Hey,
I have an OpenSUSE 10.3 box I'm using as a fileserver. I have a drive mounted in /mnt/hdd0, which I share using Samba. I can map it fine and IO goes OK, but after a while, Windows Explorer freezes, forcing me to kill the process. I realize that Windows Explorer seems to enjoy freezing, but this only started after I began using my Samba share.

Suggestions appreciated. Also, I'm not married to Samba, so if there's some better way to share my data then I'm open to suggestions

Thanks,
Nathan

as long as you configured samba correctly for the share, the issue is on the windope side of things. explorer can be a very tempramental at times. I have had no issues as long as I have had samba set up right and it is not that difficult to set up. the only reason for a freeze is if a transfer somehow gets locked up or windope freezes...I would look at the windope side for the error...

baldur

Double check your samba logs and see if an error comes up during the freeze. Also check the cables and connectors.

Thanks for the replies.

baldur: Well, obviously Windows Explorer has a problem (hanging and needing to be killed is never a good response, even if dealing with a misbehaving server), but I've dealt with samba shares before and haven't seen this behavior.

jschiwal: I don't see anything extremely suspicious in the samba logs. However, the system log does yield some alarming-looking data:

I don't like seeing all those read error rate messages. I'm not entirely sure what's normal, but that seems kind of bad.

I'll try running a diagnostic on the disk.

Also, I hope the temperature sensor on /dev/sda is whacked. I'm not liking those readings...

Nathan

yeah, that is messed up...good luck...

baldur

I ran a diagnostic on both drives (sda and sdb), and they both got a clean bill of health. If Seagate says they're OK, I guess they're OK.

Do you have any other suggestions? I mean, I know the smartd stuff in the syslog looks a little sketchy, but could it be something other than a bad hdd causing this? Since the drive doesn't fail SeaTools then I can't return it.

So I removed the offending hard drive and installed a known good SATA drive from a different computer. Still see the same problem. I think I can rule out disk failure.

can you map to your samba share from another machine on a difference port on your switch? You might be experiencing network problem.

Does the Windows' log indicate anything. What are you doing when the problem occurs. What kind of files are in the share? For example, if they are images, maybe windows is creating a preview icon cache file. Do you have a service in a service situation. For example, sharing a directory when a parent directory is also a service. I don't know how well that would work, but it could be the case if you are sharing a subdirectory in your home directory, and your home directory is shared via the [profile] service. More serious would be if the parent directory were a share from a third computer, but I don't think you indicated that.

Is it during a file copy that you have the problem? One thing you could try is to map the samba share, on your windows machine to a device and use it in the command shell instead of windows explorer. (e.g. net use e: \\server\service ) Can you copy or create files without a problem then? If not, open windows explorer but keep the command shell open. If Explorer freezes, what about in the command shell? If you can work in the console but Explorer is frozen, the session should be OK but there could be a problem with a file that Windows uses (e.g. the countless dll's).

Consider increasing the log level in smb.conf. Maybe something will turn up.

If Windoze explorer is 'hung' then it's probably waiting a network timeout for something to fail. Are you certain that the authentication is OK and Samba is correctly configured? Windoze is notoriously bad at authenticating properly with Samba servers although if properly configured it works like a charm. In short allow no guest access to anything, read up about whether passwords should be encrypted or not for your Win version, and make sure the user name is exactly the same on Linux and Windoze. Allowing guest access is precarious as sometimes it will work, sometimes not. Also note that if you create a user on Windoze with a name MyName and then change the name to myname using Windoze user management control panel that Windoze will continue to send the first user name to Samba for authentication, which won't work. It only works if you create a new user myname and copy all files over.

Check the log tail /var/log/samba/log.smbd and see what's there. It can be made to work, really!

* Authentication is fine. I can access the freaking thing and copy files. It just hangs if I leave the folder open.
* log.smbd doesn't shed any light on the problem.
* I thought it might be my antivirus, but I disabled that and still see the same problem.
* The command prompt hangs as well.

Nathan

have you got the samba box's ip address in the dns/wins? i cant remember if you said this was a logon server or not, but it cant hurt to add it to the dns at least.

I connect via IP address rather than hostname, so I don't think that's the issue.

here is a similar problem that I was having and now after I looked at that log closely, it could be similar...I was transferring large amounts of data through my network onto my notebook so I could watch movies at work...

I do not know if you are moving large amounts of data, but what essentially would happen is the drive would over heat and this would cause it to lock...except my notebook was set up to shutdown on an over heat...check the temps of the drive...just touch it and see how warm it is...a failing drive does not act like that...usually you see data loss and data errors when you run a disk checker...so it is probably not that...mine still works fine...

it also could be your motherboard is getting too hot...check your fans, heat from the system...that was mentioned in the error log...temp fluctuations...

also try to mount the dirctory onto the linus server and see if that has an effect...in essence, try to isolate the issue...is it all files or ones of a certain size, type...

baldur

it could also be a problem with smartd...you should probably check in on that since it is both raw read errors and temp errors...smartd tries to optimize the disk and continually check for errors or issues...so if that is hanging, that would cause your disks to hang...

baldur