[Samba] Samba & Windows session limits

[Jonathan Daub]

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out a problem related to accessing Windows shares from 
Linux samba clients (either smbfs or libsmbclient).

According to Microsoft, there is a limit to the number of open incoming 
sessions that Windows XP/2000 will permit at one time: the limit is 5 for XP 
Home, and 10 for XP Pro. The XP "net session" command shows the open 
sessions.

Microsoft says that incoming sessions originating from the same computer are 
counted as one session. I've tested this by accessing multiple shares 
simultaneously (not password protected) from another Windows PC, and indeed 
the "net session" command shows only one session active.

However, using the Linux samba libraries, it appears that each time a 
Windows share is mounted, it consumes one session, even if the shares are 
mounted from the same Linux PC. For example, after mounting two shares, "net 
session" shows the following:

C:\>net session

Computer               User name            Client Type       Opens Idle 
time
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\\192.168.0.11         ROOT                 Unix                  0 00:00:03
\\192.168.0.11         ROOT                 Unix                  0 00:00:19

Perhaps the Linux samba libraries are not creating the underlying smb 
sessions in the same way that Windows is? At any rate this behavior causes 
Windows XP to run out of available sessions, after which you get an Access 
Denied error attempting to create or access additional sessions...

Any ideas on how to make the Linux samba libraries use one slot per source 
PC? Or do I have this all wrong?

Thanks,
Jon

P.S. Tested on samba 2.2 and 3.0.

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