6 0AB0 6EDB  04A7 6E67 6D45 7FE1 99A6