[Samba] smbmount hangs Linux if Windows server goes down

[Howard]

Hello.

My linux box mounts a Windows filesystem as an smbfs entry in /etc/fstab.  I 
found that, if the hosting Windows box goes down for some reason (Imagine 
that!), any process on the Linux box that was accessing it hangs forever in 
state D and cannot be killed.

How can I configure smbmount so that it will timeout and return errors rather 
than hang forever?  I have scoured the web for answers, and see some for NFS, 
but not for SMBFS.

This is a serious problem because my Linux box also runs a Samba server.  
Sometimes a Windows box is accessing a directory on the Samba server that is 
actually symlinked to a directory hosted via smbfs on another Windows box.  If 
something happens to it, then the smbd server gets hosed and starts 
indefinetly spawning children until I reboot the Linux box, which I cannot do 
remotely because the shutdown gets hung trying to unmount the smbfs! What a 
mess!!!

Please, can anyone help?