CentOS - Oct 2006 - smbmount: mount() syscall gone bad ?

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I have seen a weird problem in one of my clients. The reported that
when issuing a smbmount command (both client and server are CentOS 4.4),
it would take up to 30 second for the mount to complete.

To make a long history short, by using strace and the source, I noticed
smbmnt is first calling mount() using ascii options for *data. Then
that would timeout, and it would try again using a struct, finally working.

Looking at the source code, it will first try ascii if kernel >= 2.4,
and fallback to struct if it doesn't work. So changing smbmnt.c to
always using the struct first solved my problem. I also noticed that
debian will always go first for the struct aproach.

Anyone seen this before ?

- -- 
Rodrigo Barbosa
"Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur"
"Be excellent to each other ..." - Bill & Ted (Wyld Stallyns)

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On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 12:37:15 -0300 Rodrigo Barbosa wrote:
> I have seen a weird problem in one of my clients. The reported that
> when issuing a smbmount command (both client and server are CentOS 4.4),
> it would take up to 30 second for the mount to complete.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Anyone seen this before ?
> 
I have noticed this problem too.

For me, whether the delay occurs or not depends on which mount
options I use. The behavior below has been 100% reproducible for
me so far.

(My client is Centos 4.4, but the fileserver is running Win2003 SP1.)


This combination of options always takes 30 seconds to mount:

# date; mount -t smbfs //WINSERVER/TestShare /mnt/TestShare -o
ro,ip=192.168.1.9,workgroup=TESTNET,username=guest,password=; date
Sat Oct 14 06:49:54 EDT 2006
Sat Oct 14 06:50:24 EDT 2006

# umount /mnt/TestShare/


However, if I add certain extra options (e.g. nodev, dmask/fmask, etc)
the delay vanishes:

# date; mount -t smbfs //WINSERVER/TestShare /mnt/TestShare -o
ro,nodev,ip=192.168.1.9,workgroup=TESTNET,username=guest,password=; date
Sat Oct 14 06:51:34 EDT 2006
Sat Oct 14 06:51:34 EDT 2006

# umount /mnt/TestShare/

# date; mount -t smbfs //WINSERVER/TestShare /mnt/TestShare -o
ro,dmask=750,fmask=640,ip=192.168.1.9,workgroup=TESTNET,username=guest,password=;
date
Sat Oct 14 06:52:19 EDT 2006
Sat Oct 14 06:52:19 EDT 2006

# umount /mnt/TestShare/


Taking out those extra options, the delay returns:

# date; mount -t smbfs //WINSERVER/TestShare /mnt/TestShare -o
ro,ip=192.168.1.9,workgroup=TESTNET,username=guest,password=; date
Sat Oct 14 06:52:52 EDT 2006
Sat Oct 14 06:53:22 EDT 2006

# umount /mnt/TestShare/


I had assumed the problem had to be on the Windows side of things. :-)

Best Regards,
PWR