Samba Problem: Fedora crashes when transferring large files

First off, I'm fairly new to linux so bare with me.

The box is running Fedora Core 3 with Samba version 3.0.10-1. It's a 3.0 GHz box with a gig of ram. It's got 2 120gig SATA HDDs and 1 120gig IDE HDD. The MOBO is a Gigabyte GA-8INXP.

I can connect to the samba shares just fine, but I'm having a problem transferring large files. Small files will transfer just fine, but larger files (50MB or more) cause the server to crash.

When transferring a file from an XP box to the Fedora server, the transfer will stall (it doesn't always stall at the same point). The HDD light on the fedora server will become steadily lit (the hdds go crazy) and the GNOME GUI will lock up. I have to then cycle power to restart the box.

I haven't seen or heard of this problem before (I searched here and many other forums). Any ideas or advice?

Thanks

~TL

have you tried the CLI smbclient?

Originally posted by apsivam have you tried the CLI smbclient?

Yes, I've tried smbclient. smbclient connects to the XP machine and transfers part of the file (~24MB out of 120MB). smbclient reports the entire file has transferred (when it really hasn't) and the HDD light becomes steadily lit. The GNOME GUI is frozen and I have to cycle the power. Perhaps this isn't a samba bug, but a hardware bug?

I'm at a loss.

Thanks,

~TL

I had that problem a while back. In my case, it was caused by a conflict between my 2 network cards. I think I fixed it by just removing one. Sorry I can't be more specific, but it was a long time ago and I don't really remember exactly what the problem was. I remember it drove me nuts until I figured it out, though.

Alright, I figured out why Samba would crash and it wasn't a Samba problem - it was hardware. The SATA drives and a portion of the PATA drive made up the Logical Volume where samba was storing the transferred files. After reading around, I discovered that SATA support under linux is spotty so I pulled the SATA drives and did a clean install (I needed to reinstall anyway) with just the single PATA drive. I reconfigured Samba as before and, now, have no problems transferring large files anymore. So the problem was the SATA drives - drivers or something.

~TL

I'm having the same problem
But no SATA drive here. Just a PATA.....

Everything is working perfectly on the box except this crashing when transferring files!

any other ideas ppl?

I've solved my problem too

After reading several pieces of advice relating to hardware issues I decided to clock my cpu back to the default level.

Samba hasn't crashed the machine since.