[seul-edu] File locking question with Samba

[Ryan Booz <ryanbooz@alumni.psu.edu>]

I'm wondering if anyone can give me some thoughts on some file locking
issues with Samba.

I have a couple of programs that came with texts for testing and such.
I'm trying to get them going one at a time and can't seem to get stable
results with any of them.  Basically, the program is installed on a
share for the class and everyone must have file read/write permissions
to a few files that hold the database for questions and scores so that
as students give answers and finish test they can be written to the
database and views later.

I've tried many different types of locking, oplocking, share modes
settings and can't seem to figure out what this type of program expects
from a file server to work well.  Of course the instructions and the
company seem to be of little help with the actual setup.  The only
instructions are that each user has to be able to write to the database
files (the specific files are given in the instructions) for it to
work.  But in a class of 20 students, about half the time it locks up at
the end when students try to finish the test, which is when the scores
are to be written.  Sometimes a message appears that "trying to unlock
the database because it is locked by another user: try x of 60".

This problem is very similar to another program we use in typing and I
had problems similar to this last year.  The database often became
corrupted.  The only help I got from the company is that Samba is not
supported by there help and that they could only tell me to make it work
like an NT server... allowing everyone read/write to the database files.

Any thoughts?  Anyone run into this problem with programs before?

Thanks,
Ryan Booz
Belleville Mennonite School

P.S.  Oh yeah, I've tried to look through the logs for each computer and
don't see anything obviously wrong, but I admit that I don't understand
each of the locking messages and such.