Red Hat Knowledgebase

Release Found: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 1
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 3 (and above)

Symptom:
Samba seems to have problems with file integrity and may corrupt data if the sendfile option is on.

Solution:
This is most likely due to the sendfile feature turned on in Samba. You need to disable sendfile support by modifying /etc/samba/smb.conf and add the line sendfile=no in the global options section.

For example:

#======================= Global Settings =====================================
[global]

# workgroup = NT-Domain-Name or Workgroup-Name
   workgroup = BEVERLY

# server string is the equivalent of the NT Description field
   server string = Samba Server

# file integrity workaround for Samba version less than 3.0.11
   sendfile=no

Note: This behavior should be fixed if you are using Samba 3.0.11 or later. If you are using an earlier version of Samba, then the above workaround (i.e. set sendfile=no) will work but it has negative performance impact. Also, you may experience compatibility issues when sending data to systems running other OS's.

You can update Samba by using up2date if your system is registered with Red Hat Network (RHN):

up2date samba