Hidden, system, readonly attributes do not work as expected on OS/2

[guest]

Clients (WinXP and Netdrive) see files on the server, that have the hidden and/or system attribute set.

Clients (WinXP and Netdrive) seem to be able to change hidden, system, readonly attributes, but the attributes don't stick (it appears the server ignores these changes.

Clients (WinXP and Netdrive) can delete files on the server that have readonly attribute set.

[psmedley]

http://smedley.info/smbdtest.zip is a first attempt at fixing this - attributes of files that preexist on the server at least are recognised with WinXP client.

[guest]

Sjoerd Vissers comment on ecomstation.support.networking:

This formulation does not take into account several features of samba and CIFS. I don't think they are bugs, but they are merely the result of some confusion between classic DOS attributes and the DOS attributes emulation of samba on UNIX file systems.

Samba was developed for UNIX filesystems, not for DOS, Windows and OS/2 filesystems.

UNIX filesytems do not know the DOS attributes hidden, system, readonly, so samba ignores them when it reads the filesystem of the server that can make use of it. This explains the samba behavior under (1) and (3).

Samba makes use of the the UGO user right system of UNIX filesytems and can superimpose on this extra restrictions on samba shares (like read only). Under OS/2 the UGO permissions can only be simulated with security/2.

Because Windows clients expected to see DOS attributes on their own filesystems and on their shares (Windows NT servers), the samba team emulated them on the server. The DOS attributes were laid down in the extended attributes of the server filesystem and had only meaning when used by samba.

See fi: http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba-technical/2003-July/030879.html

To make use of it you have enter in smb.conf.

[global] store dos attributes = Yes

If you don't do this (2) will apply.

But when doing this under OS/2 you must realize again that the samba DOS attributes have nothing to do with the classic DOS attributes. Making a file RO via netdrive does not change its DOS atributes on the server, but changes its extended attributes.

You can see this is if you study files made RO via samba with EABrowwser. They have a section USER.DOSATTRIB having the value of 0x12.