[Samba] Disconnect problem

[John H Terpstra]

Cantisan,

What type or NIC and HUB doe you have? Ethernet cable quality?

We have thousands of sites running samba on all varietles of Red Hat. You
should make sure your hardware is all OK. We are seeing an incredible
number of instances of bad hardware that causes similar problems.

On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, cantisan wrote:

> Samba and Win2k just don't seem to want to work together.  I get disconnects
> after about 13MB of data transfer, and the Win2k box just loses the share as
> if it were disconnected.  Re-establishing the share works, but data transfer
> of large files or working with large amounts of data is impossible.  From
> the amount of traffic on this newsgroup regarding WinXP and Win2K problems
> with Samba, I think this problem is common - although a solution hasn't
> cropped up, or I haven't found one in my travels.

What is abundantly common is that folks are still learning how to manage
WinXP!

- John T.

> Here's my contribution to finding the problem:
> I put a sniffer on the net and see that when this disconnect occurs, the
> Samba server sends a set of 5 or 6 data packets to the Win2K box, and the
> Win2k box sends back ACK packets for them. [all normal so far..]  However,
> the Linux (RedHat 7.3) box doesn't appear to get the last ACK packet (or
> isn't processing it - since tcpdump is picking it up it IS being
> received...), as it resends the last data packet (same tcp seq number).  The
> Windows box ACKS that packet again, and this is repeated about 6 or 7 times
> before the Windows box decides that it's not worth the trouble and just
> stops communicating (no attempt to FIN the connection either...)
>
> Now I don't know why the ACKs just aren't getting through to the data
> handler for Samba, or why Windows doesn't bother to try to send a FIN packet
> (no obligation...it's a timed-out tcp connection as far as Win2k cares..),
> but I'd like to know how to fix this.  I have the tcpdump output if anyone
> would care to look at it..
>
> The problem has been with me since RedHat 7.0 and Samba that came with it -
> I'm on RedHat 7.3 and Samba 2.2.6 now and the problem is still here
>
>

-- 
John H Terpstra
Email: jht at samba.org