[Samba] conflict between Realtek 8139 (client) and 3c2000T (server) NIC's with Samba?

[Bart van Dijck]

Hi,

Last friday I changed the NIC in two of our Samba servers from a 3com 905b
(100mb) to a 3com 2000T (1000mb) to take advantage of our new switch which
supports gigabit.

One of the workstations (XP SP1, with all subsequent patches and hotfixes
and with an onboard Realtek 8139) then started
to have problems with the two Samba servers with the new NIC's. It could see
the network neighbourhood alright,
it could browse but when opening a file a time-out or error occurred.

In the logs lines like this:
syslog.1:May 15 17:00:56 kylie smbd[27625]: [2004/05/15 17:00:56, 0]
smbd/oplock.c:oplock_break(869)
syslog.1:May 15 17:00:56 kylie smbd[27625]:   oplock_break: client failure
in oplock break in file file.xls

I tried setting:
oplocks no
level2 oplocks no
in the smb.conf
but no luck.
(mind you: all other workstations worked just fine, it was just this one el
cheapo barebone). There was also no problem in reaching another Samba server
with an 100 MB 3c905 NIC.

I then tried updating to Samba 3.0.4 but still no luck. Had fun though with
updating the recycle bin etc ...

I then tried using a different PC also with a Realtek 8139 card: same
problem! So I put another NIC in the offending machine and presto:
everything worked just fine.

Can someone explain this and possibly suggest another solution? We have a
number of PC's with Realtek's (I know: they are not hgh quality cards to put
it mildly) and would
rather not replace them all. I can't think what the cause of the problem is:
a NIC that otherwise works fine (surfing, even from the same machine which
had the Samba server or any other network activitity) causes problems with
Samba. I could understand it if the Samba server had the Realtek NIC, but I
never have had any problems with 3com cards.

Googling turned up no relevant informatie, so does anybody on this list have
an idea? If additional info is needed I can provide it.

Thanks,
Bart van Dijck