samba - Sep 1999 - mounting NT 4.0 WS shares w/Linux

Running NT 4.0 WS SP 5 and samba 2.0.5a on Linux, 2.2.12 kernel. 
Whenever I mount an NT share from Linux, it times out after an
indeterminate period of time.  This has been a continuing problem, the
only workaround being to perform something requiring disk activity on
the NT box, bypassing the cache (i.e., ls > /dev/null doesn't work, but
df does).  This must be done on a regular basis--every two or three
minutes.

Error messages 
me2v:reliant me2v$ ls winnt
ls: winnt: Input/output error

from /var/log/messages:
Sep 15 20:09:14 reliant kernel: smb_trans2_request: result=-32, setting
invalid
Sep 15 20:10:25 reliant kernel: smb_retry: signal failed, error=-3

This was after only about 1 and 1/2 hours, give or take 15 minutes.

This has been a recurring problem since I moved to 2.0.3 from 1.9.18 way
back when, and plenty of other people have had it, also.  The typical
response is that it's a password caching problem, but the password
caching fixes, if any, haven't fixed the problem.

I would like to know 1) Is there something in NT that could be causing
this, and what that is/how to fix it, or 2) how to fix it once and for
all from the Linux side (besides not using samba, that is).  Or is there
a smb.conf undocumented option somewhere that would help?  

I don't know if this is technically a Linux problem or if it's a samba
problem, since historically smbmount has not been officially part of
samba (although it's distributed and compiled with samba), so I wasn't
sure who to post to.  Hopefully, someone has found a fix, or at least
knows what the problem is...

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure it's not an NT service pack problem, since
this has been a recurring problem with no service packs, and with SP3-5.
-- 
Matthew Vanecek
Course of Study: http://www.unt.edu/bcis
Visit my Website at http://people.unt.edu/~mev0003
For answers type: perl -e 'print
$i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);'
*****************************************************************
For 93 million miles, there is nothing between the sun and my shadow
except me. I'm always getting in the way of something...

On Wed, 15 Sep 1999, Matthew Vanecek wrote:
> Error messages 
> me2v:reliant me2v$ ls winnt
> ls: winnt: Input/output error
Interesting, since I've had the _same_ problem ever since _I_ upgraded to
samba2. I wonder if it hasn't bothered enough people yet! :)
> I don't know if this is technically a Linux problem or if it's a
samba
> problem, since historically smbmount has not been officially part of
> samba (although it's distributed and compiled with samba), so I
wasn't
> sure who to post to.  Hopefully, someone has found a fix, or at least
> knows what the problem is...
When posting about six months ago I ran into the same difficulties; the
samba people suggested either bland workarounds or switching to smbfs
(which was a valid suggestion, although not what I was aiming for). This
unsupported nature of smbmount is a pain - I just wonder why everybody
shuns it.

The whole smbmount area is very murky; the switch to new commandline
parameters/format was not really publicized and it made a whole load of
people wonder - see the lists when samba2 was released. The new syntax is
convoluted IMHO, and yet there has been no sign of integration with the
official mount, which does support mounting various filesystem types. Why
is anybody's guess - one cause might be the not-exactly-simple aspect
of samba. Not that this is _samba_'s fault in itself, just that the
consequence is that it's hard to hack on.
> Incidentally, I'm pretty sure it's not an NT service pack problem,
since
> this has been a recurring problem with no service packs, and with SP3-5.
Aye, I've done the same tests with the same results always. It doesn't
happen with plain Win95 sharing, at any rate.

k