samba - Dec 2004 - Minor annoyances: Samba 3.0.2/Win2k and WinXP

I have three users that are having trouble with my Samba network.  This
trouble is composed of two (possibly distinct) issues.  My network is
controlled by a Red Hat ES 3 server running Samba 3.0.2 with an LDAP
backend.

Issue 1:  Laptop users, with "Offline Files" that are made of their
"My
Documents" directories.  These directories are stored on the Samba server
(so they can be backed up) and sync'ed so they can use them on the road.
This issue is intermittent, but when it happens, it *really* happens.  The
symptoms are the machine will complain that it's "Working Offline"
and ask
the user to click an icon in the taskbar to restore the connections.  They
do, the machine goes back online and things are fine for a varying amount of
time (between 10 seconds and days to months).  Then the cycle starts all
over again.  Both of the affected machines are running Windows XP Pro with
all of the patches/service packs etc. applied to them.

Issue 2: Windows 2000 Pro desktop user.  This issue manifests itself as an
error message when the user goes to save a file.  The error message is: "An
error occurred while reconnecting <Drive Letter>: to \\Server\sharename.
Microsoft Windows Network: The local device name is already in use.  The
connection has not been restored."  Even though the error message leads the
user to believe that something bad has happened, the file he is trying save
*is* saved, and no problems exist.  This used to happen from time to time,
now it has become a normal happening instead of a rare occurrence.

I've googled my heart out and have very little info on Issue No. 1, but a
lot on Issue No. 2.  It seems as though they might be related, but I can't
pin any one thing to both of them.  All of the info I can find on No. 2,
seems to blame either/and a busy network or Microsoft for the problem, but
no solution has been offered that actually fixes the problem.  I can find
evidence of this happening all the way back to 2000 - so I know I'm not
alone here.  I do have a busy network, but nothing that my systems can not
deal with.

The biggest problem that I have with all of this is that it only affects
these three computers.  The remainder of my network appears to be unaffected
by them (about 30 computers).

So my question is: Does anyone have a solution to this problem?  Anyone have
a similar issue that we can compare notes on?

--
Kevin L. Collins, MCSE
Systems Manager
Nesbitt Engineering, Inc.

Collins, Kevin wrote:
> My network is
> controlled by a Red Hat ES 3 server running Samba 3.0.2...
Samba 3.0.2 IS pretty old these days... I'd suggest taking the time to get
up to 3.0.9 and then seeing where you stand. Remember to test on non-production
servers when at all possible, or stock up on
pizza and H2O! ;-)

-- 
Michael Lueck
Lueck Data Systems

Remove the upper case letters NOSPAM to contact me directly.

Lueck, Micheal wrote:

Collins, Kevin wrote:
>> My network is
>> controlled by a Red Hat ES 3 server running Samba 3.0.2...
> Samba 3.0.2 IS pretty old these days... I'd suggest taking the time to
get
> up to 3.0.9 and then seeing where you stand. Remember to test on non
> production servers when at all possible, or stock up on 
> pizza and H2O! ;-)
>
> -- 
> Michael Lueck
> Lueck Data Systems
Ok, after some testing, this weekend we upgraded our Samba servers to 3.0.9.
In our lab, the symptoms described in the "Laptop" section of the
original
posting went away.  We did duplicate this with 3.0.2 in our lab, and an
upgrade to 3.0.7 is where the problem actually stopped.  We went ahead and
tested 3.0.9 as well, as this is the version that Red Hat is pushing with
"up2date".  Again, the problem did not manifest itself.

The upgrade came off without a hitch.  All of my machines were working as
normal this morning.

Until about 3 minutes ago.  One of our Laptop Users were forced offline
again.  This time, he actually lost work because of the "syncing"
process.

So needless to say, it's back on top of my 'Giant List O'things to
Fix'.

So, besides the information contained in the original post
(http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2004-December/096759.html), what more
is needed to continue down the path to fix this problem?

Thanks in advance,
Kevin