[Samba] smbd hung processes - Samba 3.0.7

[Elmar Bihler]

I have the very same problem with samba 3.0.14a running on Debian Sarge and
have found no solution yet. Has anyone found a solution in the meanwhile?
Could it perhaps be due to a failure in our networking hardware?



> We've seen Samba crash and burn twice in the last 48 hours - it just 
> started happening, and we have no idea what might be causing it.  I'm 
> hoping that someone will recognize this problem.

> Platform:  we are running RedHat Enterprise Server, with Samba 3.0.7. 
> We're using security=domain in an old-style NT4 domain environment.

> The symptom that we're seeing is that the number of smbd processes 
> suddenly begins to increase.  We normally run with betwen 100 and 150 smb 
> processes, but when Samba fails, the number starts to increase quickly, 
> and users start to have problems accessing files.

> smbstatus reports approximately the right number of clients (133), but ps 
> shows a much larger number of smbd processes active (680).  Smbstatus 
> reports a list of active smbd processes - this list includes the oldest 
> processes and the newest processes, but there is a block of smbd processes

> in the middle that are not in the smbstatus report.  What we THINK is 
> happening is that the smbd processes begin to hang, the clients time out, 
> they initiate a new session with Samba server, which respawns another smbd

> server process (leaving the old, hung process running).  This keeps 
> happening over and over until we kill samba.  The hung processes need to 
> be kill -9'ed.