Samba Problem: Fedora crashes when transferring large files

[TheLizard]

First off, I'm fairly new to linux so bare with me.

The box is running Fedora Core 3 with Samba version 3.0.10-1. It's a 3.0 GHz box with a gig of ram. It's got 2 120gig SATA HDDs and 1 120gig IDE HDD. The MOBO is a Gigabyte GA-8INXP.

I can connect to the samba shares just fine, but I'm having a problem transferring large files. Small files will transfer just fine, but larger files (50MB or more) cause the server to crash.

When transferring a file from an XP box to the Fedora server, the transfer will stall (it doesn't always stall at the same point). The HDD light on the fedora server will become steadily lit (the hdds go crazy) and the GNOME GUI will lock up. I have to then cycle power to restart the box.

I haven't seen or heard of this problem before (I searched here and many other forums). Any ideas or advice?

Thanks

~TL

[feddersen]

I think I have the same problem exept its my smb4k client that freezes up. I use Mandrake both on server an workstation..

[TheLizard]

Alright, I figured out why Samba would crash and it wasn't a Samba problem - it was hardware. The SATA drives and a portion of the PATA drive made up the Logical Volume where samba was storing the transferred files. After reading around, I discovered that SATA support under linux is spotty so I pulled the SATA drives and did a clean install (I needed to reinstall anyway) with just the single PATA drive. I reconfigured Samba as before and, now, have no problems transferring large files anymore. So the problem was the SATA drives - drivers or something.

Hope this helps.

~TL