[Samba] Unmountable Linux Samba mounts

[Rob Gillen]

This is what I wrote to the Mandrake Expert list (of course, nobody 
there could answer my question there -- limited attention span I guess):

This worked the first time that I tried it, but there are cases when it 
does not work.  For example, if after mounting a Windows share the 
connection gets broken, the mount will not work, and you might see 
things like command-line lockups during directory listings, etc.  At 
this point, I believe you can successfully use a "umount -l" to unmount 
it.  When I tried it, the mount was not immediately removed from the 
list of mounted filesystems via the mount command.  I probably moved too 
fast trying to figure out what was going on, because I shot back to 
runlevel 1 (from 5), and it is from there that I noticed that the mount 
point was no longer listed with the "mount" command.

Now, if instead of immediately using "umount -l" after the network 
connection is broken you decide to restart the Samba server daemons, 
then you will be unable to use the "mount -l" command.

ROB


Z Linux wrote:

>I get the same problem when I mount smb shares and
>then disconnect my notebook from network without
>unmounting the share, it seems like samba needs the
>share to be available to unmount it, however for me, I
>use
> umount -l /your/mountpoint
>this will free up the mountpoint and will try to fully
>umount in the backgroud (I guess). Not a very
>intelligent solution though because I still see
>smbmount in the process list, it will atleast free up
>the mount point.
>
>--- Rob Gillen <borgille at pobox.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Some of you might be familiar with the strange way
>>that Linux will
>>sometimes disallow umount-ing or listing directory
>>contents of a mounted
>>smb share, returning the error text, "Input/output
>>error."  I believe
>>this error happens when a smb share is mounted, then
>>that remote share
>>is removed.  This is a seriously annoying problem,
>>because restarting
>>Samba does not solve the problem, nor does changing
>>runlevels.  I am
>>guessing that it may be a kernel-level problem, so I
>>am looking for more
>>information and possibly some confirmation on this. 
>>I have tried
>>changing the runlevel to [S]ingle level user, which
>>is running pretty
>>much nothing save kernel processes and a simple
>>shell. At this level, a
>>'mount' command still shows the shares to be
>>mounted, and also at this
>>level it is still impossible to umount them.  The
>>only solution that I
>>have found so far is rebooting, which I think is an
>>unacceptable way to
>>handle such a problem.
>>
>>On a possibly related side note, during the time
>>that I could not remove
>>the unmountable mounted smb shares, the dhcpd daemon
>>that was running on
>>the box also seemed to start malfunctioning.  On the
>>Linux box
>>(Mandrake), everything appeared to be fine; that is,
>>I was able to
>>restart the dhcpd daemon without any errors.  But
>>none of the other
>>networked machines which normally get served
>>addresses from it were
>>getting addresses.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to
>>sniff packets, so I
>>don't know what kind of communication (or lack
>>thereof) was occurring,
>>but it did seem like network traffic was being
>>blocked in the Linux box
>>from something.  It was a frustrating exercise
>>trying to figure out why
>>my other boxes were not getting addresses. 
>>Strangely enough, after I
>>rebooted the Mandrake box, everything worked as
>>normal again, and the
>>other boxes got their IP addresses fine.
>>
>>Like I said, I don't know for sure if the dhcpd
>>thing was related to the
>>smb mount problem, but I'll try to repeat the
>>problem when I get some
>>time and see if it recurs.  If anybody has seen the
>>same problem or
>>something similar, I would appreciate it if you
>>could share how you
>>resolved it.  As I also said, this might be strictly
>>a Linux related
>>problem.  I don't have any other platforms to test
>>it out on.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>Rob
>>
>>
>>
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