[Samba] Runaway samba processes

[Robert Euston]

Hi,

Phil Chambers wrote:
>>We have Samba 2.2.5 running on AIX 4.3.3. The server is a very heavy 
>>duty server, and has 3 main shares, which are very large.
>>
>>The problem is that after a few days of running, the server suddenly 
>>stops killing off newly spawned smbd processes. They do not die, even 
>>when the original smbd process is killed. They will respond to a kill 
>>-9, but killing off the main PID does not kill the runaway children. 
>>(Instead, their PPID goes to 1 )
> 
> I'm curious to see if this is in any way related to a problem we have.  Are the 
> ruaway processes using cpu or are they completely idle?  We have a problem with smbd 
> getting into a loop and consuming cpu.  We do also see processes which do not get 
> closed down, but it is just odd processes and I think they will kill with just a 
> -TERM.

This is happening on a huge server with gigabytes of real memory. It can 
handle thousands of these dead proocesses before slowing down - and then 
it's not the memory, but the huge process list. They do consume memory 
and CPU, however, so it may be related.

What is the procedure for logging a bug with the Samba developers?

Thanks,
Robert