Samba bug - length of smb.conf ?

[peter.davidson at bt.com]

Folks,
	we operate a file-server using Samba running on HP-UX 10.20.
Recently, we noticed that people trying to form new connections to Samba
shares were occasionally able to connect (eg getting a 'network name not
found' error) - and looking at their client log files in /opt/samba/var,
Samba was core dumping, with the following text : 

===============================================================
INTERNAL ERROR: Signal 11 in pid 19391 (1.9.18p10)
Please read the file BUGS.txt in the distribution
===============================================================
Last message was SMBtrans
size=95
smb_com=0x25
smb_rcls=0
smb_reh=0
smb_err=0
smb_flg=0
smb_flg2=0
smb_tid=68
smb_pid=8257
smb_uid=0
smb_mid=32129
smt_wct=14
smb_vwv[0]=19 (0x13)
smb_vwv[1]=0 (0x0)
smb_vwv[2]=8 (0x8)
smb_vwv[3]=4096 (0x1000)
smb_vwv[4]=0 (0x0)
smb_vwv[5]=0 (0x0)
smb_vwv[6]=5000 (0x1388)
smb_vwv[7]=0 (0x0)
smb_vwv[8]=0 (0x0)
smb_vwv[9]=19 (0x13)
smb_vwv[10]=76 (0x4C)
smb_vwv[11]=0 (0x0)
smb_vwv[12]=0 (0x0)
smb_vwv[13]=0 (0x0)
smb_bcc=32
[000] 5C 50 49 50 45 5C 4C 41  4E 4D 41 4E 00 00 00 57  \PIPE\LA NMAN...W
[010] 72 4C 65 68 00 42 31 33  42 57 7A 00 01 00 00 10  rLeh.B13 BWz.....
===============================================================

Sometimes this would happen 3 or 4 times before the connection was formed;
at other times, the connection could not be formed.

Since we were running an old version (1.9.18p10), we upgraded a second
machine to version 2.0.7 - but the same thing was happening.

Finally, after a couple of weeks of attempting a fix (including installing
HP-UX patches etc), we discovered the cause - the smb.conf file was too
long.
 - at 20526 bytes (887 lines), Samba would core dump regularly
 - at 20318 bytes (878 lines), Samba would run fine on version 1.9.18p10,
but would still core dump on 2.0.7
 - at 20118 bytes (869 lines), both versions of Samba run ok.

Presumably, at the large file sizes, some sort of internal limit was passed
which was causing memory corruption. Would it be an idea to change
'testparms' to tell the user if smb.conf is too large? Possibly this has
been included in the very latest version, I haven't had a chance to look at
it yet.

Thanks,
	Peter

Peter Davidson
Services Team, BT ISE Belfast
tel. 028 9041 4193 ; fax 028 9023 2404
email : peter.davidson at bt.com