Broken pipe on ls after doing mount -t smbfs

[Rasjid Wilcox]

I have a problem with smbmount.

I have a linux server running E-Smith (or Mitel SME server as it is now) which
is basically a cut down version of RedHat 7.0 (running Kernel 2.2.19-7.0.8smp).
Samba version is 2.0.10. We are connecting to an NT server (service pack 3 - I
must upgrade that sometime soon).

We have quite a good tapedrive and backup software (3rd party) on the E-Smith
server, whereas the NT server has a poor tapedrive and hard to use backup
software.  I was planning to backup the NT server as part of the daily backup of
the E-Smith server.

# mount -t smbfs //<ntsrever>/<sharename> <mountpoint> -o
rw,username=<smbusername>,gid=<user>,uid=<user>

works fine - for a while.

Go away for a while (I have not timed this, but less than 15 minutes).
# cd to <mountpoint>.
# ls
ls: broken pipe
or sometimes
ls: input/output error
or sometimes
ls
<NOTHING>

Linux still thinks the shares are mounted.
# mount
//<ntserver>/<sharename> on //E-smith/<mountpoint> type smbfs (0)

However, trying to unmount gives
# umount //E-smith/<mountpoint>
umount: //<ntserver>/<sharename>: not found
umount: //E-smith/<mountpoint>: not mounted

It would seem that the smbmount is being dropped for some reason, and this info
is not being passed back to mount.

I would like the smbfs mount to be persistent.

Is there some configuration that I am unaware of?  Do I need to put "keepalive =
60" in /etc/smb.conf?  Is this even relevant for smbmount?  Or is this an actual
bug?

Actually, this looks like it may be the same problem that Giovanni is having.

Any help would be greatly apprecitated.

Cheers,

Rasjid.