[Samba] Help! Mysterious samba problem...

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Sun, Aug 04, 2002 at 08:31:47PM -0500, Jay Hall wrote:
> I experienced a similar problem due to the virus protection software I 
> was using from Computer Associates.  Disabling the virus protection 
> software fixed the problem.

I tried disabling Norton Anti Virus (and Norton Clean Sweep) as well
--- no luck.

I also tried disabling oplocks, per a suggestion from another e-mail
from this list.  Also no luck.  It eliminates the oplock error
messages from the log files, but copying files to the samba share
still loses.

I have no problem copying large numbers of files/directories *from*
the samba share to the local disk.  That works fine.  It's only
writing files to the samba share from the Windows ME client that's
running into problems.  Also, if I boot my laptop into Windows 2000, I
can copy large files to and from the samba share with no problems.  So
I don't think it's a networking problem.

One note: using the system monitor program on the Windows ME client,
the "kernel: processor usage" chart pegs at 100% when it's stalled
trying to write to the smb share.  The copying files progress bar
stops for some 15-20 seconds during this stall period, before the
error message "The specified network resource or device is no longer
available" appears.  Which files will caause the hang seems to be
somewhat deterministic, although I don't know if that's a function of
their exact size or because of their contents.  This is not 100%
reliable, however.  For example, one file "Holy Week 1.doc" generally
will hang the file transfer immediately if attempted, one in ten
times, the copy work just fine.  

Argh.... I have no way to debug this; I'm beginning to understand why
I hate windows (and smb) so much.....  no useful debugging tools, and
completely uninformative error messages.  (The windows error messages
I've been getting have been the equivalent of the old joke about Brian
Kernighan's car: its only instrument is a big question mark on the
dashboard, which lights when something goes wrong.  According to the
joke, Dr. Kernigham explained this by saying: ``The experienced driver
will know what's wrong.'')

If anyone can give me any suggestions, I would be much obliged.  Right
now, I don't know what to tell my church's parish secretary other than
Windows sucks.  :-(

							- Ted