Samba server ok at boot, later fails to bind to IP. smbd restart doesn't help.
 

We recently installed linux on a new server, and all is well but one thing...

Our server boots fine, and all is well. However, after an unknown period of time, samba no longer responds to queries.

I did a netstat -a | grep 139 and got nothing. I also performed nmap on localhost and eth1 (connection to the switch) and it shows that port 139 is not in use.

I checked my processes ('ps -A | grep smb') and it shows that its running. The rcsmb script shows that samba is 'running'. Doing 'rcsmb restart' restarts the daemon, but port 139 still shows blank.

I checked samba's logs, and still, nothing. I ran smbd in interactive mode (-i) and still got nothing (no errors).

I have all firewalling off, as far as I can tell. We're behind nat, and on a small subnet (< 30 users) so I figured it wasn't critical... at least for now.

This is so strange... and I have no explanation!

This server is replacing an older server, but I can't make the switch until this is resolved!

What distro are you using?

If you stop the service using the script does the process actually stop or does it still show when you run ps?