Too many smbd processes

[martynh]

I've just set up RH 9 with samba (2.2.7a-security-rollup-fix). When the first Windows client connects I get 47 smbd -D processes created!. This number gets higher and higher as other users connect and time goes by. After a few days (there are only 5 pc's at most connecting) I have to reboot the server. I've seen over 1000 smbd -D processes by this time.

Apart from the delay in getting a connection (presumably caused by the time taken to spawn all these processes), Samba actually seems to work OK.

Any suggestions anyone?

Thanks

Martyn Hodgson
martyn.hodgson@iipay.com

 

[PHV]

Are you sure your smbd server is started with the -D (as a daemon) flag ?
What is the output of the smbstatus command ?

 

[mattjurado]

Yes, and what command are you using to show all these smbd processes.

Matt J.

 

[martynh]

(You will notice I have upgraded to 2.2.8a, but the problem remains the same)

Output of the smbstatus command (with ip addresses, machine names etc. changed) and is:

Samba version 2.2.8a
Service uid gid pid machine
----------------------------------------------
hamster hamster users 16833 win01 (1.2.3.5) Mon Jan 5 07:53:42
2004
common mouse users 29490 win05 (1.2.3.4) Fri Jan 2 08:49:54 2
004

No locked files



At the current time, the command

ps -eaf|grep 'smbd -D'|wc -l

returns a value of 364


A typical line from ps-eaf|grep 'smbd -D' being:

root 14445 558 0 08:22 ? 00:00:00 smbd -D

All of the processes have the same PPID, in this case 558.

Any suggestions?

 

[martynh]

To my surprise, I solved my own problem.

I had set the authentication mode to SERVER, rather than USER. I think that the many processes being created were all looking for a non-existant authentication server.

How samba worked at all with this setting amazes me. I think it would have been easier if it hadn't! All is well now, and hopefully if anyone else makes this mistake, they will come across this posting.

Martyn Hodgson
January 2004