samba - Jan 2003 - Bad crash with Samba 2.2.7 and linux software RAID-5

While running a combination of Samba 2.2.7 and software (md) RAID-5 on a 
RedHat 8.0 machine, I have encountered a peculiar behavior.  If anyone 
can advise, or report a similar happening, I would greatly appreciate it.

If any user logs into the console (GUI login to X) while users are 
browsing or accessing files on the Samba share, smbd processes will 
begin to enter a "D" state, and freeze access to the disk.  The 
processes can't be killed, because they are (to my knowledge) waiting on 
the hardware for something.  I can't even umount the disk, because 
there's a process using it that can't die.

If this continues long enough, the whole machine locks up.  And I mean 
LOCKS UP.  Frozen video, and no response at all.  The only way I've been 
able to recover control of the machine is to reboot from the switch.

Also, there isn't anything in the log files.  Nothing.  On autopsy of 
the rebooted system, the system logs and the Samba logs show nothing 
strange prior to the reboot.  I can log in via SSH, and everything is 
fine.  If no one logs into the console, uptime is days, so far, with no 
errors or problems.

I umounted the RAID array, and created a test share on the boot drive, 
which is an ordinary single-disk device.  This did not cause a failure 
or problem.

I have appended my smb.conf file to the end of this, even though I 
strongly suspect that a problem with md is causing all of this.

Thanks,

Ryan Lynch