smbmount on NT4 shares disconnecting randomly

[Urban Widmark]

On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Matt Doyle wrote:

> I've heard of this problem before and the usual solution offered is to 
> remount the shares.  However, when I try to smbmount the share it says it is 

It's not a solution, it's a workaround ...

> already mounted, and when I try an smbumount I get an input/output error and 
> can't umount it.  The only solution is to reboot the Linux box (logging out 
> doesn't help).

The input/output error should have a matching kernel log message. Could
you send it/them? Any difference between doing smbumount and plain umount?


> To mount the shares, I'm using .bash_profile entries as follows:
> 
> /usr/bin/smbmount //NTSERVER/sharename /home/matt/sharename -o 
> username=matt,password=pwd,uid=matt,gid=users,fmask=777,dmask=777,ip=192.168.0.2

You may want to consider making smbmnt & smbumount setuid so anyone can
mount using them, or switching to autofs (allows you to put the passwords
in a root readonly file).

The way you mount is not the problem.


> I had a look at the release notes for 2.0.7 and it didn't mention any fixes 
> for this problem, so I've stuck with 2.0.6 for now.

A problem that 2.0.7 also has is that smbmount may terminate if the server
is rebooted. Also smbfs in most versions have problems with a process
getting a signal while accessing smbfs.

You can try 2.2.18pre3 that has a fix for the signal problem (but I broke
a Config.in in 2.2.18pre3, so you need to change from a n to "n" if you
use make xconfig) or 2.4.0-test7. I don't remember if the signal problem
caused I/O errors on smbumount, but it could.

If the server is rebooted (should be easy to check) you need to patch
smbmount, http://www.hojdpunkten.ac.se/054/samba/index.html
(You can choose between "dies-if-dies", "fixes" or "ascii+fixes" ... :)

/Urban