[Samba] transient "access denied" problem

[greg wm]

hello samba geeks,

since i moved most of our data from a windows 2000 server to a samba
server last week, about one or two of our windows 2000 workstations per
day come up with "access denied" (to the data on the samba server only),
which persists until the workstation is rebooted.  no such thing
happened while all that data was being accessed from the windows 2000
server.

my only guess so far is that we may be hitting some sort of bug that
might be related to latency in responses from samba.  my reason for
being suspecious of latency related problems is due to my experience
with linux swap latency.  on my linux workstation, when something needs
to come back from swap, it can take many seconds.  our linux server is
working without any obvious problem, though it does have many roles:
bind-named, smb/nmb, httpd serving up php/perl/python/mysql/postgresql,
postfix/saslauthd/courier-imap/authdaemond, and amavisd-new/spamd/clamd.
  the 512mb RAM is always all in use, with typically ~355mb of swap
active as well.

samba here is samba-3.0.10-1.4E.2 (as installed/updated from CentOS 4
(RHEL 4) with all updates applied).  our windows 2000 workstations have
all updates applied.  the windows 2000 server might have a distant
chance of being relevant to this issue in its role as PDC so fwiw it has
no updates applied (the updates themselves are likely higher risk than
the issues they fix).

is this sort of transient "access denied" problem happening to anyone
else?  what are you/they doing about it?  would upgrading to 3.0.20
actually address this issue?

tia,
greg

Greg Whitley Mott
IT Coordinator
NonviolentPeaceforce.org