We have some Excel spreadsheets stored on our Samba 2.2.8 fileserver. The permissions are set such that some users can write to these and some cannot, but they can all read them (the world-readable bit is set).
When a user with read/write access tries to open the spreadsheet, there is no problem. The user is happy and productive and outside the sun is shining. Excellent! Have a biscuit! When a user with only read permission tries to open the spreadsheet, however, Excel fails to open it, saying that it cannot find the file. Auditing the actions taken on the Samba server shows that Excel actually opens the file several times in read-only mode, then tries to open it in read-write mode (which fails, as the user does not have the appropriate permissions). Excel presumably interprets this failure to open the file as "oh, the file isn't there then". Oh dear! No biscuit for you, naughty Excel! Clearly this is an application bug in Excel. Unfortunately my users don't quite see it that way, pointing out that opening files from a read-only share on a Windows machine or from a CD-ROM works fine. It is this disparity between the behaviour of Windows and Samba SMB server implementations that is concerning them. Chances of getting Microsoft to fix this bug are ... zero? Perhaps less? Does anyone have a good workaround for this problem? Perhaps the server should indicate to the client that the file is read-only? Or perhaps the server shouldn't fail the "open for write" operation, but instead return an "opened, but read-only" response (if the protocol allows for this). Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! Will _________________________________________________________________________ William R Sowerbutts [EMAIL PROTECTED] Coder / Guru / Nrrrd http://sowerbutts.com main(){char*s=">#=0> [EMAIL PROTECTED]@^7=",c=0,m;for(;c<15;c++)for (m=-1;m<7;putchar(m++/6&c%3/2?10:s[c]-31&1<<m?42:32));} -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
