[Samba] linux server completely hangs copying files with samba

[Dragan Krnic]

>i'm experiencying a strange problem with a mandrake 9.0
>machine, kernel 2.4.19, samba (different versions,
>including latest). when I copy large amount of data from
>any win98 machine to a share directory on linux, after a
>random time the linux machine hangs; not responding even
>to ctrl-alt-canc, only possibility is to reset. I was
>using a realtek 8139 (driver 8139too) which I know
>sometime giving problems; I tried a Dlink (always 8139too),
>same problem; reading around it could be a driver problem
>so I managed to have a good 3com905c (driver 3c59x); big
>surprise: same problem!!! i noticed that trasferring from
>the laptop which has a 10 Mit/s card doesn't give the
>error, so probably it happens with large bandwith usage
>on the server.

I think it's the same problem I had and it's not the
network problem. It's about a problem with system on IDE
drives. After I switched to a SCSI disk for boot, swap and
root the problem disappeared completely.

The fact that the problem doesn't occur with 10 Mbps
connections only shows that slow ether cannot create enough
stress for the problem to manifest itself. It's some
racing condition in UDMA driver. If you disable DMA on
your system IDE drive you won't have the problem but the
performance really sucks.



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