[Samba] Aix-Samba memory problem

[Neil Lehouillier]

Hi guys,

I recently came into a new site that is running Samba 2.2.8 on an AIX 4.3.3 box.  They are sharing out about 2 terabytes using samba.  Samba was installed using smitty and the binaries.  

They seem to be experiencing a memory problem with this box.  When I do a svmon -Pu the monitoring program shows that smbd has several processes of smbd running:

Inuse * 4096 = amount of memory being used by this process

*this was yesterday
     Pid Command        Inuse      Pin     Pgsp  Virtual   64-bit    Mthrd
   20950 smbd           33098     1906      181     5017        N        N
   22262 smbd            9104     1906      5410
   21060 smbd            9048     1906      181     5479        N        N
   25972 smbd            8678     1906      181     5109        N        N
   24524 smbd            8674     1906      181     5105        N        N
   19262 smbd            8582     1906      181     5013        N        N
   20722 smbd            8572     1906      181     5003        N        N
   21454 smbd            8572     1906      181     5003        N        N
   28946 smbd            8567     1906      181     4996        N        N
   24076 smbd            8566     1906      181     4996        N        N
   20138 smbd            8566     1906      181     4996        N        N
   17608 smbd            8565     1906      181     4996        N        N
   21820 smbd            8565     1906      181     4996        N        N
   26940 smbd            8565     1906      181     4996        N        N
  19884 smbd            8565     1906      181     4996        N        N
   9912 smbd            8565     1906      181     4996        N        N
   25800 smbd            8564     1906      181     4995        N        N
  20452 smbd            8564     1906      181     4995        N        N
   18592 smbd            8562     1906      181     4993        N        N
  28216 smbd            8521     1906      181     4954        N        N
   19110 smbd            8404     1906      181     4862        N        N

Total memory used:  841,592,832 bytes


THIS IS TODAY:
     Pid Command        Inuse      Pin     Pgsp  Virtual   64-bit    Mthrd
    9890 smbd            9219     1906      181     5453        N        N
   24468 smbd            9091     1906      181     5324        N        N
   21996 smbd            8782     1906      181     5015        N        N
   21454 smbd            8778     1906      181     5013        N        N
   26016 smbd            8774     1906      181     5009        N        N
   29822 smbd            8772     1906      181     5006        N        N
   25754 smbd            8771     1906      181     5005        N        N
   20326 smbd            8771     1906      181     5005        N        N
   22292 smbd            8770     1906      181     5003        N        N
   19716 smbd            8769     1906      181     5003        N        N
   27956 smbd            8769     1906      181     5003        N        N
   24220 smbd            8769     1906      181     5003        N        N
   18432 smbd            8768     1906      181     5002        N        N
   25106 smbd            8768     1906      181     5002        N        N
   20138 smbd            8768     1906      181     5003        N        N
   22262 smbd            8768     1906      181     5002        N        N
   27492 smbd            8768     1906      181     5002        N        N
   19364 smbd            8768     1906      181     5002        N        N
   25510 smbd            8768     1906      181     5002        N        N
   29688 smbd            8755     1906      181     4990        N        N
   26950 smbd            8724     1906      181     4961        N        N
   19110 smbd            8607     1906      181     4869        N        N

Total memory used: 792,563,712 bytes

Is samba suppose to start this many different smbd processes?  Or does it run as one smbd process?  Also is it normal for it to be taking up this much memory?  I've never worked with samba on this large a system so I can't draw on my experience on this one.

Any help you guys can give would be appreciated.

Thanks...

Neil