smbmounts hang around after windows client disconnects

[Noel Kelly]

Ducking in onto this thread seems like a better idea than starting a new
one:  I also have a continuing problem with SMBMOUNT (at least I think it is
smbmount).  I had thought it was due to my inadvertently using the one
supplied with RH6.2 rather than the compiled 2.2.2 version.  However I still
get hangs whilst copying files.

I guess my problem is different in that the Windows client is NOT
terminating the share (at least I don't think it is - the share I have
mounted is from a Windows 2000 server SP2 running Netware Gateway Services
and it has in turn mounted a Netware share to offer out).  The copying
process seems to hit a particular file (not necessarily big - one it kept
hanging on was a 5K GIF) and then the process freezes.  A "kill -9" is then
required and the share becomes useable again after a load of SMB messages
are spewed onto the console.  Try the copy again and it stops at the same
file again.  Delete/move that file and it will copy quite happily gigabytes
before fouling again.

Note that I don't actually kill the smbmount process but the copying process
- once the copying process is dead then the smbmount share becomes available
again.

Reading that back, the chain of mounts sounds pretty monstrous - but I can
see no reason why it should not work.  If I copy using Windows Explorer from
the NWGS machine to Samba it works fine but is slow (all the graphical
nonsense ?).

I am mounting the share like this:

/samba/bin/smbmount //sancho/hamnw5shared /tmp/sancho -o
username=nkelly,password=xxxxxx,ro


Does anyone have any suggestions here ?  It would be superb for us if we
could use smbmount reliably.  I read that mounting the share using automount
might help ?  I must admit that I have not waited as long as Urban seems to
suggest (1hr+) but have given it a good 15mins today with no result and
ended up killing it.

Thanks,
Noel




-----Original Message-----
From: Urban Widmark [mailto:urban at teststation.com]
Sent: 04 December 2001 08:53
To: Joel Hammer
Cc: samba at lists.samba.org
Subject: Re: smbmounts hang around after windows client disconnects


On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Joel Hammer wrote:

> Using 2.2.1a and a 2.4 kernel patched for win4lin. 

Which 2.4.x? Later versions (x > 13?) does not try to disconnect cleanly
and should work better at shutdown.

> If a windows client shuts down while the linux box is still connected, the
> share is not removed from my mount list or from /proc/mounts

It is probbaly waiting for the server end to reply to it's disconnect
message. Later versions have temporarily lost the capability to send
disconnect messages.


> It cannot be removed with umount. I can kill the smbmount with kill -15
but
> the share is still there with mount.
> Telinit to 1 does not remove the share.
> Attempts to access the share after the windows client shuts down results
in
> the process hanging. 

If you wait long enough I think tcp will timeout (take a shower, eat
breakfast - that sort of wait), at least that is what it does for me. When
shutting down perhaps you can't see that, or maybe there are additional
retries.

Killing smbmount is never a good idea. That is not where it is waiting
(not for too long anyway).


The problem of smbfs blocking when the other end disappears is known. It's
a bug in the smbfs socket code where it (basiclly) assumes it will receive
a reply if it sends a request.

It does timeout, but it takes far too long. I'm working on a better
version.

/Urban


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