File locking prevents multiple users from opening a file for write at the same time. Without file locking, one user's writes could overwrite another user's changes or cause unpredictable file inconsistencies.
One problem with file locking, however, is if a user forgets to close the file or application after finishing his work on a file, other users may be locked out and unable to make their changes. While some applications have sophisticated locking mechanisms that makes it easy to determine who has locked the file (for example, Microsoft Office files), other applications may not have such features (for example, PDF file editors).
Morro Audit can be used to determine who has a lock on a file.
- Go to Morro Audit, then click Device in the left side menu.
- Go to the Status tab, select a device in the Gateway dropdown, then select "Active SMB Sessions" from the Item dropdown.
- Click Run/Refresh. A list of all SMB sessions and locks on the device will appear.
The locks section shows which users are holding locks on all open files on the device. If the device is heavily used, the list may be long, so if you know the name of the file, use your browser's search in page function to find the record for the file.
Because the list only covers a single device's session, you may need to run the search on each individual device to determine which has the lock.