[Samba] Samba Shares Disconnecting

AndyLiebman at aol.com AndyLiebman at aol.com
Tue Mar 8 17:22:26 GMT 2005


Hi Samba list

We have about 40 Linux  Servers in use at various locations. All are running 
Samba 3.02. On some of the  servers, we seem to be experiencing periodic 
disconnection of Windows XP client  machines to their Samba shares (BTW, some are 
Windows SP1 and some  SP2).

In a couple of cases, we were able to see many events in  /var/log/messages 
stating "link beat lost" or "link beat detected". Our  assumption was that we 
had a bad cable or switch in the pathway between the  Server and Client 
machines. Replacing all cables and switches in a particular  path seemed to resolve 
the problem (we'll figure out later which component was  the defective one. The 
important thing is that the client machines on that path  are no longer 
disconnecting). 

But in some other cases, users seem to be  experiencing continued random 
disconnections. By the way, we are using the Linux  Servers to store files for 
video editing. Sometimes, an editor will go to lunch  or take a phone call and 
leave the Windows editing machine just sitting idle --  and upon returning will 
discover that the machine has been disconnected from the  Samba server. Most 
of the time, however, the disconnection does NOT occur, even  after many hours 
of idleness. 

This is a very random thing. Does anybody  have any clues what it could be 
other than defective hardware? Is there some  timeout mechanism coming into 
play? We haven't specified any "keep alive" or  "dead time" intervals in our 
smb.conf file, so I assume we're just getting the  default values for those 
variables. 

Andy Liebman  



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