[Gllug] Unreliable Samba connections

[Wulf Forrester-Barker]

One of the things that has really helped Linux become my main desktop
development system at work has been the ease with which I can use Samba
to hook into the many MS Windows servers round the place, extract data,
process it with the power of various command line tools and then either
put it back on the source server or present the results via a web
interface.

However, I have noticed that sometimes the process of mounting a remote
machine doesn't always return control to the shell, meaning the rest of
the script won't be executed (even though the mounting action may have
been successful). I use commands in the form:

mount -t smbfs -o username=username,password=password //mountlocation
./localmountpoint

Even running with a certain level of debugging information doesn't yield
anything that particularly enlightens me. I've built some work arounds
into my scripts (eg. if the mount point is still open from last time and
contains files that indicate the correct location then proceed directly
to grabbing the data) but would like to come up with something a bit
better (if mount doesn't complete in a reasonable time frame figure out
what is going on and, if necessary, try again).

Any ideas?

Wulf


-- 
Wulf Forrester-Barker, webmaster
http://www.lewisham.nhs.uk/


wulf.f-b at uhl.nhs.uk

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