[Samba] nmbd dies at random

[Henrik Christian Grove]

Hi

I have a small network with a samba server running on Debian Woody (3.0)
and 11 workstations running Windows 2000 (dual-boot with RedHat 8). For
about a year I've had problems with samba (nmbd) dying at
random times making it impossible for users to log on. On average it
happens once a week, but with great variations (down to 30 minutes). 

I've never been able to find anything in the log files and considering
the amount of logs that would be created if I increased the log level
(currently 3) I'm hesitating to increase the log level.

When the problems began the server was running a heavily patched RedHat
6.2 with custom samba 2.0.7 (build by the former administrator) and the
workstations all ran windows 95.

The samba-version is 2.2.3a with all security patches.

We use the danish version of Windows 2000, and the error message when
trying to log on is something like:
"Systemet kunne ikke logge dig på da domænet FSR ikke er tilgængeligt"
which means:
"The system could not log you on since the FSR domain is not available"
(FSR is the name of the domain).

Samba runs as a PDC, but I've had workstations running windows 95 on the
network and you couldn't log on to those either, so I guess the problem
is not related to the PDC functionality. 

I "solve" the problem by restarting (sending a TERM and starting it the
normal way) first nmbd and then smbd. I've tried just restarting
(sending a HUP) smbd and that didn't help. So I guess it is nmbd that
has the problem.

I'll gladly supply more details about the current setup of the
network/configuration of samba/... if that will be of any use.

.Henrik

-- 
Henrik Grove
grove at sslug.dk
Student of Mathematics at the University of Copenhagen