Graham Knight wrote:
I think i am running into bug 20270:
"Outlook users get access is denied (or similar) errors"
The bug report states the cifs.lvl2_oplocks_cap should be turned off in order to fix the problem. I have about to 8000 CIFS users and only a handful have had this kind of problem. What are the ramifications to my other 7990 users if I turn off level 2 oplocks to fix the 10 users that are having the problem?
Should i just ship the 10 problem users to an NT server?
Hi Graham,
The ramifications of disabling level-2 oplocks depend on what your clients are doing. In a nutshell: if your clients share files frequently with each other then you should expect to see an increase in file reads when you disable level-2 oplocks because level-2 oplocks tell clients that it's OK to cache reads locally. Level-2 oplocks only come into play when there are multiple file openers, so disabling level-2 won't do much if you don't share files much.
For example, if you had multiple NT clients doing compiles on a shared source tree, level-2 oplocks would allow the clients to cache the source files, speeding up subsequent compiles.
Outlook is affected by level-2 oplocks because it sometimes opens the same file more than once.
Level-2 oplocks aren't supported by Win9x, so those clients won't be affected at all.
Here's Microsoft's KnowledgeBase article on NT oplocks:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q129/2/02.asp
Bug 20270 is fixed in 5.3.4R3P1 (available now) and 5.3.5 (coming soon).
Matt