NMBD process crashing

[Albrecht Schlosser]

King Andrew J wrote:
> Can anyone help/explain why the NMBD process on my VMS server is crashing, I
> will explain.
> 
> VMS 7.3-2, with TCP 5.4 on Alpha ES47 7/1150
> SAMBA 2.2.8

There are (or have been) multiple releases of Samba 2.2.8 on
http://www.pi-net.dyndns.org/anonymous/jyc/

Which one are you using.

> I have had this issue ever since Samba was installed and have implemented a
> fix of Stopping and Restarting the whole of Samba over a weekend to get
> round the issue.  I saw an article about the NMBD process crashing and the
> only answer at that time was as I have already done.

at which time ?

> The situation appears to be that NMBD process starts up as normal when the
> server is booted or rebooted and runs quite happy for a period of time.  The
> NMBD process then appears to crash and I am unable to find any files or logs
> that can help with diagnosing why.  I then manually start up the whole of
> Samba to get the NMBD process up and running.

I'm not aware of a crash, but I know that NMBD had problems with some system
resources, acquiring too many locks without releasing, or other resources.
You should at least have the newest release of Aug. 17, 2005:

http://www.pi-net.dyndns.org/anonymous/jyc/samba-2_2_8-src-20050817.zip

and related files.

However, I just looked on our system and saw that the lock problem does
still exist.

Please have a look at $ monitor lock, and see if you have increasing lock
counts. If you have, then you should kill the NMBD process, and watch the
lock display. This is what I found (only the "Total" parts shown):


NMBD (and about 10 SMBD processes) still running:
-------------------------------------------------

                             OpenVMS Monitor Utility
                            LOCK MANAGEMENT STATISTICS
                              1-MAR-2007 14:18:53.75

                                        CUR        AVE        MIN        MAX

     Total Locks                   33062.00   33204.17   33062.00   33250.00
     Total Resources                7895.00    8064.25    7895.00    8115.00



After killing all NMBD and SMBD processes:
------------------------------------------

                             OpenVMS Monitor Utility
                            LOCK MANAGEMENT STATISTICS
                              1-MAR-2007 14:20:29.78

                                        CUR        AVE        MIN        MAX

     Total Locks                    3103.00   32205.18    3103.00   33250.00
     Total Resources                3034.00    7832.76    3034.00    8115.00


Some time later:
----------------
                             OpenVMS Monitor Utility
                            LOCK MANAGEMENT STATISTICS
                                  on node ALPHA1
                              1-MAR-2007 14:45:12.12

                                        CUR        AVE        MIN        MAX
     Total Locks                    5426.00   12465.34    3101.00   33250.00
     Total Resources                3123.00    4528.05    3032.00    8115.00



I didn't investigate further, but it seems that this could also be your
problem.

Any ideas, anybody? JYC ?

Albrecht