Hello, all.

I am having issues with Windows Desktop Search 2.6 (herein WDS; a local file indexer similar to Beagle and Google Desktop) and a recently deployed Samba server. For this to make sense, here is my setup and back-story.

Home folders were housed on an older Samba 3 server, with the user’s My Documents folder redirected to their home folder. WDS is set up to index the contents of a user’s e-mail and My Documents folder, and has worked without fail for months. I recently migrated the home folders over to a newly deployed Samba 3 server, and in doing so, WDS would enter endless indexing loops. That is, it would scan the home folder for changes, reindex sixty-someodd files, finish, and go idle. Not even ten seconds would pass when the indexer would rescan the home folder, reindex the same sixty-someodd files, finish, go idle, and the cycle would start anew. This creates a lot of disk activity on both the client and server, and has gotten quite irritating.

I weeded out software failure on the client by reinstalling WDS, re-imaging the client OS, and trying it on multiple client workstations. Nothing has helped, leaving the server as the problem. I looked at its smb.conf file; it’s a very vanilla configuration, like the server it replaced, so I’m not sure where the problem could lie. The only fundamental difference between the two is the new server utilizes user-level security whereas its predecessor utilized share-level. How this could make a functional difference for a file indexer I don’t know, so I’ve scratched that from my list of suspects.

My other suspects include:

- File time stamps: I’m not sure how WDS handles time stamps, if it modifies them after a file has been indexed et cetera, as Microsoft’s documentation is vague at best. My research shows there isn’t much configurability in the realm of Samba and time stamps, but maybe that’s where I’m wrong.

- Archive/system/hidden bits: The old server implemented them, so I mapped them on the new one to see if WDS perhaps modified the archive bit after an index. That didn’t help, either.

- Home folder/file ownership: The home folders now are chmoded to 700, the users own their homes as well as all files and folders within, and the users group is the group owner for everything. Does Samba need to be a member of the same group as the user in order to function properly? I can’t imagine so, as aside from WDS, all other functionality works great.

I’m hoping this is an easy fix, a simple mistake I overlooked or a parameter I neglected to implement. So I’m shooting all this by you guys to see if you have any suggestions. Between WDS’ absent documentation and a lack of probable causes on the Samba system, I’m thoroughly lost.

Thanks in advance,

Moltag