[Samba] Best practices for long-running Samba server

[Misty Stanley-Jones]

Hi all,

I have been having the weirdest network browsing problems on my network the 
past week.  Come to find out the wins.dat file got corrupted.  Removing that 
file fixed everything.  Because our systems typically have uptimes measured 
in months rather than days, and it is difficult for me to restart Samba 
except as a scheduled task (which I'm afraid to do because there are users 
who come in earlier than I do in the AM and users that work later than me in 
the PM, and I don't want them having to call me at home :D ), I need to know 
what the best practice is for the .dat and .tdb files.  Is it normal for them 
to become corrupt over time?  Is there some best practice for how often to 
remove them and let them re-populate?  Anything else I should know for a 
Samba instance that typically runs for months on end without interruption?

Thanks in advance,
Misty