Linux (RHEL/SLES) CIFS mount of Windows network drive is unreliable: Input/Output err
 

I have a single Windows XP Professional SP3 acting as a web server. The C drive of the Windows is set to network share full access for everybody.

There are about 15+ Linux boxes which have this Windows box mounted via CIFS with proper administrative credentials. When only a few of these machines access the CIFS mount everything runs fine and smoothly. However when I attempt to do activities which involve over 10 Linux clients simultaneously accessing the share, i receive alot of Input/ouput error messages regardless of the command.

Things like ls/cp will result in Input/output error during heavier load.

I have attempted to edit the Interactive logon: Number of previous logons to cache from 10 --> 50 via gpedit.msc on Windows. With no luck.

Besides the fact that allowing full access to the c drive is not a good idea XP has a 10 concurrent connection share limitation. Changing the number of of previous logons to cache via gpedit.msc does not change this limitation.

This is a windows not a linux problem and I an not aware of anything that will change this limitation.

michaelk is right, your only options are to switch the system to a server version of Windows (+ an appropriate number of CALs) or, much cheaper, switch the server to a Linux system with Samba or NFS (or other network file-systems).