[Samba] Samba and the InterWeb

[Alex Hooper]

Hi,

We have an office-based Windows-locked publishing system whose only 
delivery mechanism is to write to a local filesystem, and a requirement 
for its output to be available to a collocated production environment 
comprising Solaris and Linux boxes. The 'obvious' solution was to run a 
Samba server on one of the collocated Linux boxes and mount the share it 
provides on the relevant Windows machines in the office. And this is 
what I have done. This works, but encounters the problem I am about to 
describe.

SCENARIO ONE:

Connecting to the server/share in Explorer (Windows XP) by typing the 
path (\\dns.host.name\share) into the address bar is accomplished 
without problem, as is receiving a directory listing. But uploading a 
file to the remote share (by drag and dropping) causes Explorer to 
freeze for anything between 10 and 30 seconds after which the file 
transfers at good speed.

SCENARIO TWO:

Map the remote share, using same connection details. Now copy is often 
fine, but sometimes will just fail with a "Cannot copy
<filename>: The specified network name is no longer available." and 
leave a zero-length file at the remote end.

Not infrequently, smbd processes are being left in an 'uninterruptible 
sleep' state.

If I mount the remote share via smbmount onto a Linux server in the 
office, I don't encounter any of these problems.

Packet-sniffing on scenario one shows that the pause is happening before 
  any set-up for the file transfer: it looks like the client 
disconnects, then there's a pause, then it reconnects.

I'm using Samba version 3.0.25b-1.el4_6.4 on RHEL ES release 4. Clients 
are Windows XP Pro. Our office has a fairly large and complex LAN which 
is managed by a separate department. Access to the Internet is, not 
surprisingly, via a NATting gateway. Appropriate ports have been opened 
in the firewalls, though all communication is in Direct-hosted mode (ie, 
I only see traffic on port 445/tcp).

smb.conf looks like this:

[global]

         workgroup = WG123
         netbios name = n2323  # hostname of server
         server string = FOO-BAR-Samba

         #wins proxy = yes
         #wins server = xxx.xx.xx.x

         security = user
         passdb backend = tdbsam

         load printers = no

         # idle time (mins) before client is disconnected
         dead time = 15
         keepalive = 10
         socket options = IPTOS_THROUGHPUT SO_SNDBUF=8576
         inherit permissions = yes

[test-xml]
         path = /stuff/test-xml
         writeable = Yes
         public = no

Could anyone suggest what might be going on here?

Thanks,

Alex.
-- 
Alex Hooper                           |  <w> www.bmjpg.com
Systems and Database Administration   |  <e> ahooper at bmjgroup.com
BMJ Knowledge, BMJ Publishing Group   |  <t> +44 20 7383 6049
BMA House, LONDON, WC1H 9JR           |


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