[Samba] What circumstances migth favour frequently locked files

[John H Terpstra]

On Sun, 14 Mar 2004, Vladuta Cristian wrote:

>
>
> Gentlemen, I am running a RH9 - Samba PDC ( 3.0.1pre3) in a mixed
> W9X/XP/NT production environment and encountered a problem related to
> locked files. By tracing down the event I suspect it might have happened
> when a certain user tried to copy a large number of files from an NT
> server on to the Samba server.  The process resulted in a list of locked
> files that remained there until a smb restart. Below is my event log
> related to that.
>
> However I discovered other files staying locked as well , not in
> relation with big transfers .
>
> Can you please tell me what circumstances might favour such unwanted
> locking situations? And what are the odds for file corruption in such
> cases?

The log below shows the smbd has segfaulted (or crashed). That is
particularly bad as it will leave entries in the lock tables and of course
may have corrupted files that were being written to at the time of the
crash.

Segfaults can be caused by two factors:
	1. Hardware problems
	2. An executing application attempts an out-of-bounds operation

By far the most common cause of segfaults is hardware related. Typical
causes are:
	a. Bad memory
	b. Power instability
	c. Component overheating
	d. Defective components like network cards

Since Samba-3 was released we have fixed at approx. 6 coding errors that
could result in segfaults. Most were triggered by unusual  conditions and
are unlikely to affect code that drives main-stream operations.


> And final question:  What is the safest upgrade method from a
> preliminary version - rpm package - ( 3.0.1pre3, my case) to the latest
> stable one?  Simply removing the rpms and installing the new ones by
> preserving the conf and smbpasswd file?

Download the Samba-3 RPMS from the Samba-Team FTP sites and run:
	rpm -Fvh *rpm

This will preserve your configuration settings and will update all
packages that are installed.

- John T.

>
>
> 2004/03/11 17:05:50, 0] lib/fault.c:fault_report(36)
>
>   ===============================================================
>
> [2004/03/11 17:05:50, 0] lib/fault.c:fault_report(37)
>
>   INTERNAL ERROR: Signal 11 in pid 4046 (3.0.1pre3)
>
>   Please read the appendix Bugs of the Samba HOWTO collection
>
> [2004/03/11 17:05:50, 0] lib/fault.c:fault_report(39)
>
>   ===============================================================
>
> [2004/03/11 17:05:50, 0] lib/util.c:smb_panic(1400)
>
>   PANIC: internal error
>
> [2004/03/11 17:05:50, 0] lib/util.c:smb_panic(1408)
>
>   BACKTRACE: 14 stack frames:
>
>    #0 smbd(smb_panic+0x11c) [0x81bc81c]
>
>    #1 smbd [0x81ab1f2]
>
>    #2 /lib/tls/libc.so.6 [0x420275c8]
>
>    #3 smbd(alloc_sub_basic+0x22) [0x81c2cb2]
>
>    #4 smbd(strftime+0x19a1) [0x80776ed]
>
>    #5 smbd(make_connection+0x4ca) [0x80cb4aa]
>
>    #6 smbd(reply_tcon_and_X+0x1af) [0x809bd8f]
>
>    #7 smbd [0x80c7c56]
>
>    #8 smbd [0x80c7e29]
>
>    #9 smbd(process_smb+0x8f) [0x80c803f]
>
>    #10 smbd(smbd_process+0x167) [0x80c8c77]
>
>    #11 smbd(main+0x4bf) [0x8227c0f]
>
>    #12 /lib/tls/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe4) [0x42015574]
>
>    #13 smbd(chroot+0x35) [0x8076b91]
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
John H Terpstra
Email: jht at samba.org