Samba problem on mission critical system.

[Anton de Wet]

Hi

I've been asked to help with a samba problem on a mission critical
system. I've been working with samba for a LONG time, but I have to
admit this time its got me stumped :(

Scenario: 
---------
Sun Solaris box (new installation, I didn't check the version) running
a large storage solution making a carousel system of tapes look like a
file system. All SCSI based. Samba is used to make this (slow but
accesible) file system available to 2 NT machines running an
application that in turn makes it available to many client
machines. Recently accessed files are stored on hard drive. Samba 2.0.6.

Many other of these installations are running fine with samba. This
one used to run fine until some changes were made over December. The
only change that people are aware of is that a new network card has
been added to the Sun box for a dedicated crossover link between this
server and one of the NT boxes.

Samba access to other hard drive shares is fine. When a share using
the tapes is accessed, the 1st time the files are copied off it takes
a LONG time to copy the files. This seems to work OK. Subsequent
accesses should then be fast.

Files are generally small (1 to 50kb).

Problem:
--------
Accessing cached files from the NT machines take 15 to 30
seconds. Changing directories is also VERY slow.

Testing so far:
---------------

Test 1: Fiddle with settings in smb.conf. Setup was quite
extensive, I piece by piece took it down to the simplest config
possible. Using all defaults, user security etc. There is no change.

Test 2: Bringing a linux notebook, I smbmounted the drives. Everything
works exactly like it is supposed to work.

Test 3: Using different NT server, restuls are the same as with other
NT servers.

I've also tried setting locking = no, no difference.




Any ideas on what can be causing this? What I can try to fix it? Is it
possible that an error like this can be caused by a change in the Sun
hardware?


Thanx for any ideas.

Anton






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"We have to be the change we want to see in the world" - Gandhi