[Samba] Cifs client

[Max Kipness]

I've been using the latest cifs 1.8 client at http://linux-cifs.samba.org/
with Fedora 3 and RHE 4. 

This client seems to have a lot of issues that I did not notice when using
smbfs. It seems like when there is an issue with connectivity to a windows
machine, and you try to access a cifs mount, the entire session locks up. I
basically have to kill the session, log back on, and then there is no way to
kill the process as it is showing a 'D' for 'waiting for I/O. There have
been times on various linux servers where I had so many unkillable cifs
processes that I then could not even do a reboot or shutdown of the system.
I have had to physically hold the power down to halt the computer.

My question is whether this in any way relates to Samba itself on the
system. I see various revisions of the whole Samba suite, but I believe
these revisions only handle improvements on the server-end.

Anybody else using cifs for connectivity that has had these issues? Are
there any ways around this or it is the product just unstable at this point?

Thanks,
Max