SAMBA for sharing ACT! Database

[sciencewhiz]

I'm currently doing some consulting for a very small business (3 computers right now). They want to install ACT! and access the database over the network. ACT! recommends that the server be Windows 2000 or XP Pro and not be running ACT! as a workstation at the same time. The 3 computers are either running 98 or XP home and all three would need to act as workstations as well.

They do have an old P133 with a 1 gig hardrive and an unknown (right now) amount of RAM availible also.

After reading the ACT! documents, I realized that all the server was doing was sharing the database use windows file shares, and the workstations were mounting the shared folder as a remote drive. I thought the old computer running linux might be able to do a better job then any of the three workstations.

So my question is, are there any gotchas to running SAMBA to share files with win98 and XP home? I've used samba before to mount other shares on my linux system, but not to share my own files. I would most likely install debian woody, because that is what I have the most experience with (run debian woody on my server (apache, exim, mailman) and unstable on my main computer).

Any advice, thoughts?

 

[Nothinman]

I can't think of anything off hand, the fact that it's Linux should be transparent to ACT!

 

[Crab cake]

Disable oplocks on the samba server and you should be fine. I've done this for a couple of clients. Samba also works well for Filemaker as well as Access. Just make sure oplocks is disabled. Just about the only database format that I've encountered that doesn't like samba is Foxpro.

 

[cleverhandle]

I though oplocks only had bad interactions with NFS and that for SMB-only setups they should be fine? What exactly goes wrong, Crab cake?

 

[sciencewhiz]

from the SAMBA howto:

Regardless, oplocks should always be disabled if you are sharing a database file (e.g., Microsoft Access) between multiple clients, as any break the first client receives will result in the entire file needing to be sync'd (not just the single record), which will result in a noticable performance delay and, more likely, problems accessing the database in the first place. Notably, Microsoft Outlook's personal folders (*.pst) react very badly to oplocks. If in doubt, disable oplocks and tune your system from that point.

 

[cleverhandle]

Well, there you go... Thanks.