samba/win2k connection loss

[Paul Bowen]

A customer has a D320 running HP-UX 10.2 (I know its old) and has been running samba on it for years fine. A Microsoft specialist company has been brought in and has changed the NT server on the network for a Win2K server. Now the PC clients (win98/XP) are really slow at retrieving a file from the samba shared directory on the D320, and after a while they lose the link and ask for password authentication, that it never used to. Of cours Microsoft say its a Unix problem - over to me. ? help !

[James A. Donovan]

There are known issues with slow performance from Win2K boxes. Check to make sure your systems are on at least the SP referenced here...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;301952&Product=win2000

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;818396&Product=win2000

[Paul Bowen]

Apparently all the latest service pack items are already installed. Any other clues ?

[Darren Prior]

Hi,

It's possible that your version of Samba pre-dates Win2k; so it's worth reading through release notes of the newer Samba versions.

Have you checked the Samba logs for errors? Set the debug level to 2 and ensure that logs are created for each client, then check the log.smb (or log.smbd) and the log for a single client that has the problem. This could give you a clue about parameters that need changing, whether it's keepalives or some other issue.

regards,

Darren.

[Geoff Wild]

Yes, what version of Samba is running?

For W2K, set

keepalive = 0

in smb.conf.

I have my Samba's setup with:

security = SERVER
encrypt passwords = Yes
password server = BDC1, BDC2, BDC3
preferred master = No
domain master = No
wins server = WINSERVER

Rgds...Geoff

[Paul Bowen]

I had the log level set to 5 to try and find theproblem. The following message is repeated at least once per second(SERVER is the Win2K on domain SALES, ADV9000 is the HP9000):

[2003/11/28 02:49:57, 4] nmbd/nmbd_workgroupdb.c:(292)
dump_workgroups()
dump workgroup on subnet 192.168.0.112: netmask= 255.255.255.0:
SALES(1) current master browser = SERVER
ADV9000 40009a03 (Samba 2.0.6)
SERVER 4004162f ()

According to swlist, the samba version is A.01.02, but in lthe log file it mentions 2.0.6 !?
btw security = SHARE. Don't know if this should cause a problem, though. I have set preferred and domain mast = no, I had local master=no. I will try it and see if it gets better.
Thanks

[Geoff Wild]

That's a pretty old version of CIFS (samba)...

You might want to upgrade to latest:

B8725AA A.01.10 HP CIFS Server

based on samba 2.28a

Rgds...Geoff

[Paul Bowen]

Installed the latest version from the HP portal and they say it all seems much faster now, thanks.

[Darren Prior]

Hi Paul,

You've confused me a little now! HP doesn't provide CIFS for 10.20 systems, I believed it was only possible to use open source Samba on 10.20.

regards,

Darren.

[Paul Bowen]

I downloaded Samba-2.2.3a from
http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/cgi-bin/redirect?hpux/Networking/Misc/samba-2.2.3a/samba-2.2.3a-sd-10.20.depot.gz
which I found on hpux.connect.org.uk
Next job is to get them to upgrade the server !
Merry Christmas