Description of problem: After latest series of updates to fedora core 2, something seems to be wrong with the samba filesystem - pretty sure it's the samba server which is responsible (not client or kernel). I'm seeing frequent freezes during access - not whole system freezes, but just the smbfs filesystem. I'm seeing this from 3 different samba FC2 clients. Before updates everything worked perfectly (at over 8MB/s), now, speed remains the same, but at random moments it just totally locks-up/freezes - only a umount/mount of the samba share helps. Has happened even during simple 'cat remote 2GB file' commands. Same version on all machines. samba{,-common,-client,-server}-3.0.6-2.fc2 gaia (server): 2.4.27-rc4-gaia (based on kernel.org) zeus (client): 2.6.8-1.521smp (FC2 normal) chronos (client): 2.6.8.1-521 (FC2 normal) hades (client): 2.4.18-4custom (base on RH73 kernel) The gaia-hades combo worked before updating the samba software on either of them, indeed I think this problem was occuring on hades before a samba-client update as well. Thus: I'd assume the problem is with the samba-server, or possibly the gaia samba config, but this hasn't changed in ages, so... Are there some extra ports that need to be opened in the latest samba server? How reproducible: Always, but random - takes time. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Just really need to use a smbfs file system for a sufficiently long time, usually a single GB or less of transfer suffices.
(the above mention of a samba-server package was an error of course - no such package) I'll just add that I reinstalled samba-3.0.3-5 on the samba server and have since transferred over 80GB (using zeus as the client) without interruptions (it'd have broken at least a dozen if not 50 times with the newer version). Is the newer samba using 2.6 kernel features? Note: The easiest way to get a samba 3.0.6-2.fc2 session to freeze is to access data on a spinned down disk - the disk spins up, but by then the session is already frozen.
Don't have a fix, but I can confim this to be a serious problem. I've got a couple of linuxboxes here, and they all show the same smb- lockups after trying to copy a random amount of data. Fedora Core 1, kernel 2.6.8.1, x86_64 preempt, samba 3.0.7-2.fc1 Fedora Core 2, kernel 2.6.8.1, x86 smp ht preempt, smb 3.0.7-2.fc2 Tried both as server and as client, no difference, same crap. Gonna revert to an older version of the client-packages tomorrow, see if that fixes things (maybe this can pinpoint whether it's a server- or client-side problem).
Haven't tried 3.0.7-2 as server or client yet, but the problems appeared with 3.0.6-2 and I've verified 3.0.6-2 works as client with 3.0.3-5 being the server. Based on your comment I'd guess the 3.0.6-2 and 3.0.7-2 server code is bad.
Been playing with 3.0.3-5 on the server-side, 3.0.7-2 on the clientside. Problem is *much* less obvious, only a very occasional input/output error. Not perfect, but tolerable. Vice-versa (303 client, 307 server), the problem is just as bad as with a full 3.0.7-setup. So I think I agree with you, it's something bad on the past-3.0.6 serverside of things. The really bad thing is that I can't use anything before 3.0.6 on our fileserver since that would break some windows-specific stuff. I don't know what exactly breaks, but I'd love to get this fixed or worked around, it's starting to piss me off pretty badly.
So you have had problems with 3.0.3-5 as server? That's weird I've had none with 3.0.3-5 serving and 3.0.6-2 as client, and I've copied something like 200GB's of data off a samba mount (for a very time sensitive app - no problems)...
Just to see what happens, try putting "use sendfile = no" in the [global] section of the server's smb.conf.
This isn't a 100% sure answer, but preliminary tests would suggest that "use sendfile = no" does solve the problem.
Fedora Core 2 is now maintained by the Fedora Legacy project for security updates only. If this problem is a security issue, please reopen and reassign to the Fedora Legacy product. If it is not a security issue and hasn't been resolved in the current FC3 updates or in the FC4 test release, reopen and change the version to match.
Note that FC1 and FC2 are no longer supported even by Fedora Legacy. Many changes have occurred since these older releases. Please install a supported version of Fedora Core and retest. If this still occurs on FC3 or FC4, please assign to that version and Fedora Legacy. If it still occurs on FC5 or FC6, please reopen and assign to the correct version. Thanks!