samba - Oct 2008 - time sensitive error "the specified network name is no longer available."

I have a user w/ puzzling error. We have not been able to get a tcpdump or 
significant samba log, but I'm posting to see if anyone else has seen 
this. I did find some older posts that point to possible
client issues.

We're running samba 3.0.25b on RHEL4.

The user reports:
I am getting an error whenever I want to make a copy of a MS Excel file on 
my shared network drive: 

(From windows explorer) I was trying to create a copy, and when I do the 
paste I get the error.
Cannot copy _filename_: The specified network name is no longer 
available."

And then the file that is created is corrupt. The original file is about 
240K.

Now for the timing part. If she executes the copy command, and waits 
(count 1,2,3,4 seconds) then it seems like it works.

Thanks,
Bill Marshall

At 04:09 PM 10/29/2008 -0500, William Marshall wrote:
>I have a user w/ puzzling error. We have not been able to get a tcpdump or
>significant samba log, but I'm posting to see if anyone else has seen
>this. I did find some older posts that point to possible
>client issues.
>
>We're running samba 3.0.25b on RHEL4.
>
>The user reports:
>I am getting an error whenever I want to make a copy of a MS Excel file on
>my shared network drive:
>
>(From windows explorer) I was trying to create a copy, and when I do the
>paste I get the error.
>Cannot copy _filename_: The specified network name is no longer
>available."
>
>And then the file that is created is corrupt. The original file is about
>240K.
>
>Now for the timing part. If she executes the copy command, and waits
>(count 1,2,3,4 seconds) then it seems like it works.
Seems to be a common problem that no one has been able to address yet. When 
it does it to me, it creates a zero-length file. Repeating the operation at 
any time up to about 2-3 minutes delay causes winders to ask if I want to 
overwrite the file. If I say Yes, I get a good copy.

I see it mostly when copying video files to a Samba share.

One possible explanation is that WinXP tries both the low port (139 ?) and 
the high port (445 ?) at about the same time, and continues the transaction 
with which ever port answers first, leaving the other one to die. Some sort 
of collision results. I added a line to smb.conf:

smb ports = 139

This is supposed to help if you see this in the logs:
get peername failed; endpoint not connected

Using port 445 or 443 (I forget which) is supposed to be better but 
Win95/98/ME clients don't support that, and I don't know if Win2k does,
but
I suspect it does.

The bad news: I still get the "Network name not available" error from
time
to time. But it's better.

I just make very sure not to do any file moves, I copy and delete. 
Sometimes I have to perform a copy or save a second time and overwrite the 
zero-length file. But that gets me where I'm going.




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