Fixed: OpLocks caused the corruptions/slowness (Was: How Samb a let us down)

[David Brodbeck]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John H Terpstra [mailto:jht at samba.org]

> This is a not uncommon finding. I have followed up with many users who
> have complained of Linux and / or Samba problems to find that 
> they were having problems with MS Windows NT so they decided to try 
> Samba.

That wasn't really the case in my situation, but Samba *did* help me track
down the problem.  See, with NT it mostly manifested itself in hidden,
irreproducable ways, like data corruption, that were easy to blame on
general flakiness.  We switched to Samba, and suddenly there was a major
reproducable issue -- the user would find that AutoCAD files he had opened,
then closed, tended to stay locked, forcing him to reboot before accessing
them again.  An investigation showed he had been connected to a badly
overloaded hub by mistake.  When this was fixed, our Access corruption
problems "magically" disappeared as well.

> Here are the more common causes of corruption problems:
> 
> 	1. Defective HUBs/Switches (especially the cheaper varieties)
> 	2. Defective Network cards

I'd add "Duplex mismatch problems".  This isn't the same thing as 1 and 2,
because it can happen through misconfiguration even when all the hardware is
operating as designed.