[Samba] Printing problems

[Josh Kelley]

Gerald (Jerry) Carter wrote:

> Josh Kelley wrote:
>
> | Second, we're seeing lots of the following messages in
> | our log files:
> |
> | [2005/01/27 13:31:34, 0] rpc_server/srv_lsa_hnd.c:create_policy_hnd(111)
> |  create_policy_hnd: ERROR: too many handles (1025) on this pipe.
> |
> | I'm getting reports from users that they're intermittently
> | unable to  print.  Windows reports, "Unable to create a print
> | job"; this seems to  correspond with the "too many handles"
> | errors, but I haven't gotten  details consistently enough
> | to know for sure.  Any suggestions?
>
> Are you using an XP client?  There's a limit on the
> number of open printer handles that smbd will allow
> to prevent a client from eating up too much memory.
> it's set to 256 currently.
>
> I would look at a network sniff to see what the client
> is doing opening all those printer handles.

We are using XP clients.  I'll try running a network sniff; thanks for 
the suggestion.  (The problem is happening intermittently on a number of 
our lab computers, which makes that a bit harder.)

A couple of questions, keeping in mind that I know little about the SMB 
protocol or Samba's internals:  If I'm reading the source code and the 
log messages correctly, these are policy handles (policy handles on 
pipes?).  Are those the same thing as printer handles?  The limit on 
policy handles in 3.0.9 is apparently 1024, not 256.

Another oddity:  We'd been getting hundreds or thousands of these error 
messages each day, then our server crashed yesterday morning for 
as-yet-undetermined reasons.  Since the reboot, I've been seeing neither 
the "old print jobs aren't cleared" bug nor the "too many handles" messages.

Josh Kelley