User Guide

Chapter 2 Setting Up Share Points 19
Opportunistic Locking (oplocks)
SMB share points in Mac OS X Server support the improved performance offered by
opportunistic locking (“oplocks”).
In general, file locking prevents multiple clients from modifying the same information
at the same time; a client locks the file or part of the file to gain exclusive access.
Opportunistic locking grants this exclusive access but also allows the client to cache its
changes locally (on the client computer) for improved performance.
To enable oplocks, you change the Windows protocol settings for a share point using
Workgroup Manager.
Important: Do not enable oplocks for a share point that’s using any protocol other
than SMB.
Strict Locking
It’s normally the responsibility of a client application to see if a file is locked before it
tries to open it. A poorly written application may fail to check for locks, and could
corrupt a file already being used by someone else.
Strict locking, which is enabled by default, helps prevent this. When strict locking is
enabled, the SMB server itself checks for and enforces file locks.
Consider Security
Review the issues discussed in “Security Considerations” on page 14.
Share Points for Network Home Directories
If you’re setting up a share point on your server to store user home directories, keep
these points in mind:
• There’s a share point named Users already set up when you install Mac OS X Server
that you can use for home directories.
• Make sure you set the Network Mount settings for the share point to indicate that it’s
used for user home directories.
• Make sure you create the share point in the same Open Directory domain as your
user accounts.
Disk Quotas
You can limit the disk space a user’s home directory can occupy by setting a quota on
the Home pane of the user’s account settings in Workgroup Manager.
To set space quotas for other share points, you must use the command line. See the file
services chapter of the command-line administration guide.
LL2346.Book Page 19 Friday, August 22, 2003 2:38 PM