[Samba] smbd high cpu load

[Wayne Cochran]

We have a Linux file server for a set of computer science and  
engineering
labs where each lab contains machines running Mac OS X, Ubuntu Linux,
or some incarnation of Windows. At times the these machines become
almost unusable and I think I have narrowed the problem to smbd  
processes
soaking up all the CPU on the server. Running 'top' on the server
reveals a dozen or so entries like the following:

   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
18229 millerbr  20   0 12420 3980 2992 R   26  0.1   0:03.85 smbd
18225 tande8    20   0 12380 3564 2660 S   22  0.1   1:00.19 smbd
18861 dhenniga  20   0 12676 4316 3328 R    7  0.1   0:01.86 smbd
18210 samcprui  20   0 12616 4064 3128 S    3  0.1   0:55.84 smbd
18214 mlhorn    20   0 12568 3912 3060 S    3  0.1   0:25.23 smbd
18867 tsze      20   0 12784 4656 3592 S    3  0.1   0:10.28 smbd
18728 daflores  20   0 12684 4560 3516 S    2  0.1   0:35.44 smbd
18678 twharris  20   0 12780 4556 3552 S    1  0.1   0:11.35 smbd
...

Looking through the log files reveals nothing obvious at first glance,  
but of course
I am not sure what to look for and there are a lot of log files.

What steps should I first take to debug the situation?

Thanks for any and all help.

--w

Wayne O. Cochran
Clinical Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Washington State University Vancouver
wcochran at vancouver.wsu.edu
http://ezekiel.vancouver.wsu.edu/~wayne