Slow connection with smbclient (Windows in the same machine works fine!) - Sorry, message a little long...

[Henrique Cesar Ulbrich]

Hi folks!

I have a really really bad and weird problem here. 

In my company we have some 40 or 50 stations, divided in about 8 or 10 
workgroups. The network is "almost 100% pure Windows". I say almost because 
two machineas are not: the server itself (Slack + Samba 2.2.7) and my 
workstation, wich is a Red Hat 8.

My machine is the ONLY Linux station in the whole network.

All Windows clients (ranging from Win98 to WinXP - we have all versions!) 
connects and "surf" flawlessly across the net, throug their own shares and 
to the Samba server shares.

My station, when running Windows XP, also works flawlessly.

BUT my Linux station is a headache. I don't know what to do. 
Smbclient / smbmount is simply slooooooooooooooow on doing whatever I want 
on the network.

A simple "ls" command in a mounted smb directory takes more that 20 MINUTES 
to accomplish.

Mounting the shares does not take a second. But navigate through the mounted 
shares (and copying, deleting, moving, opening, etc...) takes, sometimes, 
20, 30 or even 40 MINUTES to do something.

None of the Windows clients has such a problem. Again, my machine, when 
running WinXP, does not have this problem. An it has the SAMENetbios name, 
same IP, same MAC (of course), the only thing that changes is the OS.

I have this 170k GIF image file being copied from my neighbour's computer 
(right beside! same workgroup! same net segment!). Elapsed time 40 minutes 
and counting. And it is not over yet!!!  I know it is still retrieving 
because I'm controlling the image by the Konqueror image preview and the 
tcpdump output. 

I've never had this problem before with no distro, including previous Red 
Hats. I'm not saying it is a RH8 problem. I just don't know what it is, and 
what to do. 

In all companies I've worked before, I've alwais used Linux as my 
workstation and never had to worry about smbclient setup & troubleshoot.
I just set up a mountscript with the shares I want and go fot it!
It was always a trivial task.

What do you suggest? Where is smbclient's netbios config stuff so I can have 
a look?

I have already RTFM, read the man pages, the smbclient tips (unmantained for 
a long time), the "Using Samba" book (which says absolutely NOTHING useful 
about smbclients, besides testing the server...) and searched for answers 
all across the Net.

I'm desperately crying. I'm advocaring for Linux here. I want to make a 
gradual migration of desktops here to Linux, but I NEED this working. You 
know, all bosses are MS-Oriented these days...

Thanks in advance.
-- 
Henrique Cesar Ulbrich
henrique at digerati.com.br

(now playing: Green is the Colour 
 Pink Floyd - Live at the Electric Factory 1970)