[H-GEN] Samba Woes

[Robert Stuart]

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[Edited to avoid sending the list yet another entire copy of Pat's
post; could subscribers please take pains to quote less of the
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Patrick Nichols wrote:

> The problem:
> File opens/file saves/directory listings on shares from our samba
> server occasionally pause for a short time ranging from a couple of
> seconds up to 30 or more.  This is often enough to make the windows
> machines crash.

Hi,

The suggestions you have received so far have delt with name resolution
issues.  You might also like to turn on WINS support:

wins support = yes
name resolve order = wins bcast hosts

If it is a name resolution issue, you might notice pauses for an
individual client in a pattern (ie after the dns/netbios entry is
expired from a cache).

You run your server in "SHARE" mode not "user" mode.  I'm not sure what
the implications of that are as I've never run a server that way.  I'd
suggest investigating security = user.

I'd recommend upgrading samba to 2.2.7a as a high priority (don't do
this if you have Win2k Terminal Server clients), this will help issues
you may have with WinXP.

Are you aware that "update encrypted" probably won't do anything because
you have "encrypt passwords" turned on?  Its meant as a migration aid
for when you have plain text passwords; but it shouldn't hurt.

Locking: I'd run the machine with these locking settings below.  I have
had horrible problems with kernel oplocks so I wouldn't recommend them. 
blocking locks are ON by default - yuck!  Is it possible that the
problem only happens on shares that have files opened by other clients?

   blocking locks = no
   locking = yes
   oplocks = yes
   level2 oplocks = no
   kernel oplocks = no
   strict locking = yes

If you always have logging turned up to 3, put it back down to 1, it may
be that the logging is getting too busy for the machine to do much else
depending on what the specs are....  You can use smbcontrol to target
particular client processes for debugging at higher levels.

Another problem I've had is a cheap realtek network card causing me
grief.  I try to use epro100 or 3com cards.


Good luck.


Robert Stuart
Systems Administrator
Ph: 61 7 3864 0364
Fax: 61 7 3221 2553




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