Our site has been experiencing problems with Samba causing kernel panics under heavy use. We are running Mandrake 7.0 and Samba 2.0.6. We are no longer using the distro included with Mandrake - we actually downloaded the 2.0.6 release and recompiled. Downloading from Samba shares causes no problems - and downloads are frequent and heavy - but uploading similar amounts of data leaves a catatonic server at best and a kernel panic at worst. Dropping several > 1Mb files on a share will usually do it. This has been the case using a dual processor Celeron 433 and a single processor AMD K6-2. Both systems have plenty of RAM and disk space and run fine with NFS. We first noticed the problem on a AMD K5-133 system, and initially attributed the problem to the NIC, but later tests proved the hardware is fine. I ran a "samba-less" linux install on it for several months with no unusual behavior. This is highly repeatable - to the point that I have turned write permissions off on all shares. I have taken to uploading with FTP using LeechFTP to keep from trashing my partitions. Since I didn't build the dual Celeron system, I will give the specs on my AMD K6-2 system. AMD K6-2 350 (not overclocked), 128Mb RAM the NIC is a LiteON 10/100Mbps board (Linksys) This board sits on a 100Mbps switched ethernet and operates in full duplex. (it's a quick network) Although I can't imagine the disks being a problem, here's the disk layout: Primary (hda1) is at 25% usage and is a 1.6Gb WD PIO Mode4 drive (/) Secondary (hdb1) is at 4% usage and is a 1Gb WD PIO Mode3 drive (/home) Tertiary (hdc1) is at 46% usage and is a 1.2Gb WD PIO Mode4 drive (/usr) There aren't any shares on those drives though (other than the "home" directories - here is the SCSI subsystem: Softraid /dev/md0 consists of 4 identical Seagate 2Gb UW disks (/export1) Volume is at 49% usage /dev/sda1 is a 4Gb Quantum UW disk (/export2) Volume is at 40% usage All of the shares on the above two filesystems. The clients are a mix of NT, linux, Win98, Win95 and Win2K. I have been able to reproduce this problem on all client OS' so far - so that doesn't appear to be a factor. Also, the problem appears limited to copying files - opening/saving does't seem to cause a problem - even with Photoshop and its huge PSD files. This system normally runs X, so I can't see the kernel panic screens. Given the repeatable nature of the problem, I can drop out of X and cause the crash. If any other info is needed - send me an email. We are trying to find better workarounds or solutions, as the current situation is kind of ridiculous. Thanks, Seth Henry jshenry@net-noise.com
On 2000-04-26 17:40:19 +1000, Jeremy Seth Henry wrote:> Our site has been experiencing problems with Samba causing kernel > panics under heavy use. We are running Mandrake 7.0 and Samba 2.0.6. > We are no longer using the distro included with Mandrake - we actually > downloaded the 2.0.6 release and recompiled. Downloading from Samba > shares causes no problems - and downloads are frequent and heavy - but > uploading similar amounts of data leaves a catatonic server at best > and a kernel panic at worst. Dropping several > 1Mb files on a share > will usually do it. This has been the case using a dual processor > Celeron 433 and a single processor AMD K6-2. Both systems have plenty > of RAM and disk space and run fine with NFS. We first noticed the > problem on a AMD K5-133 system, and initially attributed the problem > to the NIC, but later tests proved the hardware is fine. I ran a > "samba-less" linux install on it for several months with no unusual > behavior.Programs shouldn't be able to cause a kernel panic, so this is a bug in kernel space, whether it happens only with samba or not. NFS uses UDP, so it probably has different timing characteristics and doesn't trigger the bug. You could try using FTP or ttcp to generate a similar amount of traffic and see if it crashes, too.> This system normally runs X, so I can't see the kernel panic screens. > Given the repeatable nature of the problem, I can drop out of X and > cause the crash. If any other info is needed - send me an email.The panic message would be interesting, but you should send it to kernel-dev, not samba. You might also want to read the docs reporting bugs in /usr/src/linux, if you haven't already. hp -- _ | Peter J. Holzer | E = mc? -- Albert Einstein |_|_) | Sysadmin WSR / LUGA | E(M) = C -- Bruce Schneier | | | hjp@wsr.ac.at | -- noticed by rain forest puppy __/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | on bugtraq 2000-04-20 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 371 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/attachments/20000426/d8f5cf11/attachment.bin
Hello, Gentlemans! I've a similar problem with a second server running Linux. It has four Net Cards Realteks 8139AS 10/100Mbps. One cards operates in 100Mbps mode (Servers Network) and others in 10Mbps mode. When a huge amount of information pass through a card operating in 10Mbps mode, a soft restart of the interface needed (e.g. a card don't work at all, no transfer operations can be permited) for example: if-down eth0 ; if-up eth0 After this the interface work fine until a next overflow. There was a kernel 2.0.36 . I've downloaded a new driver for it and the problem disappered. Think, it would be useful to download the latest driver. Maybe I didn't understand Yours problem completly, but my native language is Russian. Hope, this would make a little help to You! Good-Luck. ------ Sasha.