Runaway nmbd processes

[Francois Gouget]

   I have runaway nmbd processes. It's the second time I have this
problem in a few weeks. The first time I noticed it when I started
having 'cannot fork' errors. This time I'm more lucky and I noticed it
earlier. Currently I have `ps aux | grep nmbd | wc -l` = 120 nmbd
processes. My log says:


[2001/01/05 19:09:40, 1] nmbd/nmbd.c:main(757)
  Netbios nameserver version 2.0.7 started.
  Copyright Andrew Tridgell 1994-1998
[2001/01/05 19:09:40, 0] nmbd/asyncdns.c:start_async_dns(150)
  started asyncdns process 20533
[2001/01/05 19:09:41, 0] lib/pidfile.c:pidfile_create(86)
  ERROR: nmbd is already running. File /var/samba/nmbd.pid exists and
process id 21248 is running.
[2001/01/05 19:09:41, 1] nmbd/nmbd.c:main(757)
  Netbios nameserver version 2.0.7 started.
  Copyright Andrew Tridgell 1994-1998
[2001/01/05 19:09:41, 0] nmbd/asyncdns.c:start_async_dns(150)
  started asyncdns process 20535
[2001/01/05 19:09:41, 0] lib/pidfile.c:pidfile_create(86)
  ERROR: nmbd is already running. File /var/samba/nmbd.pid exists and
process id 21248 is running.
...

   I got 39 messages like this in just two seconds. All these processes
are still running. An strace tells me they are blocked in a read:

   read(6,

   Then it stops and starts again later at 23:44. I don't know what's
so special about these times. Actually it seems to happen when I
boot a Windows machine on the network.
   This is with the Samba from the Debian distribution: 2.0.7-3.

   What's happening? Is there something I can do to help debug it?


--
Francois Gouget         fgouget at free.fr        http://fgouget.free.fr/
                  Hiroshima '45 - Czernobyl '86 - Windows '95