Hello, We use a windows share on a Windows 200 server and a linux server RED HAT ES 4 as client. Under heavy load, we had the message below kernel: smb_add_request: request [eb542200, mid=13298] timed out! After some research on internet and some tests on our machine, we get this error only with kernel 2.6.xx (even the last) and nothing with kernel 2.4 So we try to use CIFS and the fsstress programme to check if it was better. Now we get the message "CIFS VFS: close with pending writes". We tried 600 Process and 20, 50 100 operations -When using local disk, it works -When using 600 x 20 operations, it works -But in the other case, the message CIFS VFS appears and the client program has no error return code. It is better tha then the smb mount but not perfect Is there a solution ? Regards, Charles CUNIN
This is much better in 2.6.27.8 and 2.6.28 kernels (we added changes to the cifs send logic which help the cifs tcp retransmission path under heavy stress)
The changes to the sendpath in cifs have removed the most common case for sendtimeouts which led to this message (close with pending writes) and the timeout/backoff logic was fixed to be consistent.