Windows native and system copy

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "GCC Consulting" <gcc at optonline.net>
To: "'Kenneth Brody'" <kenbrody at bestweb.net>; "'Nancy Palmquist'" 
<nlp at vss3.com>
Cc: "'Filepro 2 List'" <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 9:47 PM
Subject: RE: Windows native and system copy


>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: filepro-list-bounces at lists.celestial.com
>> [mailto:filepro-list-bounces at lists.celestial.com] On Behalf
>> Of Kenneth Brody
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 10:31 AM
>> To: Nancy Palmquist
>> Cc: Filepro 2 List
>> Subject: Re: Windows native and system copy
>>
>> Quoting Nancy Palmquist (Tue, 22 Mar 2005 10:15:56 -0500):
>> [...]
>> > Ken,
>> >
>> > While I understand you always work in a world where the OS works
>> > perfectly,
>>
>> Hardly.  I've had my XP systems bluescreen, and I know what
>> horrors await if my 98 box goes to 0% resources available
>> (it's currently down to 15%).  I even had a Unix box lock up
>> hard (no crash, no panic, just everything freezes for all
>> terminals immediately) when you tried to do the equivalent of
>> "unlink( (char *)-1L )" due to a bug in filePro at the time.
>>
>> > I also understand that we are talking about Windows and I
>> have yet to
>> > see any Windows version work perfectly.  There are always driver
>> > issues, network issues, OS bugs and no matter how many patches you
>> > install it is still broken in one way or another.
>>
>> I've run into plenty of issues.  However, I haven't (yet) run
>> into the problem of a file not being there until later.
>> Apparently, others have, and the SLEEP appears to work around
>> the system bug.
>>
>> > So if a small pause gives the wacky OS time to get itself together,
>> > then so be it.
>>
>> True.  On the other hand, what's going to happen when the
>> system bug requires a 6-second delay to work around?  ;-)
>>
>> --
>> KenBrody at BestWeb dot net        spamtrap:
> Ken,
>
> Change the sleep to 6000 or something longer.
>
> All that aside, the file I am copying is there, the problem is, I think, 
> that
> the OS still has it locked.  It is "taking its own sweet time" to release 
> it for
> other uses. :)
>
> Maybe this wouldn't be a problem if I ran the task from on of the XP
> workstations that are never shut
> off.  Maybe the network latency would compensate for any problems with the 
> task
> manager.
>
> Richard

Don't laugh.
A one second delay may actually BE the most technically correct answer 
because it may actually be what windows itself does.

I just read a very interesting comment in a Linux magazine article in an 
interview with a lead maintainer of Samba 3.x who works for HP.

Basically, the interviewer made a whimsical comment/prompt along the lines 
of "bug for bug compatible with windows?" and the Samba developers response 
was to describe just one example (presumably of many) of something they 
found where their code initially performed exactly according to all 
published specs. And yet, sometimes Excel will choke on a file shared via 
Samba, claiming it was open by someone else when it really wasn't.
What they found was that Excel was opening the file, getting an oplock, and 
then opening the file again right away without having released the first 
lock, violating it's own lock. Samba was quite sanely reporting a sharing 
violation on that second attempted open. Why does it only crash when the 
file is hosted via Samba and not when hosted on a Windows share? Because 
Windows does NOT generate a sharing violation for the 2nd open as long as 
the first open closes within one second. He said that behaviour isn't 
documented *anywhere* and they've also found differences between win2k and 
2k3 that indicate that sambas regression testing procedures are apparently 
more thorough than windows' own, else they'd have spotted the same 
differences and either corrected or documented them.

The article is here:
LinuxUser, Issue 46, page 47.

The cover looks like this, it's probably still on some shelves, I just got 
it today at a B&N, but it actually one issue old.
http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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