[linux-cifs-client] Re: Some problems with linux-cifs

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:
> Steven French wrote:

> With the RHEL version of 1.34 the build seems to be progressing 
> smoothly.  It hasn't linked yet, but it's past the point where it was 
> dying before.
> 
> I'll publish .ko's for a few different stock ubuntu kernels if they work 
> out OK.

After learning more about building kernel modules than I really cared to 
know, I managed to get a working cifs module, but it seemed to have the 
problem that I was facing with the previous version of the cifs module 
even worse.

Since I've now tested with the latest version and it's still a problem I 
guess now I'll report the issue :).  I was under the impression that 
cifs(fs) was unequivocally better than smbfs in terms of linux clients 
for samba and win32 file sharing servers.  I was having a minor issue 
with smbfs where occasionally it would seize up and the process 
accessing the drive would become defunct.  I thought cifs might fix this.

Far from fixing it, cifs instead exacerbated the problem, locking up 
nautilus within minutes of trying (rather than days) to access any of my 
shares.  This causes nautilus, gam_server, and any other processes that 
happen to be accessing the volume at the time become both <defunct> and 
completely unkillable, despite telling 'init' to reap its children 
repeatedly.

I've replicated this behavior on 3 linux machines, all running ubuntu, 
with both the 1.28 that shipped with 2.6.10 and a 1.34[RHEL] I built 
myself against that kernel.  There are two desktops on a wired network 
with different network cards (an AMD64 box and an Athlon) and a laptop 
on the wireless using an ipw2200 (a Pentium M).  I have also booted 
Windows on 2 of these machines and verified that there are no lock-ups, 
hangs or disconnects from Windows clients, nor using the "connect to 
server" feature on Mac OS X.

I'm using an "embedded" device, the Buffalo Tech TeraStation:

http://buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=97&categoryid=19

Which according to smbclient is:

Domain=[WORKGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 2.2.8a-ja-1.1]

I know that samba 2 is not too popular with the devs any more... could 
an interaction with that be causing the problem?

I've got a trouble ticket open with buffalo tech now since the device is 
supposedly going to support NFS through a firmware update "any day now" 
and I imagine that NFS would be a better choice for UNIX filesharing if 
I can get it going.  Still, "any day now" could be 6 months from now, 
and I'd like to have something semi-stable for my linux clients in the 
meanwhile.