Massive WinXP connections swamp samba server

[Ian MacPhedran]

Hi;
Our environment consists of a server running Solaris 7, with mostly WinXP
clients. Smbd is started via inetd. I am currently running Samba 2.0.7 on
it, but I experienced this problem with 2.2.5 as well (and even more
quickly - the first day under 2.2.5 this happened twice).

The problem seems to be caused by several of the WinXP clients each making
multiple connections to the server, and starting multiple smbd processes.
The process table quickly fills with smbd and inetd processes and slows
the server to just about a dead stop. (A crash has to be forced to get the
system back in the most severe cases.)

1) Have others experienced similar problems, and how have they dealt with
   them?
2) I think I recall an option to force all old smbds to close when a new
   connection is made from the same client that started the earlier smbds.
   (However, I'm not certain of this.)
   - Is there an option to do this sort of house keeping? (This would help
     with other problems as well.)
3) Is there anything specific to WinXP that could be doing this?
   (Especially if we can patch it, or do a registry edit fix, or ...)

I am aware of the "max smbd processes" option, but it doesn't seem to be
exactly what I'm looking for.

Thanks.
Ian.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ian MacPhedran,   Engineering Computer Centre,   University of Saskatchewan.
Room 2B13, 57 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, Sask., CANADA S7N 5A9  (306) 966-4832