[Samba] continuous access to printer causes high memory usage

[Martin Zielinski]

Hello,

although this should not occur on W2k client machines, please take a 
look at the "Windows XP SP2 slow printing solution"  thread.

http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2004-November/096146.html

and http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2004-November/096492.html

The symptoms are the same as you described.

2nd make shure, that you are not using some older (!) Kyo KX drivers.

~ Martin

Roel van Meer wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> I am trying to track down a printer-related problem.
> 
> The most important symptom is a smbd process using almost all memory on 
> my machine (up to 800 MB, at the specific case of which I've posted the 
> logs.) At some point the VM will kill the smbd process, freeing the 
> memory. Apart from this, samba keeps on running fine.
> 
> Investigation of a level 3 debug log of this process has shown that the 
> client (a Windows XP machine) is accessing one of the samba printers 
> almost continuously, with four rpc calls: SPOOLSS_OPENPRINTEREX, 
> SPOOLSS_GETPRINTERDATA, SPOOLSS_CLOSEPRINTER and SPOOLSS_ENUMJOBS.
> The printer driver is installed on the samba server. The client is 
> configured to use the printer via a Samba port. When the printer is 
> removed from the client, the rapid calls stop. When the printer is 
> installed again, the calls again occur in rapid succession.
> 
> Attached you'll find an excerpt of the output of 'ps', my smb.conf and a 
> piece of the log file.
> I've seen this problem at a few different machines, with samba versions 
> 3.0.20, 3.0.22 and 3.0.23 and different clients (all Windows 2000 or 
> XP). All machines are running Slackware 10.1. The only solution I have 
> found so far is removing the printers from the client.
> 
> I have been wondering if this problem can be caused by an absent or invalid
> deviced mode for this printer.
> 
> Does anyone have a clue about what might cause this? Or a hint about 
> where to look further? I'm more than willing to provide more detailed 
> information.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> roel
> 


-- 
Martin Zielinski             mz at seh.de
Software Development
SEH Computertechnik GmbH     www.seh.de