unexplained system hangs - possible smbfs issue ??

Murray Taylor MTaylor at bytecraft.com.au
Sun Oct 9 17:15:12 PDT 2005


Hi all,

I have a system using smbfs that locks up every few hours.

The system is running a cron job every minute, that opens
a directory that is actually a smbfs mounted directory on a
Windows Server 2003 machine. The program reads the directory
looking for a particular file pattern, opens and processes the file
then closes and renames the file.

What this means is that the smnfs mounted directory file count
constantly
increases.

The hang mentioned is just that... the cron job doesnt run, you cannot
login on the console (well you can type root and <enter> and thats it,
no password prompt appears). If there is an open console session,
a single command can be issued then the console freezes.
The only recovery is a power cycle.

We have run the programs under a test framework to do a month load
of files in an hour, and cant hang things, yet the production box 
(which is technically a better machine, but runs the same OS versions
as the testbed) will hang under 'normal' use every few hours. Its almost
clock regular, except that it is slowly reducing the time between hangs.

We have just purged the Windows directory, and it seems so far to
have extended the hang window.

Are there any known issues with smbfs and large directories???

NB We have other processes that use smbfs without the large number of 
files on the Win systems and these have run ok for years.


It will hang on both these production versions.

FreeBSD xxxhostnamexxx 4.10-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE #0: Tue May 25
22:47:12 GMT 2004
root at perseus.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

FreeBSD xxxhostnamexxx 4.10-RELEASE-p7 FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE-p7 #3: Thu
Apr 14 15:34:37 EST 2005
root at svmysql3.xxxdomainnamexxx:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SVMYSQL3  i386


mjt

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Murray Taylor
Bytecraft Systems
P: +61 3 8710 2555
F: +61 3 8710 2599
D: +61 3 9238 4275
E: mtaylor at bytecraft.com.au
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