[Samba] Help! Mysterious samba problem...

[tytso at mit.edu]

For some strange reason, a samba setup which was previously working has
suddenly stopped working, and I can't figure out why.

The symptoms is that attempts to write some files onto a samba
filesystem take a long time, and then error out with the error message
(in Windows dialog box):

"Cannot create or replace <filename>: The specified network resource or
device is no longer available."

On the Samba server side, the associated error messages are:

[2002/08/04 21:17:26, 0] lib/util_sock.c:read_data(436)
  read_data: read failure for 2688. Error = Connection reset by peer
[2002/08/04 21:17:59, 0] lib/util_sock.c:read_socket_with_timeout(298)
  read_socket_with_timeout: timeout read. read error = Connection reset
  by peer.
[2002/08/04 21:17:59, 0] smbd/oplock.c:oplock_break(758)
  oplock_break: receive_smb error (Connection reset by peer)
  oplock_break failed for file eudora/data/eudora.log (dev = 303, inode = 621482, file_id = 3).
[2002/08/04 21:17:59, 0] smbd/oplock.c:oplock_break(843)
  oplock_break: client failure in break - shutting down this smbd.
[2002/08/04 21:18:31, 0] smbd/oplock.c:request_oplock_break(981)
  request_oplock_break: no response received to oplock break request to pid 366 on port 1028 for dev = 303, inode = 621482, file_id = 3
[2002/08/04 21:19:49, 0] smbd/oplock.c:request_oplock_break(981)
  request_oplock_break: no response received to oplock break request to pid 367 on port 1029 for dev = 303, inode = 621499, file_id = 37

The client is running Windows ME.  The server is running Linux 2.4.19
with Samba 2.2.3a-6 (from Debian Woody).  

I wasn't at all sure whose fault it was, so I tried various combinations
of Linux 2.4.9, 2.4.19-rc1. and Samba 2.2.1a-9.  None of these changed
the symptoms, so I'm relatively confident that it wasn't caused by a
recent software update (since I backed everything out to several earlier
versions, and it didn't make the problem go away or even change
significantly.)

Any hints for what I might do to fix this would be greatly appreciated!!

						- Ted