Topic: Samba Bug?

[Ryan Duffner]

We have a simple e-smith based server for file/web server and firewall/routing. The system is a PII-400, 128MB Ram, Realtek and 3Com NICs, and 3 old Hard Drives (using different NICs because we heard this reduces problems). The first drive partitions are as follows: /hda1 mounted to /boot, /hda5 is swap, /hda6 mounted to /. The second drive (/dev/hdc1) is mounted to /drive2. The third (/dev/hdd1) is mounted to /drive3. This setup seems to work fine, but for some reason we have a memory leak when using Samba. Anytime, Samba access shares on either /drive2 or /drive3, the memory usage continually increases. It appears that Samba is caching all the drive data, but never recovering the used memory. The only way to recover is to reboot costing us uptime - reason we use Linux. Is this a know problem for Samba? We have tried to fix this with no success. Does anyone have any suggestions? Also, when is E-Smith 4 expected to be released? Lastly, can we install RedHat RPMs for Samba or do they need to come from esmith?

[Charlie Brady]

Ryan Duffner wrote:

> We have a simple e-smith based server for file/web server and
> firewall/routing.
...
> This setup seems to work fine, but for some reason we
> have a memory leak when using Samba. Anytime, Samba access
> shares on either /drive2 or /drive3, the memory usage
> continually increases. It appears that Samba is caching all the
> drive data, but never recovering the used memory.

You don't mention exactly how you are monitoring memory usage, and what is causing you concern. It is quite normal for linux to operate with a low amount of free memory - if that is what you are concerned about then stop worrying.

> The only way
> to recover is to reboot costing us uptime - reason we use
> Linux. Is this a know problem for Samba?

Not that I'm aware of. I'm sorry that you are losing uptime. What happens if you don't reboot - are you noticing any symptoms?

> Lastly, can we install RedHat RPMs for Samba.

Yes you can,. but I think they are the same anyway. If you do install them,  be sure to run "/sbin/e-smith/signal-event manager-misc"
afterwards. Read http://www.e-smith.org/custom/ for information
about customising your e-smith server.

Charlie

[Ryan Duffner]

We are using top to determine the amount of memory free. We telnet in and use top. Then we access the Samba share through Network Neighborhood. When we start using the files, browsing the drive, or other processes using Samba, the free space goes from 90MB to just over 2MB. There are really no "symptoms" of this, but I would assume that this is not good. If it does not hurt, let me know. It does appear to run more sluggish when the memory is low, but I have no benchmarking tool to backup that claim.

Thanks Charlie,

Ryan.

[Charlie Brady]

Ryan Duffner wrote:

> We are using top to determine the amount of memory free. We
> telnet in and use top.
...
> There are really no
> "symptoms" of this, but I would assume that this is
> not good.

You assume wrongly. This is quite normal. See 6.4 in the Linux FAQ: http://www.linuxdoc.org/FAQ/Linux-FAQ-6.html#ss6.4

> If it does not hurt, let me know. It does appear to
> run more sluggish when the memory is low, but I have no
> benchmarking tool to backup that claim.

Maybe it runs more sluggishly when it is busy, or maybe you expect it to run more slowly when free memory is low, so it seems that way to you. In general, linux would run more slowly if it wasted memory by leaving it free, rather than using it to cache files.

Charlie