Samba share with Squid whitelist

[thinkwell]

I have a Linux appliance on my network with a Squid whitelist. I'd like users to be able to easily be able to add sites to that whitelist.

So I put the list in /var/flexshare/shares/ directory with public access and Read/Write permissions. Then I thought the proper user could simply go to that file on the network, add the sites, and be done. (I know you need to restart Squid...)

But it seems that Squid locks the file so that the user can't edit the file over the network, but I can edit it using WinSCP. I also can edit the file over the network if it's place in the /home/shared folder. I'd prefer not to store the file there, however. Anyone able to explain why the file seems to be locked when placed in the /var/flexshare/shares/ directory, but not in the home/shared/ directory?

In both directories, I can read/write other files just fine.

Thanks!

[jledhead]

some very simple alternatives I can think of are
1)have a white list file somewhere else that squid doesn't use and have people update that file, then have a script that runs periodically (10 mins, 15 mins, ...whatever) and have the script copy the file over to the squid dir and then restart squid. The would probably be a good time to get a backup of the file, which I would recommend if you are having ordinary users editing a whitelist file, since what is the point of a proxy if you can just whitelist whatever you want.

2)use webmin to control squid and edit the file and restart squid. you could also use usermin so that users can use their windows credentials (if this machine auths against AD), otherwise you can just setup a generic user account in webmin/usermin and edit the squid db file

[thinkwell]

Thank you very much, jledhead. Option #1 is the ticket. I found a script to poll the file for changes and execute another script when the file changes. So it's working. Thanks for getting me out of a mental block.