[Samba] Excessive and useless SMB queries by XP client

[Igor Zlatkovic]

Hi there,

Samba server is 3.0.28a on Ubuntu 8.04. I connect to the server through
OpenVPN (using TUN). OpenVPN and Samba servers are on the same machine.

Using Windows XP client and the builtin Windows Explorer as file manager
I just traverse a share on the server, changing directories and
displaying their contents.

Basically it works, but quite often there are significant delays before
the contents of a directory is displayed. I have seen network activity
during those delays and recorded the traffic with Wireshark. The
interesting part of the trace is attached.

The attachment shows that the client queries info of a directory named
"test" on the share (which exists), then tries to access an alternate
data stream named \test:{4c8cc155-6c1e-11d1-8e41-00c04fb9386d}:$DATA
(which does not exist). Annoying thing is that the client repeats
exactly the same queries several hundred times before giving up and
displaying the contents of the directory. The whole network log repeats
exactly the same sequence from the attached file several hundred times,
only the FID is different every time.

If I use a Linux client, this does not happen. If I use Windows XP
client with any other file manager except for the builtin Windows
Explorer, this does not happen either. This happens only when using
Windows Explorer, on three different Windows XP clients, absolutely
reproducible.

According to the network logs, I see no wrong done by Samba, neither do
I see any problem with the network connection. Problems with MTU would
cause dropped packets and errors, but this is not the case. everything
works, no errors are reported, just there are delays during which
excessive SMB queries made by the client can be seen.

I am quite certain that the client is misbehaving. Still I write to this
list in hope that someone has seen this before and knows what is amiss
with the client.

Ciao,
Igor
-------------- next part --------------
60	105.343838	10.8.0.10	10.8.0.1	SMB	NT Create AndX Request, Path: \test
61	105.379199	10.8.0.1	10.8.0.10	SMB	NT Create AndX Response, FID: 0x32fe
62	105.379854	10.8.0.10	10.8.0.1	SMB	Trans2 Request, QUERY_FILE_INFO, FID: 0x32fe, Query File Basic Info
63	105.420342	10.8.0.1	10.8.0.10	SMB	Trans2 Response, FID: 0x32fe, QUERY_FILE_INFO
64	105.420701	10.8.0.10	10.8.0.1	SMB	Trans2 Request, QUERY_FILE_INFO, FID: 0x32fe, Query File Standard Info
65	105.459627	10.8.0.1	10.8.0.10	SMB	Trans2 Response, FID: 0x32fe, QUERY_FILE_INFO
66	105.459973	10.8.0.10	10.8.0.1	SMB	Trans2 Request, QUERY_FILE_INFO, FID: 0x32fe, Query File Internal Info
67	105.497540	10.8.0.1	10.8.0.10	SMB	Trans2 Response, FID: 0x32fe, QUERY_FILE_INFO
68	105.497732	10.8.0.10	10.8.0.1	SMB	Trans2 Request, QUERY_FILE_INFO, FID: 0x32fe, Query File EA Info
69	105.533927	10.8.0.1	10.8.0.10	SMB	Trans2 Response, FID: 0x32fe, QUERY_FILE_INFO
70	105.549305	10.8.0.10	10.8.0.1	SMB	NT Create AndX Request, Path: \test:{4c8cc155-6c1e-11d1-8e41-00c04fb9386d}:$DATA
71	105.589626	10.8.0.1	10.8.0.10	SMB	NT Create AndX Response, FID: 0x0000, Error: STATUS_OBJECT_PATH_NOT_FOUND
72	105.590081	10.8.0.10	10.8.0.1	SMB	Close Request, FID: 0x32fe
73	105.622875	10.8.0.1	10.8.0.10	SMB	Close Response, FID: 0x32fe