Redhat9 and samba bug - smbmount hangs

Contents.

• Overview
• The Symptoms
• The Cause
• The Cure(s)
• The Scripts

Overview.
There have been a lot of people having problems with Redhat Linux 9 and Samba. The problem rears it's ugly head when you try to mount a samba share with smbmount. smbmount appears to hang almost randomly when mounting and you end up with unused smbmount processes all over the place.

The problem is well documented on bugzilla, Redhat's bug forum/database, as bug #90036.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=90036
This page is simply here to help people find the information. I got (almost) all this from that page. Keep an eye on it for updates.

The Symptom.
When mounting samba shares smbmount seems to hang.
You may notice lots of stale smbmount processes..
ps ax | grep smbmount

There are probably other symptoms too but this is the most obvious one on my system.

The Cause
There is a bug in the Native Posix Thread Library (nptl), the replacement for LinuxThreads.

The Cure(s)
There are a number of options..

1. Wait. The next glibc binaries from Redhat will be fixed.
2. Patch the nptl source. If you can access the nptl CVS there is a patch.
3. Roll back to an earlier kernel and glibc. RPMs are easy to find.
4. Compile glibc with LinuxThreads? Will this work? Let me know.
5. Apply a hack (see 'The Scripts').

The Scripts
I found this on Bugzilla.. Use at your own risk.
Having said that, this script seems to work for me so far.. thanks kas!

mv /usr/bin/smbmount /usr/bin/smbmount.orig
cat << EOF > /usr/bin/smbmount
#!/bin/bash
export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5
exec /usr/bin/smbmount.orig "$@"
EOF
chmod 755 /usr/bin/smbmount

© Stuart Morrison 2003.