Problem with Notes client on Samba 2.0.7 share

[David Collier-Brown]

Roland Fehrenbacher wrote:
>> we have a strange problem running the Notes R5 client on a Samba share:
> 
> At irregular intervals the Notes client reports an "unexpected network error",
> which means it becomes unusable, and Samba shows a message like
> 
> [2000/06/15 10:13:13, 0] locking/locking_shm.c:shm_get_share_modes(213)
> get_share_modes: process 618 no longer exists
[snip]

> >From looking at the source code (locking/locking_shm.c), the function
> get_share_modes tries to read the share modes of a given file in the shared
> memory segment allocated by Samba. The corresponding entry for the file seems
> to be referenced by the PID which originally opened the file, and for some
> reason that process has died.

	Oops!
	The client has disconnected from the Samba server,
	and the server has noticed and cleaned up, allowing
	the child process serving that particular client to
	exit.

> [2000/06/15 10:13:13, 0] locking/locking_shm.c:shm_get_share_modes(213)
>  get_share_modes: file with dev 1540008 inode 23543 empty

	An it looks like it disconnected somewhere between
	creating or truncating a file and filling it with data.
	This is probably A Bad Thing (;-))

> The Samba server runs on Solaris 2.6. The problem does not appear when the
> Notes files are on a real NT share, or on a lightly loaded Samba server
> dedicated to just serving the Notes files (tested on Linux, and Solaris 2.6(.

	In that case it's probably a response-time related issue.
	Windows clients have some odd timeouts built in, and you
	may have exceeded one of these.

	This may indicate a server overload (normally unlikely) or 
	a network problem. As you noted that there was a slowness
	problem, your server may be being slothful...

	
	[Change to Sun hat]
	Can you collect a sar snapshot during a busy period
	on your Solaris machine?  The command is 

		sar -o roland26.raw 10 30

	which means write a binary file of the stats the
	kernel collects: this is a low-overhead operation,
	and can be done on a heavily-loaded machine. Then
	mail me the file and I'll mail you a report on what's
	happening.

	This applys to anyone using Solaris, by the way: I
	read sar files for a living.
	[Sun hat off]

	Mind you, running a dedicated notes server on a Linux
	box is A Good Idea, anyway...

	We've seen this kind of disconenction a lot this year,
	but it's often been things like bad hubs or routers.
	The team would love to know precisely what it is so
	they can fix it (:-))

--dave
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | Always do right. This will gratify some people
185 Ellerslie Ave.,   | and astonish the rest.        -- Mark Twain
Willowdale, Ontario   | //www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba/author.html
Work: (905) 415-2849 Home: (416) 223-8968 Email: davecb at canada.sun.com