[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