[Samba] oplock problems

[c . m . e . reniers]

We are running samba 2.2.3a ( for about 3000 users ) on HP/UX 11.11 fileservers.

Our  customers are complaining about slow response on the opening/closing of files in office/excel etc.
In the samba log file we see the following messages :

[2002/10/29 09:03:27, 0] ../source/smbd/oplock.c:(761)
  oplock_break: receive_smb timed out after 30 seconds.
  oplock_break failed for file My Documents/servers.doc (dev = 40220001, inode = 229991, file_id = 240).
[2002/10/29 09:03:27, 0] ../source/smbd/oplock.c:(833)
  oplock_break: client failure in oplock break in file My Documents/servers.doc
[2002/10/29 09:03:27, 0] ../source/smbd/reply.c:(4387)
  reply_lockingX: Error : oplock break from client for fnum = 14026 and no oploc
k granted on this file (My Documents/servers.doc).

We found out that these messages correspond with the slow response that our users are seeing.

I've searched the samba archive and there are more people having these messages.
The solutions I found were :
- You may have a netwerk problem ( which is NOT the case in our situation )
- Turn oplocks off ( But this may introduce a performance problem )

Can somebody please explain :

- What this message really means.
- Can it be related to the slow response that our customers are complaining about
- Is there a solution to this probem ( our network is ok, turning oplocks off is not a solution .. )

Regards,

Eddy Reniers,
Philips Research Laboratories
Department Computer Services,  Building WY p 29- postbox WY01
Prof.Holstlaan 4, 5656 AA Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Phone : +31-40-27-44703

Email  : [EMAIL PROTECTED]