CPU at 100% with orphan SMBD processes

[Andrew/]

I have Samba 3.6.6 running [on a Raspberry Pi B+, although that 
shouldn't matter] and primarily use the shares from a Win-7 [Pro] box 
and it works marvellously, except I keep getting smbd processes running 
using all available CPU and smbd performance drops away to appallingly 
slow speeds.

All the shares are on a USB SSD drive or a Seagate GoFlex 2TB HDD both 
of which are formatted to ext4.

I've had up to 16 processes all equally sharing the available CPU. When 
1 it uses 98% CPU, with two 49% etc. as soon as these orphan processes 
are killed performance returns to acceptable levels but additional 
processes soon seem to be created.

I've had two new processes created today and all I was doing was 
browsing the file shares.

The log levels are still at the defaults and nothing seems to be written 
to any logs.

I've searched and there seem to be a lot of similar problems on WD linux 
based NAS and Synology linux based NAs both of which, I assume, are 
using Samba for file shares.

Is this a recognised problem? Is there a solution?

Thanks,
Andrew/
-- 
*/Sent from my Raspberry Pi/*