Mount disconnects using KDE4.3/SUSE 11.2 to Server 2003

English Network/Internet
#1

I am building a OpenSUSE Linux Desktop for our users.
The build was patched with latest patches and had a bunch of software installed.

While testing I discovered that the user mounts to a windows 2003 server disconnected after an hour or so of inactivity on the mount.

Originally I was going to use SMB and have an icon on the desktop to connect to users home drive
[Desktop Entry]
Icon=network-workgroup
Type=Link
URL$e]=smb://servername/home$$/$USER1
X-SuSE-translate=true

However there is a problem with applications being able to write to smb connections in KDE 4. If I open a document form the SMB conection with openoffice it opens a blank document. This does not happen if I use Gnome.

I had some problems trying to get pam_mount to work so I went down the line of using a mount script that runs from
/etc/skel/.kde4/Autostart
and a umount script that runs from
/etc/skel/.kde4/Shutdown

I added users to sudoers to allow them to mount/umount without password. The script runs basically runs
mount -t cifs //servername/home$/username -o username=username ~/WinHome

However in testing I found the mount would disconnect, typing mount from a command line would show my mount had gone.

I originally thought it may be ‘Windows Server 2003 can drop idle connections after a specified time-out period (by default, 15 minutes)’
I changed a registry setting to increase the time however this did not fix the problem.

I then created a cron job to ls the mount every 15 mins, this seemed to help it lasted all day but dropped out over night.

Due to the SMB issue I thought it may be a KDE issue and possibly a Linux version issue.

I then built a default installations of
Mandriva 2010 with Gnome and just added the user to sudoers and did a sudo mount like the script.
The mount stayed connected overnight.

I then built a default installation of
OpenSUSE 11.2 with Gnome and just added the user to sudoers and did a sudo mount like the script.
The mount has stayed connected all day so far.

I then built a default installations of
Mandriva 2010 with KDE 4.3 and just added the user to sudoers and did a sudo mount like the script.
The mount has stayed connected all day so far.

I then built a default installation of
OpenSUSE with KDE4.3 and just added the user to sudoers and did a sudo mount like the script.
The mount disconnected after I checked it within an hour or so.

It appears OpenSUSE 11.2 and KDE 4.3 may have some issues, can anyone else verify this? Or have some ideas?

#2

Mandriva 2010 with KDE 4.3 stayed connected all weekend.

SUSE 11.2 with Gnome did not stay connected over weekend, I will see how long it stays connected the entire day today and overnight.

Did not bother retry the testing of SUSE with KDE as it would drop out regularly.

#3

On KDE with Gnome
this time the mount dropped out within 30mins.

So it appears to be a OpenSUSE 11.2 issue, Mandriva has stayed connected all weekend.

I’m going to try a previous version of OpenSUSE to see if a get the same results.

#4

I may have made a mistake with the above post regarding,
OpenSUSE 11.2 and Gnome, I may have connected to wrong VM session.

Just to make sure I’m not going bonkers.
I have four tests running now, all a default build with no patches.
I’m using VMWare 6.5.3 and have configured images to use bridged networking.

SUSE 11.2 with KDE 4.3
SUSE 11.2 with Gnome
SUSE 11.0 with KDE 3.5
Mandriva with KDE 4.3

I have mounted drives on all, I will check each over the course of the day and tomorrow morning.

#5

Ok results are in:
This time all the builds stayed connected for the afternoon before I left work, around 4 hours.

In the morning the results were:

SUSE 11.2 with KDE 4.3
Disconnected
SUSE 11.2 with Gnome
Disconnected
SUSE 11.0 with KDE 3.5
Stayed Connected
Mandriva with KDE 4.3
Stayed Connected

The plot thickens.
I will try one more test with SUSE 11.1 to see which version the problem arose.

#6

Ok results of the final test.

I tried OpenSUSE 11.1 with KDE 4.1
The mount stayed connected overnight

Just to make sure, I had OpenSUSE 11.2 with KDE 4.3 running as well.
The mount had disconnected.

So OpenSuse 11.0 and 11.1 appear not to have the problem.
It appears the the issue arose in 11.2.

#7

OH well looks like I will be installing 11.1 on the desktops.

#8

In case anyone is interested I am trying 11.3.
openSUSE-KDE-LiveCD-Build0577-i686

I have 11.1, 11.2, 11.3 with KDE and have mounted a drive to the Windows 2003 server.
So when I come into work on Monday I will see which ones stayed connected over the weekend.

Will 11.3 stay connected???

Another issue that I was having was a flakey network on the HP Z400 Workstation, on reboots it would sometimes not bind to network, I would need to unplug and replug cable.
This has not happened yet during my building my 11.1 workstation.

#9

OK the results are in.

11.1 stayed connected
11.2 disconnected
11.3 disconnected

‘Houston, we’ve had a problem’

#10

Bug 604097 submitted.

#11

Thanks to the fast work of of Novell bugzilla guys, the problem was tracked down to bug
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=573246

It is a dhcpcd problem, when a lease is renewed it runs a script, the script will unmount all cifs mounts that are present in the mtab file.

As a work around having a static IP address or using umount -n, this will not put the mount in mtab, will get around the issue.