[Samba] Frequent crashes - drives me nuts .....

[Peter Eckhardt]

Hi,

i've already setup lots of samba boxes. Mostly large servers
as PDC's or as domain members in large networks. No real problems
far.

A friend asked me to update a small network (3 Win 98 boxes
and two Win 2000 boxes) from samba 2.0.6 on
an ancient version of linux to samba on suse 8.2. The Win98
boxes use a login script to get their shares mounted the Win 2000
boxes have their shares simply mapped.

So, i removed the old linux installation and replaced it with a stock
Suse 8.2. Pulled the updates from SuSe, copied the setup from
the old box (smb.conf, dhcpd.conf, printcap, bind settings). Modified
them slightly to match the newer software releases and tested the box.
Worked as expected. A simple setup ....

The box went back to the client. Next morning both nmbd and smbd had 
died with internal errors. The box was rebooted and everything went 
smoothly again until next morning. You guess it, nmbd and nmbd had died
again. I tried to reproduce the crash. No go the box is rock solid.
So i went back from samba-2.2.7a to stock suse 2.2.7 (2.2.7a was 
installed via the suse updates). System was rebooted
and everything was ok again until next morning ....

Ok, sometimes SuSe does strange things when configuring packages. So I 
got samba-2.2.8a and recompiled it with only the necessary options.
Installed it, rebooted and everyhing was fine again. Until ... no, the
next morning it worked ... until two days later. That morning only
smbd has crashed.

Unfortunately the site is remote and has no internet connection
so I have currently no log trace
available (i will probably have a chance to get it today).

Things to consider: It was really hot here in Germany.
                     The hard disc where samba is installed failed    	 
                     completely on the first day of the install. It was
                     repaired by changing the drive electronics.
                     When doing a file system check the drive sent scsi 
           	            errors (even after the repair). After it cooled down
                     fsck ran smoothly. No errors.
                     All other apps (including a nightly full backup 
and  	            nightly copy of the data to a second hard drive do
                     work without problems).


Might it be possible that a windows box is sending bad packets which 
make samba die ? We have a suspicion that samba always dies when a 
certain Win 98 box logs in to the Workgroup.

It's strange that the system runs rock solid during the day and always
dies in the morning.

Does anyone have a clue where to look for that problem or has 
experienced something similar ?


Regards
Peter

-- 

dadi-linux                       www.dadi-linux.de

Peter Eckhardt                   Fon: +49 6071 951256
Weberstr. 36B                    Fax: +49 6071 951257
64846 Groß-Zimmern               peter.eckhardt at dadi-linux.de