[Samba] many smbd processes when sync'ing sysvol

[Alex Matthews]

Hi there,

I have three S4 servers running as AD DCs.
In order to keep the sysvol share in sync I'm using crontab to run the 
following command:

/usr/bin/rsync -PavAX --delete root@<masterPDC>:/var/lib/samba/sysvol/ 
/var/lib/samba/sysvol/

However everytime this command is run a couple of extra smbd processes 
are started on the <masterPDC> (between 2 and 5 processes) which never 
exit and just sit there taking up resources. So, quite quickly I had a 
system with over 500 smbd processes and no free memory which very 
abruptly fell over and stopped serving genuine clients.

Has anyone else come across this issue/know what is causing it?

I have taken some level 10 logs of the smbd processes that get formed. 
However I don't have access to them from my current location. I will 
email them in tomorrow from work.

Thanks,

Alex