[Samba] smbd -D processes spawn out of control

[Ryan Steele]

All,

I'm running the latest stable version of SerNet-Samba on a Debian Sarge 
box (I switched from the traditional Samba package for certain reasons 
which I won't delve into here), but I've come across a serious issue.  
Every day, the Samba processes become so numerous that the server begins 
acting really flaky.  That is to say, there are so many smbd -D 
processes that the server stops responding to further Samba requests and 
the server comes to a crawl.  For brevity's sake, I won't post the 
results of 'ps auxwww | grep smbd', as it would take up a lot of 
unnecessary space...but an smbstatus reveals nothing that indicates a 
huge problem:

server:/var/log/samba# smbstatus
Processing section "[homes]"
Processing section "[netlogon]"
Processing section "[printers]"
Processing section "[print$]"
Processing section "[public]"
Processing section "[downloads]"

Samba version 3.0.22-SerNet-Debian
PID     Username      Group         Machine
-------------------------------------------------------------------
11210   user2        Domain Users  user2      (192.168.1.198)
11353   user1       Domain Users  user1      (192.168.1.199)
11252   user3      Domain Users  user3        (192.168.1.209)
11208   user4      Domain Users  user4      (192.168.1.197)
11199   user5         Domain Users  user5     (192.168.1.251)
11280   user6     Domain Users  user6         (192.168.1.208)

Service      pid     machine       Connected at
-------------------------------------------------------
public       11353   user1       Mon Jun 12 13:38:19 2006
IPC$         11208   user4       Mon Jun 12 13:26:06 2006
IPC$         12921   user1       Mon Jun 12 14:51:33 2006
IPC$         11353   user1       Mon Jun 12 14:01:21 2006
IPC$         12391   user1       Mon Jun 12 14:02:53 2006
IPC$         11210   user2       Mon Jun 12 14:11:13 2006
IPC$         12623   user1       Mon Jun 12 14:27:55 2006
IPC$         12391   user1       Mon Jun 12 14:02:53 2006
public       11199   user5      Mon Jun 12 13:25:34 2006
IPC$         11199   user5      Mon Jun 12 13:34:53 2006
public       11210   user2       Mon Jun 12 13:26:20 2006
IPC$         11252   user3         Mon Jun 12 13:31:02 2006
IPC$         12612   user1       Mon Jun 12 14:26:26 2006
public       11280   user6          Mon Jun 12 13:32:20 2006
user5        11199   user5      Mon Jun 12 13:25:34 2006
IPC$         12921   user1       Mon Jun 12 14:51:33 2006
IPC$         12612   user1       Mon Jun 12 14:26:26 2006
IPC$         12945   user1       Mon Jun 12 14:52:56 2006
IPC$         11353   user1       Mon Jun 12 14:01:20 2006
public       11252   user3         Mon Jun 12 13:28:57 2006
public       11208   user4       Mon Jun 12 13:34:47 2006
user6    11280   user6          Mon Jun 12 13:33:37 2006

Locked files:
Pid          DenyMode   Access      R/W        Oplock           
SharePath           Name
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11280        DENY_WRITE 0x2019f     RDWR       NONE             
/home//user6   archive.pst   Mon Jun 12 13:33:44 2006
11280        DENY_WRITE 0x2019f     RDWR       NONE             
/home//user6   companylists.pst   Mon Jun 12 13:33:45 2006
11280        DENY_NONE  0x2019f     RDWR       NONE             
/home/public   user6/My Documents/company/Assoc vs Shareholderbenefit 
Comp 2005.xls   Mon Jun 12 14:02:36 2006
11280        DENY_NONE  0x2019f     RDWR       NONE             
/home/public   user6/My Documents/company/Budget/2006 Budget/company 
Budget-2006 1-23-06.xls   Mon Jun 12 14:03:55 2006
11280        DENY_NONE  0x2019f     RDWR       NONE             
/home/public   Quickbooks/company2005.qbw   Mon Jun 12 14:06:17 2006
11199        DENY_NONE  0x2019f     RDWR       NONE             
/home/public   user5/My Documents/companyLetterhead.doc   Mon Jun 12 
14:00:24 2006
11280        DENY_WRITE 0x2019f     RDWR       NONE             
/home//user6   user6.PST   Mon Jun 12 13:33:37 2006
11280        DENY_NONE  0x2019f     RDWR       NONE             
/home/public   Quickbooks/company2005.qbI   Mon Jun 12 14:06:17 2006
11210        DENY_NONE  0x2019f     RDWR       NONE             
/home/public   user2/ADP/Batches/2006/Pay per 13  6-4 thru 6-17-06.xls   
Mon Jun 12 15:33:14 2006


I've tried *everything* short of strace-ing, and I'm running out of 
options and time to get this working.  If anyone has had similar 
problems, please let me know what you did to correct the issue.  Nothing 
is NFS mounted, everything is local to the box (Samba, the home 
accounts, LDAP, etc).  It seems to me that Samba doesn't recognize when 
an smbd process should be killed on the server side, so they continually 
build up.  However, memory usage and swap space usage on the box are 
relatively low, so it's not an issue of the server being unable to 
handle the load of traffic.  Users then experience the problem of  being 
disconnected and working offline,  being unable to print, unable to 
access shares, etc.  Also of note:  If I enter at the command line the 
following command:  'smbclient -L server -U username' when the server is 
overflowing with smbd processes, I get the following error:  session 
setup failed: Call timed out: server did not respond after 20000 
milliseconds.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!  If you 
need any further details, I would be happy to provide them.

Best,
Ryan