[Pkg-samba-maint] Bug#509428: libsmbclient: System freeze when accessing SAMBA/CIFS share on Network Appliances storage

[Steve Langasek]

reassign 509428 linux-2.6
found 509428 2.6.26-1
severity 509428 important
thanks

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 11:17:44AM +0100, vogu00 wrote:
> In our network, there's a network storage (Network Appliances) that I
> mount on all the attached Linux clients via SAMBA or CIFS. Since 2 years,
> this works without any problems.

> I recently did some tests with Debian Lenny. In the beginning, everything
> went fine. Since an upgrade to Lenny (approx. 3 weeks ago), I have some very
> bad effects: Mounting the NetApp share is ok, but when changing
> to a directory below the mountpoint, the system quickly crashes or freezes.
> 
> The directory in which one I change has some 250 directory entries. In the
> few cases, where the system doesn't crash and where I can do an "ls", the
> result only shows some 145 of the 250 directories.

> As I told, the system normally freezes. It does this nearly every time when
> entering "cd" followed by TAB (for bash completion). In that case, nothing
> works any longer, not the mouse nor the keyboard. Remote ssh shells cannot
> be opened, the system can even not be pinged any longer; I have todo a reset 
> (causing data loss for all opened applications).

> I do not use any special mount options, just
>    mount.cifs //myserver/share /mnt/xxx
> or
>    mount.smbfs ...

> I can easily reproduce the problem on
>  - Debian Lenny (since I updated it +- 3 weeks ago; before that update, there
>  was no problem)
>  - Ubuntu 8.10
>  - Xubuntu 8.10

> The problem does not appear on
>  - Debian Etch
>  - Ubuntu 8.04

> I made my tests on 5 different PCs and also on some virtual machines. The results
> are the same everywhere.

> I am not sure if it really is a libsmbclient bug. It might be as well
> somewhere else in Samba.

libsmbclient is unrelated to kernel-level mounts of CIFS shares. 
Reassigning to the kernel.

If you have crashes in addition to freezes here, it would be helpful to get
some sort of log of those crashes.

This problem appears to be specific to Network Appliances devices; I've had
no problems with mount.cifs in current kernels when talking to other sorts
of servers.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org