[Info-vax] Is there a way to enabling versioning in Samba

[Dirk Munk]

Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> Den 2017-07-26 kl. 00:38, skrev Dirk Munk:
>> don.zong at gmail.com wrote:
>>> My impression with Samba is that the file is always overridden, no 
>>> versioning. revision number might change though. Wondering if there 
>>> is a way to enable versioning in Samba - so that whenever there is a 
>>> change in the file, it will create a new file with a new version.
>> Overridden? what does that mean?
>>
>> Very simple. Suppose an application wants to create a file called 
>> myfile.txt, what will Samba do?
>>
>> 1. Does myfile.txt exist?
>> 2. If yes, delete myfile.txt
>> 3. create myfile.txt
>>
>> The only thing you have to do in the Samba code is to remove 1. and 
>> 2. and you will have file versions
>>
>
> For someone (a user) that doesn't expect multiple copies, and that
> will never see these copies, this is a route to disaster. It must be
> possible to switch on/off per share, so that you can switch versions
> on on "input" shares where the files are supposed to be processed
> by some OpenVMS procedure (that knows what file vesions is).
>
> But then, if this is changed, we have an OpenVMS Samba port that
> is a little more different than the main Samba distribution

A solution might be to let Samba create files with a version limit of 1. 
In that case 'normal' Samba file operations will work as expected by a 
Windows user. You alos might have a kind of Samba utility on your PC 
that will allow to set another file limit. There are many possibilities 
to get the best of both worlds.

In the past when we we using Pathworks, I did allow more versions of 
Pathworks shares. If a Pathworks user noticed that he/she had made a 
major mistake in let's say a spreadsheet, he/she could just delete the 
present version, and the previous would pop up. No need to get one from 
a backup set. That is one of the advantages of versions.

By the way, NTFS is regarded by some as a Files 11 version. It seems 
there are some hardly used well hidden possibilities in NTFS that would 
allow some kind of versions, but don't ask me how.