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

[vogu00]

Package: libsmbclient
Version: 2:3.2.5-1
Severity: critical
Justification: causes serious data loss



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages libsmbclient depends on:
ii  libc6                2.7-16              GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcomerr2           1.41.3-1            common error description library
ii  libkrb53             1.6.dfsg.4~beta1-4  MIT Kerberos runtime libraries
ii  libldap-2.4-2        2.4.11-1            OpenLDAP libraries
ii  libtalloc1           1.2.0~git20080616-1 hierarchical pool based memory all
ii  libwbclient0         2:3.2.5-1           client library for interfacing wit

libsmbclient recommends no packages.

libsmbclient suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

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.