Issue where the timestamp are removed while copying files from the drive to the NFS shares

  • Article

The timestamp gets modified to the current system date, while the files are copied from local drive to mounted NFS drive. File timestamp could be important for auditing purpose, running backup tools or for other reasons.  

The effected Windows O/S are:

- Windows 2003, SFU 3.5 , Client for NFS

Windows 2003 R2, Client for NFS

Example
1: We mount a NFS share on Windows 2003, NFS client to a drive. Then we copy a file from local C:\ drive which has a time stamp (‎Tuesday, ‎ September ‎ 14, ‎ 2010, ‏‎ 11:04:37 PM) to the mounted NFS drive. After the copy the timestamp gets changed to the current system time.

During our testing we found that the issue looks like a bug with the NFS client and the behavior is inconsistent. We also tested another scenario:

Example
2: We mounted the NFS share on Windows 2003, NFS client using the mount command and also tried browsing the NFS share on the same machine through UNC. While the timestamp issue was still there while we were copying files to the mounted drive explorer windows, the issue could not be reproduced while copying the files to UNC explorer windows.

But this behavior was not consistent.

However the issue is not there with Windows 2008/2008 R2, client for NFS.

Owing to the fact that both SFU 3.5 and Windows 2003 are outside mainstream support, this bug will not get fixed. The URL below talks about the lifecycle for both the products.  

https://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3207 ==> SFU 3.5

https://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&p1=3198&x=7&y=13 ==> Windows 2003

 

Our recommendation on this would be to upgrade to Windows 2008/2008 R2.