smbmount cannot browse large NT directories

[Robert P. Goldman]

On 27 June, Ben Tilly reported that smbmount (linux as client to NT
boxes) had trouble listing large directories on Windows NT servers.

Here's his message:

> I have an NT machine (4.0, service-pack 3 using NTFS) exporting a
> filesystem to Linux through smbmount.  Specific directories are not
> browsable.  By that I mean that "ls *" comes up blank, however if
> you know the filename, "ls foo.txt" will still find the file and you
> can access it without problems.

> I do not have a simple test case for which ones have trouble, here is
> what I know.  All of them have several thousand entries.  A list of
> random files that long is OK.  If I create an organized list I am
> OK.  If I play around too much with the files in a directory, it
> becomes OK (at least for a bit).  But I have a list of several
> thousand filenames where if I create a new directory, put files with
> those names in it, and then try to read it from Linux, I come up
> blank.


I have had a very similar problem, in my case connecting to a network
appliances toaster, rather than to an NT server.  I think this may be
the same problem Kenneth Oakeson reported on 29 June.  I have a little
more information.  Here's what I find in /var/log/messages when this
happens:

Jun 15 10:46:41 mn65-zippy kernel: smb_proc_readdir_long: Looping in FIND_NEXT??
Jun 15 10:46:41 mn65-zippy kernel: smb_refill_dircache: readdir failed, result=-5

I am using using samba 2.0.7 on RedHat with Kernel 2.2.14-smp.  A
follow-up message from Urban Widmark indicated that this is a kernel
(smbfs) problem and should be fixed in 2.2.14, however this is not my
experience.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Robert