ERRDOS message from smbclient

[Eric Shih]

Hi:

I'm using smbclient version 1.9.15p8 to do some printing from a Solaris
2.3 box to an NT 4.0 share of a remote Win95 box with a printer attached. 

Unix <-----> NT 4.0 printer share <---WAN---> Win95 printer share

(NT is sharing a share...)

About a year ago, I wrote a printer script that is used by the lp system
to print to the printer using an lp command. As an error check, the script
saves the output of the smbclient program to a log file, and saves the
printfile into my directory, just in case the printing screws up. Things
were working quite well up until about a month ago, when smbclient began
to give the following error message: 

smbclient returned Server time is Thu Jul 31 05:31:24 1997
Timezone is UTC-7  
CR/LF<->LF and print text translation now on 
printing file  /var/spool/lp/tmp/fido/151-1 as 151-1
ERRDOS  - ERRbadfid (Invalid file handle.) printing remote file 
0 bytes printed 
ERRDOS - ERRbadfid (Invalid file  handle.) 
closing print file

The bad thing is that this does not occur consistantly -- the same file 
that may give this error one time may print fine the next. I've even 
tried running smbclient manually, and I still get the error message 
at random times.

I can only think that the problem is with the network, NT, or the Win95 
box, since nothing's changed on the Unix box...

1. What does the message mean?

2. Is a file handle the same as a pointer to a file?

3. Could a network error cause this?


Thanks in advance,

Eric Shih

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Lost on the information cowpath