Users on Win Terminal Server 2008 R2 losts the access to Alfresco 4.0 CIFS server

[icarrara]

I have 30 users on a Terminal Server Windows 2008 R2 named \\NT05.

I have Alfresco 4.0 Community installed on another Windows 2008 R2 named \\DOC with CIFS server activated, with the below properties:

cifs.disableNativeCode=true
cifs.maximumVirtualCircuitsPerSession=96

All it is ok for stand-alone clients running Win XP, 7, etc - all are able to map a local disk O: to the Alfresco CIFS named  \\DOC\Documents.

The problem is with 30 users logget to the Terminal Server NT05 …

At the beginning of their session the users are able to access the remote share mapping the disk O: to \\DOC\Documents (the CIFS servr on Alfresco).  But after some variable time the share disappears and it is impossible to contact the remote share until I restart the Terminal Server NT05.

I know that Terminal Server relies on the underlying Windows operating system to establish the transport for the client pool, and Windows will only issue ONE   TCP/IP connection to the remote server – this results in all virtual client sessions and share mounts on \\NT05 being multiplexed over a single TCP/IP transport pipe to the remote server (\\DOC)

To resolve the issue, at first I'm trying on the Terminal Server \\NT05 to maintain a separate TCP virtual circuit per EACH user - this for allow separate connections to the remote \\DOC\Documents share per each user.

In the past on old Windows servers, you can allow each terminal server client to maintain a separate virtual circuit using `regedt32`, navigate to: `HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Rdr\Parameters` and adding a value named `MultipleUsersOnConnection` as a type `REG_DWORD` entry and setting the data value to 0.

I'm not able to find the same registry setting for Windows Server 2008 R2 with Remote Desktop Services rolde installed.

How I can maintain a separate TCP virtual circuit per each user to access the remote share instead the only one that transports multiple virtual circuits ?

In older Windows server the registry keys was named also MultiUserEnabled or EnableMultiUser or MultipleUsersOnConnection … I think …

Beside the above soluton, anyone experienced the same issu on Terminal Server 2008 R2 to lost the connections to the Alfresco CIFS server ?

Thank you in advance,

Ivano Carrara

[afaust]

Hello,

we have had customers with similar issues running Alfresco on Windows Server and using CIFS for more than just a hand full of users. Almost always the root of the problem could be found in some part of the native Windows handling of SMB/CIFS (i.e. some internal table for TCP handles overflowed, VC#0 issues…).

My personal advice: Do not use the native CIFS code, configure Alfresco to use Java Sockets for CIFS instead. As far as I can remember, cifs.disabledNativeCode=true (which you have already used) has no real effect on Windows unless you do a bit more extensive reconfiguration.
There was an attempt to get this documented in https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/MNT-3494 but since Alfresco does not test this scenario, it is <b>officially not supported</b>. But it works better / more stable than native CIFS for all our customers while we continue to try to convince them to switch to a real server operating system.

Regards
Axel

[sysadmin2012]

Hi icarrara,
Just wanted to share some insight i got after weeks of trial and error. We fixed this issue by adding a DNS-wildcard (Ex *.alfresco-cifs) in our internal DNS-server.

So when our terminal server users using Windows Server 2008 R2 Server loggs in we run "netuse Q: \\%username%.alfresco-cifs\Alfresco".

This seems to force Windows to always start a new session for every user and have fixed our "Access denied" problems.

A new problem have arose from this fix and that one you can read about here: https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/JLAN-147

To fix that problem you have to do some coding and build your own alfresco-jlan-embed.

Regards
sysadmin2012