smb + win2k mapping issues
 

Hi,

new here but found some good info on this board in the past so i thought i would give this a try.


My main file server is FC3 w/ samba running that lots of users have been mapping to for years without any problem.

Just in the last week, this little problem popped up. The mappings from the client side computers (win2k pro sp4) are still there and work, but M$ Office (2k) doesn't want to save anything to the mapped drives over to the server on the first try.

User makes document, tries to save it to drive x, gets the notice that the drive is not available, saves again and all is well.

Now under My Computer, the mappings show up but most w/ a red x. They are there and you can follow them even w/ the red x.

Any ideas?

Thanks

I've noticed that Windows will display the red X on a disconnected network drive, and then not remove it once the drive is available, so that's probably just a minor symptom.

It sounds like the Windows clients are losing share connections at some point, but the users aren't noticing until they need to save in MS Office (which are probably the applications that they use). Windows then successfully reconnects the share, but Office has already decided that the drive is not accessible. It's probably something timing out, though I guess that it could also be an unstable network connection somewhere.

My Solution
 

Hi, after looking all over the place, and not finding a true answer, I got started playing with it and found that this solution worked for my environment:

i wrote a simple bat file at removed all the current existing bat files.

net use /delete * /y

Then i added the mapped drives back to the windows box with the persistent switch.

net use /persistent:yes h: \\fileserver\%username

After all that worked out, I disabled the windows auto disconnect feature.

(Case sensitive)
NET USE SERVER /autodisconnect:-1

Once all this is done, my windows systems are fully connected to the file server no problem and seeing how windows is not smart enough to know that the path does exist even if it doesn't check in ever freakin 5 seconds, it quites worrying about it and just trusts it.


Thanks