Samba hangs up at copying many large files
 

Hi everybody

I was searching the Internet for an answer to my problem, but it seems nobody has encountered the same problem like me before !?!

I have a linux file server (SuSE 8.2), running on old hardware (AMD-K6/2, 80GB IDE harddisk), an IBM Thinkpad running Windows 2000 and an AMD Duron 1300 tower running Windows 98SE.
All are linked together in my little home network by a router at 100MBit/s.

Now the strange thing is: Whenever I try to copy many directories with multiple files (each 5MB or bigger) at once from my tower (Win98SE) to the server and vice versa with the Windows Explorer, everything seems to work fine.

But whenever I try the same thing with my notebook (Win2000 SP4), a few files are copied but soon the server will be halted. I have to switch it off an on again. The number of files transfered is different every time, even with the same set of files.

The following message appears in my logfile:

kernel: Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000014
kernel: printing eip:
kernel: c025436a
kernel: *pde = 00000000
kernel: Oops: 0002 2.4.20-4GB #1 Mon Mar 17 17:54:44 UTC 2003
kernel: CPU: 0
kernel: EIP: 0010:[tcp_transmit_skb+1178/1520] Not tainted
kernel: EIP: 0010:[<c025436a>] Not tainted
kernel: EFLAGS: 00010246
kernel: eax: 00000014 ebx: 00000014 ecx: c394146b edx: 00005000
kernel: esi: c2177664 edi: c32810fc ebp: c2177588 esp: c2455e70
kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
kernel: Process smbd (pid: 1780, stackpage=c2455000)
kernel: Stack: c3941440 00000020 00000000 00000014 c394146c c2177664 c2177540 c2177540
kernel: c2177588 c025693e c2177540 c3941440 000005b4 00005094 c024b33f c2177540
kernel: 000005b4 c2177570 c2454000 00000001 c2454000 7fffffff 000005b4 c2177760
kernel: Call Trace: [tcp_send_ack+126/192] [tcp_recvmsg+1231/2384] [inet_recvmsg+54/80] [sock_recvmsg+47/208] [netif_receive_skb+367/416]
kernel: Call Trace: [<c025693e>] [<c024b33f>] [<c0265906>] [<c0227d3f>] [<c022f39f>]
kernel: [sock_read+131/144] [do_softirq+95/176] [sys_read+120/256] [system_call+51/64]
kernel: [<c0227e63>] [<c0122aaf>] [<c0144a18>] [<c0108c33>]
kernel: Code: 00 00 8b 9e ec 00 00 00 01 c3 8b 46 08 29 c3 89 d8 83 f0 ff

Since I already tried the usual games with exchanging the server memory (64MB) and already updated from Samba 2.2.7a to 2.2.9 and the system is not overclocked (in fact, it is not even running at top speed, since I wanted to go for safety) it seems to me to be a problem of the type of operating system that is trying to talk to the server? Is there a know issue with the interaction of Samba and Win2000 SP4 ?

Can anybody of you think of what the problem might be? What additional information would you need?

Thanks for your suggestions

Uwe

PS: Copying a small amount of files works very well from both "client" systems

I should add now that last weekend I tried to copy the same files (that failed on my Thinkpad with 100MBit/s-LAN) with my Thinkpad on WLAN (11MBit/s) and with a Dell Inspiron Notebook that runs an English W2K on 100MBit/s - and both worked.

It seems that only the transfer from my German W2k to the server via 100MBit-LAN is not working.

Now the question seems to be if the server is too slow to handle all the data coming in... (huh? Can that be? It handles the data coming from W98SE on the same speed without any error...) or if there is a hardware-problem with my Thinkpad (connections goes through a switch and works perfect with my other PC, so I don't think so).

Perhaps you have any ideas regarding this new facts?
Can I now exclude a problem with Samba or might there still be one, since the logfile entry points to it?