samba - May 2000 - Samba Children aren't dying, fighting instead

Hello All,

First I would like to thank you all for for providing such a wonderful
forum for Samba discussion.  I have learned *vast* amounts perusing 
this list.  I also would like to thank people for their replies to 
my previous question (Re: lock files on write protected shares).  That all
works great now!  

My most irritating problem recently has become worse as more people are
using the network.  I am currently running Samba 2.0.7 on an Alpha RedHat
6.0 server which is acting as a PDC for several NT 4.0 Workstations (SP 4).  
Things work well for a little while, but as smbd starts spawning subprocesses, 
sometimes 10-15 for a single user, seriously slowing down network response
(logins take 30sec up to several minutes; ditto for logouts).  The child
processes stick around even after the user logs off.  Another side effect
is that MS Office stops working, and eventually the server
"disappears"
from the network.  Killing off the obsolete  processes solves the problem
(sometimes the NT workstation needs to be restarted).  

Ideas?  Smb.conf is available upon request, log files too.

Thank you so much for your help.  Best wishes,

Jeff

Jeff wrote:
| Things work well for a little while, but as smbd starts spawning
| subprocesses, sometimes 10-15 for a single user, seriously slowing
down
| network response	
...
| Another side effect is that MS Office stops working, and eventually 
| the server "disappears" from the network.  Killing off the obsolete 
| processes solves the problem

	Ok, you have clients disconnecting for some reason.
	As a palliative, set 
	[global] 
		deadtime = 10
	or
		keepalive = 3600
	which will schedule a check every 10 minutes for
	a dead client, followed by the child process cleaning
	up.  Decrease the time as required.

	Look at the logs and see if you can see a sequence of
	connect/diconenct/connect, and see if you can see an
	obvious reason.

	Reasons we've seen in the past include timeouts, possibly
	die to a connectivity problem, shredded packets, due
	to a broken hub/router, and other client or network
	weirdnesses.


	Samba users: should there be a dead time default? if
	so, how much and why?
	
--dave
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | Always do right. This will gratify some people
185 Ellerslie Ave.,   | and astonish the rest.        -- Mark Twain
Willowdale, Ontario   | //www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba/author.html
Work: (905) 415-2849 Home: (416) 223-8968 Email: davecb@canada.sun.com