samba - Sep 2000 - Loosing Mounts .. kernel: smb_dont_catch_keepalive: server->data_ready == NULL error

I've a diskless Linux (LRP) box with Samba client
mounting a share off a NT4 SP6 box. Its regularly
'loosing' the share. If I do a ls it shows NO files.
Unmounting and remounting it fixes it. This is happening
about 2 time/day on average. 

A possibly related error in the log is:

kernel: smb_dont_catch_keepalive: server->data_ready == NULL 

One German reply re this error caught my attention.. It seems 
to be related to the -C option for folding pwds to upper case...
(but I couldnt read the content !)

I've removed this from the mount and dont get the error on 
mounting now... interesting to see what happens from here. 
I changed the pwd to upper case. 

Anyone else had or solved this problem ?

rgds .. Peter

Peter, I and many others I believe are having the same problem...check out 
the message below from Urban from an earlier post...and let us know how 
you go. 

the kernel updates mentioned below are at: 

ftp.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/
or try the mirror within the site 
I grabbed the updates myself today but haven't attempted to recompile as 
of yet
you'll need pre-patch-2.2.17-20 before going to pre-patch-2.2.18-10 (which 
is the latest I could see) I believe. 

On Mon, 18 Sep 2000 auto852@hushmail.com wrote:
> Has anyone experienced Samba dropping mounts? (NT shares).
Everyone using smbfs I believe ...
> again. But after an undetermined amount of time Samba just drops them 
again
> and I have to remount them again. Does anyone know of a fix to this problem
> (with the latest version)?
I can right now remember 2 ways to get this.

1. If the server is down while someone is accessing the smbfs mount
   smbmount will terminate. Apply one of the "fixes" patches
       http://www.hojdpunkten.ac.se/054/samba/index.html

2. There is a signal related problem that will kill smbmount in some
   versions of the kernel. Upgrade to 2.2.18-preX or 2.4.0-test8 or later,
   those versions contain a workaround. If this is your problem you should
   get messages like this in your kernel log:
       smb_retry: caught signal

If this does not match/work, come back with kernel version and kernel
logs from when a mount stops working.

/Urban


At Sun, 24 Sep 2000 17:48:13 +1100, "Peter Court"
<pc@hotkey.net.au> wrote:
>
>I've a diskless Linux (LRP) box with Samba client
>mounting a share off a NT4 SP6 box. Its regularly
>'loosing' the share. If I do a ls it shows NO files.
>Unmounting and remounting it fixes it. This is happening
>about 2 time/day on average.
>
>A possibly related error in the log is:
>
>kernel: smb_dont_catch_keepalive: server->data_ready == NULL
>
>One German reply re this error caught my attention.. It seems
>to be related to the -C option for folding pwds to upper case...
>(but I couldnt read the content !)
>
>I've removed this from the mount and dont get the error on
>mounting now... interesting to see what happens from here.
>I changed the pwd to upper case.
>
>Anyone else had or solved this problem ?
>
>rgds .. Peter
>

On Sun, 24 Sep 2000, Peter Court wrote:
> A possibly related error in the log is:
> 
> kernel: smb_dont_catch_keepalive: server->data_ready == NULL 
Do you get any other smb_* messages?

> One German reply re this error caught my attention.. It seems 
> to be related to the -C option for folding pwds to upper case...
> (but I couldnt read the content !)
I missed that one (or maybe it was in html and was killed by my procmail
filter :)
> I've removed this from the mount and dont get the error on 
> mounting now... interesting to see what happens from here. 
> I changed the pwd to upper case. 
Removing -C suggests that smbmount forgets about case conversions on
remounts (what samba version are you using? more recent smbmounts doesn't
have a -C option)

Sometimes the connection between the server and client is dropped. This is
just fine. What happens then is that smbmount tries to connect again.
Maybe smbmount has forgotten about -C on the second attempt so when it
should reconnect it fails. Like this:

first try "passwd" -> "PASSWD", succeeds; reconnect uses
"passwd", fails

I would upgrade to samba 2.0.7 on the client and see if that helps.

/Urban