Hi Jeremy, Thanks for your prompt response. I implemented your suggestion and added those lines to includes.h, recompiled and reinstalled the samba on the test machine. Unfortunately it made no difference. :-(. I added some debugging code and looked what happened : -------------------------------------------------------------------- DEBUG(4,("Trying sysv shmem open of size %d\n", shm_size)); /* first the semaphore */ sem_id = semget(SEMAPHORE_KEY, 0, 0); if (sem_id == -1) { if (read_only) return NULL; hash_size = SHMEM_HASH_SIZE; DEBUG(4,("semaphore : initial hash-size = %d \n", hash_size)); while (hash_size > 1) { sem_id = semget(SEMAPHORE_KEY, hash_size+1, IPC_CREAT|IPC_EXCL|SEMAPHORE_PERMS); DEBUG(4,("semaphore : %s - hash-size = %d \n", strerror(errno),hash_size)); DEBUG(4,("semaphore : sem_id = %d \n", sem_id)); if (sem_id != -1 || (errno != EINVAL && errno != ENOSPC)) break; hash_size -= 5; } ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Running this modified version gave me the following log.smb : Netmask for lan0 = 255.255.255.240 Derived broadcast address xxx.xxx.xxx.xx Added interface ip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xx bcast=xxx.xxx.xxx.xx nmask=255.255.255.240 load_client_codepage: loading codepage 850. 04/01/1998 17:50:21 loaded services Trying sysv shmem open of size 102400 semaphore : initial hash-size = 2047 semaphore : No space left on device - hash-size = 2047 semaphore : sem_id = -1 semaphore : No space left on device - hash-size = 2042 semaphore : sem_id = -1 semaphore : No space left on device - hash-size = 2037 semaphore : sem_id = -1 semaphore : No space left on device - hash-size = 2032 semaphore : sem_id = -1 semaphore : No space left on device - hash