[linux-cifs-client] Re: mounting from a server with DNS-based, load balancing

[Steve French (smfltc)]

>I am having trouble mounting shares from a netapp filer that has two
>interfaces and one hostname. If I rely on the round-robin DNS
>resolution in the mounts, about half of the shares mount the first
>time I try them. After another couple of tries I can get all the
>shares to mount. If I set the IP in /etc/hosts on the client all the
>shares mount fine. Debug messages point to a problem with mounting
>shares with a different server IP. It looks like cifs doesn't the IP
>to change, and after the first mount from a server subsequent mounts
>of different shares from the same server have to use the same IP
>address as the first mount.

The cifs kernel client matches on ip address (the host name resolution 
is done in mount.cifs before it calls the kernel).  What you are 
probably seeing is that 1/2 of the mounts attempt to setup a new session 
(rather than using the existing smb session, as it would if it detected 
that the ip address is the same).   Are you sure that the server is not 
rejecting the session setups to the 2nd ip address (because it sees the 
connection which exists to the first and mistakenly thinks this is an 
error).