samba - Sep 2002 - Wierdness using Samba PDC with WinXP-Pro and Win2K-Pro clients

Hi All-

Please tell me if I'm posting to the wrong list.  I looked for the list
called
samba-ntdom (listed at http://us1.samba.org/samba/archives.html) because it 
seemed a more appropriate forum, but it looks like that list has been 
dissolved.  Has the discussion for that list moved to some other list?

Anyway, here's the problem that I'm hoping someone can help me with:

I have just finished making a change to the server machine in a 3-node 
network.  Before, it was running Win2K Server, and now it's running SuSE 
Linux 8.0 and the default samba package installed with that distribution 
(samba-2.2.3a-64).

The Win2K Server OS was acting as the PDC for the LAN, and the two client 
machines (one running Win2K Pro and the other running WinXP Pro) were 
connected to the domain offered by that Win2K server.  Now, the same machine 
is running SuSE 8.0 and it is acting as the PDC for the LAN and the same two 
clients are now using the SuSE box as the PDC and they are now connected to 
the new domain created on the SuSE box.  The server also serves up an SMB 
share to the client machines.  The client machines map this network file 
share to the local F: drive for each client.

This LAN is in a business office running a database application based upon 
FoxPro.  The file share served up by the server contains the database 
application executables and data.  The two client machines should both run 
copies of the database application simultaneously, and this worked without 
problems when the PDC and file share were being provided by Win2K server OS.

But the wierdness is this:  The arrangement still works fine with the SuSE box 
as the PDC and SMB file server, BUT... ONLY if I start the database 
application on the Win2K client machine FIRST, and then, once it is running, 
I subsequently start the database application on the WinXP client.  If I 
start up the apps on the clients in that order, then all is well, and the app 
apparently runs noticably faster on both clients with the SuSE box as the 
server than it did with Win2K server.

But if I start up the app on the WinXP client first, and subsequently start up 
the app on the Win2K client, then the Win2K client is very, VERY slow in 
loading the app (maybe 5-10 times longer than usual) and the app running on 
the WinXP client crashes in flames with the next operation of any sort.  The 
error message that it offers before going down is, "Insufficient
Memory"
which is undoubtedly completely unrelated to the real problem (the client 
machine has 128 MB of RAM).

The database application is pretty simple.  It is not a client/server 
application.  The very same executable file is fired up on each client, but 
the working directory for one client machine's application is different from
that of the other client machine (this seems to be the way that the database 
application's programmers have implemented the system to avoid file locking 
problems---apparently, the data files that live in the app's working 
directory are synchronized periodically with the app's main directory).

More specifically, the working directories for each client are sub-directories 
of the file share served up by the server.  The working directory for the 
WinXP client is the database app's main directory, and the working directory
for the Win2K client is another directory.

Domain logons all seem to work just fine, and all other aspects of filesystem 
browsing seem ok.

To try and solve the problem myself, I have moved the XP client machine's 
working directory to a separate directory from the app's main directory
(just
a thought).  This made no difference in the wierdness.  I also have read the 
smb.conf man page pretty thoroughly for the options that show up in the SWAT 
sections entitled: protocol options, tuning options, and locking options.  
Nothing there seems to address this issue.

I've browsed through many of the archived articles for this list and the
older
ntdom list, but there seems to be no searchable archives, so that was 
certainly not comprehensive.

I have implemented the windows registry hack for the WinXP machine that allows 
it to be a member of this domain.

Can anyone think of anything else that I should try?  I'm thinking that
there
must be some locking option that Windows XP handles incorrectly or something 
like that.  I'd really appreciate any thoughts on the issue.

Thank you in advance for any help.


-Joe

On Tuesday 24 September 2002 14:42, "Kenneth Illingsworth" wrote:
> See if the following Q article helps:
> http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q259716
>
Thanks for the reply, Ken.  I read the article on enabling or disabling disk 
write caching.  I'm not sure if you meant that I should try enabling or 
disabling disk write caching on one or both of the clients, or if you meant 
that I should try experimenting with disk write caching on the samba server.  
Maybe you meant that I should try everything related to disk write caching?

In any case, I did try experimenting with disk write caching on the server by 
trying both Boolean values for the samba tuning options, "strict sync"
and
"sync always."  As expected, the application slowed way down when
these
options were set to "yes," but otherwise, there was no change in the 
wierdness I mentioned in my original post.

It is still the case that if I start the database application on the WinXP Pro 
client first and then start it on the Win2K client subsequently, the app 
running on the XP client crashes with the next operation that I attempt.

I also tried disabling disk write caching on the XP client and on the 2K 
client (each has only one local disk).  I didn't expect this to affect 
anything because it is the network file system offered up by the samba server 
where all of the reads and writes are taking place, but I tried it anyway.  
No change in the wierdness, so I returned disk write caching to enabled on 
both clients.

If anyone has any other ideas for solving the problem, I would really 
appreciate hearing them!


Regards,
Joe