Hi,

My company had a consultant come in to setup a Samba server on our Lionus machine (running RedHat 8). The other day the Samba server suddenly stopped working. That is, I could no longer access the shared folder on the Linux computer from any Windows machine in the company. I had been emailing the consultant for help on this, but he has stopped corresponding with me. However, he did tell me to try restarting the Samba server, and I did that to no avail. I also ran "ps -ef|grep mb" and it said the following (which the consultant said meant Samba was indeed running):


root 923 1 0 Jul13 ? 00:00:00 smbd -D
root 927 1 0 Jul13 ? 00:00:00 nmbd -D
mkc 2974 2671 0 15:26 pts/3 00:00:00 grep mb


He told me to check the Samba log file, and I did so. The last line said "waiting for a connection," which struck me as odd...none of the regular Samba log files said that. Here are the last few lines from the smbd.log file:


[2005/07/13 10:38:11, 3] smbd/server.c:main(747)
loaded services
[2005/07/13 10:38:11, 3] smbd/server.c:main(762)
Becoming a daemon.
[2005/07/13 10:38:11, 3] lib/util_sock.cpen_socket_in(813)
bind succeeded on port 139
[2005/07/13 10:38:11, 2] smbd/server.cpen_sockets(215)
waiting for a connection


So...I'm stuck. I haven't done anything strange to the Linux computer, other than start using Putty to SSH into it from a remote location in the plant. I rebooted the workstation from this remote location just to try it out, and that seems to be when the trouble started.

Anyone have any ideas?

Matt

Does /var/log/messages say anything interesting?

Superficially, I have not read anything in your posting that sounds either abnormal nor suspicious. Aside from the usual "what happened recently" question... you should not assume that the problem originates with this machine. Perhaps the packets from the Windows machine cannot get to this box. Maybe there's a router that needs to be restarted, or (literally) a loose wire. You need to very systematically examine possibilities, starting (geographically) at the machine that is failing to connect, then to the wiring between here and there, then to the Samba machine. Make a list of hypotheses ("what could be the problem?"), and then gather evidence either to confirm them or to rule them out.

Well, that's another strange part of this. I have been able to successfully "ping" the Samba workstation from a remote location via SSH. The Samba workstation has internet connectivity, and there is no router involved....all of these machines connect to the overall company network. I checked all wires and cables and all is well there. It truly seems as though this problem happened overnight, or even during the span of a couple hours.

As for /var/log/messages...I located the line where it says both smbd and nmbd startups succeeded. Shortly thereafter I saw one strange line:


Jul 14 16:12:11 lisa smb: smbd startup succeeded
Jul 14 16:12:11 lisa smb: nmbd startup succeeded
Jul 14 16:12:11 lisa anacron: anacron startup succeeded
Jul 14 16:12:11 lisa atd: atd startup succeeded
Jul 14 16:12:13 lisa modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module char-major-10-134


Does that mean anything to you? Otherwise, all looks well. Nothing is funky in the Samba log, either, at least not that I can see. Would it make sense to try and reinstall the Samba server on the Linux workstation? Might be a hefty task for someone who doesn't have a wealth of Linux administration experience.

Thanks,

Matt