[linux-cifs-client] Timeout waaay too long

[Daniel K]

Hi,

ever since I began sharing files between Linux and Windows systems I've 
been suffering from one major problem that affects smb, nfs as well as 
cifs: Long lock ups on server down times.

If the serving computer shuts down / crashes, every process hangs when 
trying to access the still mounted share. Just try df, mount or ls. You 
can't even umount the share in this condition! When using smb this was 
very severe as you couldn't mount a share with a "soft" option. So the 
process in fact just hung until I pressed reset. Now, with cifs it is 
much better. But still the timeout  is very long. And you still cannot 
umount an offline share to prevent further lock ups.

Now my suggestion would be to make the timeout adjustable (now it is 
something like 30 seconds on every access). And maybe automatic umounts 
if a share isn't available anymore. At least one should be able to 
umount such a share.

Best regards,
Daniel