[Samba] Overloaded samba server. Is it a bug?

[Martin]

On Friday 28 October 2005 23:14, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> > 2) Root user was no longer recognized, (we still trying to figure out
> > why, the user's been added to the tree, but nothing changed) so we used
> > the
> > new role based administration provided by samba 3 as a workarround
> > (SeMachinAccount...), and no more troubles about it.
>
> Yep.
Why?

> > Something happens in a determined moment of the day (rush hour).
> > Everything is running smoothly (0.3 - 0.4 of load average) when the load
> > start to grow indefinitely!!!!!!. It raises from 0.3 to 50 in a matter
> > of
> > seconds!, and it keeps growing till the server dies. We couldn't find
> > the
> > reason of this, but it happens in a two hors interval. Before and after
> > this
> > interval, there are no errors of any kind.
>
> My guess is this:  Your LDAP server is getting backed up because of a
> bug, perhaps invoving a lock in the database.  Then Samba processes
> start backing up, trying to access LDAP, which is wedged.  They keep
> hammering at the ldap server in the backoff pattern, then fail (causing
> the client to try again).
>
> Because the questions are not being answered, the load goes though the
> roof, and this causes the LDAP sever more pain.
>
> One option is to separate your LDAP server from your samba server, and
> have more than one LDAP server available per Samba server.  This allows
> Samba to use the other server, with the local one recovers (assuming
> some short-term lock).
The LDAP Server IS running on dedicated machine (Actually a Linux eDirectory 
Cluster with DirXML)

As recomended at 
http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-Guide/2000users.html#ch7dualLDAP, 
we have configured dual ldap backend to provide LDAP failover, with a windows 
eDir réplica, but we still without full undertanding your terminology 
"...backing up..."

Now we are testing this configuration and waiting for the results.

--
Martin