[Samba] CIFS hang

[Darrel Barton]

I have a Proliant running Red Hat with the 2.6.9-5.ELsmp kernel.

We have a Windows 2000 Server who's secondary disc drive is mounted on the 
Linux box via CIFS using the following command:

/sbin/mount.cifs //w2000/docs /var/www/documents -o 
dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0444,gid=100,uid=501,username=winuser,password=winpass 


 From time to time, for whatever reason, the Windows 2000 Server requires 
rebooting and if they reboot it without first allowing us to umount the 
cifs, all requests to the cfis directory will hang.   Requests, cd 
commands, df commands ... all hang ... for as long as three HOURS and they 
cannot be killed (kill -1, -15, -9) and the smb cannot be 
restarted.  Presumably this is all a result of the calls being hung within 
the kernel.

It has been suggested that we upgrade the kernel to 2.6.9-78.0.13.

I'm not generally opposed to upgrades, but I'm hesitant to "upgrade to the 
latest version" as a substitute for understanding the root of any problem 
and engineering a proper fix.  Maybe it's the years of Microsoft software, 
but I believe that upgrading to the latest version has become tech support 
slang for "we have NO IDEA what your problem is, so maybe the latest 
version will fix it by accident -- but for very sure you'll be so deep in 
the woods with NEW problems that you'll likely forget about this one entirely."


Would anyone have any first hand knowledge of this problem and experience 
that a later kernel is a solution?
Regards
Darrel