[PLUG] Access and Samba

Don Buchholz buchholz at easystreet.com
Mon Sep 9 01:47:41 UTC 2002


Carla Schroder wrote:
> Any brave souls out there try sharing an Access database via Samba? I have a 
> client who has a large number of custom order forms (Visual basic of course) 
> in Access. He is retiring his NT4 server, and replacing it with Linux. The 
> Linux box will be a domain controller, file server, and email server with 
> Postfix. (Firewall is a separate Snapgear box)
> 
> Someday down the road he may migrate to PostgreSQL or something similar, but 
> for now it has to be Access.
> 
> As there will be no Windows server, he wants to put the Access .mdb on the 
> Linux box, for the users on the Windows clients. Databases are tricky beasts, 
> will it work? I'm going to try it out on my test system, if anyone has real 
> experiences to share that would be very nice. I find conflicting information 
> via Google, some say it can be done, some say not.
> 

One word of caution -- I had to add "oplocks=no" to a SAMBA share
holding a QuickBooks Pro 2000 shared data file.  Like Access, it
stores data in a single file, and then allows multiple users to open
it and modify different areas of the file.

I don't remember all the details ... just that I had to search
Google for a few hours to make some Samba error messages (and
QuickBooks problems) go away.

I don't know if Access uses the "opportunistic locks".





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