[Samba] Strange delays/hangs/freezes with samba

[Peter Schuller]

Hello,

our file server was rebooted due to an extended power outage a week or
so ago. Ever since then, we have had a problem with clients "freezing"
or hanging when accessing the Samba server.

It sometimes happens when loggin in, at the beginning of the login
script. The script will stall; explorer will hang (not even the task
manager can be brought to the front). At that point all you can do is
wait it out. Things get "unstuck" in 10-30 seconds usually.

Similar effects can be seen when doing other forms of file I/O against
samba.

When this happens, the client seems to be sending some form av request
to the server on port 139; *AND* getting an ACK. This happens with an
interval of a few seconds, until it gets unstuck and the packets start
flowing again. (I didn't save the dump; I will investigate further on
monday).

When such a freeze happens, it's *not* global to all samba clients.
Client A may be frozen while client B does not have a problem accessing
anything.

We have done some testing and as far as we can tell it's not a packet
loss problem or anything like that.

No "unusual" activity can be seen on the server during the freeze,
except for the obvious result of the samba process serving the client no
longer actively consuming CPU.

Restarting samba does not help.

It happens at semi-regular intervals. I can sit down at a workstation
doing nothing but login and logout as a domain user; and perhaps 30% of
the times it will freeze when the login script runs. Similarly, one just
has to browser around the server a while to reproduce a freeze that way.

Kernel is 2.4.18, samba is 2.2.4. I - am going crazy :)

Any ideas?

Thank!

-- 
/ Peter Schuller, InfiDyne Technologies HB

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