Hi,
I have some network problems in the KDE version of both Kubuntu and Lisa KDE. I don't have these problems when using the Gnome versions of the operating systems. I will tell you what I have and how it is all connected:

I use a router which is also a DHCP server, giving out addresses in the 192.168.1.x range. All computers, 3 plus a media player, are setup as DHCP clients. To make sure each computer still gets the same IP-address I use a list in the router which connects the MAC-addresses of the computer network cards to a fixed IP-address. This means when I switch on a computer, some network communication is going on between this computer and the router, the router sees the MAC-address, looks in his list and gives the PC the right IP-address. Complicated? No. I can setup computers as DHCP clients this way and still always have them get the same address.
I do this because I use a few lines in the fstab file to mount disks located in other computers as if they were local disks.

For Samba this is like this:

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//192.168.1.11/xxx      /home/jan/shares/xxx                cifs  rw,username=guest,password=,uid=1000,iocharset=utf8,codepage=unicode,unicode 0 0

(I use the /home/jan/shares folder for my shares)

For NFS I use this format:

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192.168.1.21:/home/jan /home/jan/shares/Computername nfs rw,hard,intr,noexec 0 0

(Here it's a bit more complicated because I am user jan in both computers)

For NFS I also have some more files I use:
Exports:

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#/etc/exports: the access control list for filesystems which may be exported
#      to NFS clients.  See exports(5).
#
# Example for NFSv2 and NFSv3:
# /srv/homes       hostname1(rw,sync,no_subtree_check) hostname2(ro,sync,no_subtree_check)
#
# Example for NFSv4:
# /srv/nfs4        gss/krb5i(rw,sync,fsid=0,crossmnt,no_subtree_check)
# /srv/nfs4/homes  gss/krb5i(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
#
/home/jan 192.168.1.21(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
/home/jan 192.168.1.11(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
/home/jan/Videos 192.168.1.21(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
/home/jan/Videos 192.168.1.12(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
/home/jan 192.168.1.12(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)

hosts.allow:

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# /etc/hosts.allow: list of hosts that are allowed to access the system.
#                   See the manual pages hosts_access(5) and hosts_options(5).
#
# Example:    ALL: LOCAL @some_netgroup
#             ALL: .foobar.edu EXCEPT terminalserver.foobar.edu
#
# If you're going to protect the portmapper use the name "portmap" for the
# daemon name. Remember that you can only use the keyword "ALL" and IP
# addresses (NOT host or domain names) for the portmapper, as well as for
# rpc.mountd (the NFS mount daemon). See portmap(8) and rpc.mountd(8)
# for further information.
#
portmap: 192.168.1.21
lockd: 192.168.1.21
rquotad: 192.168.1.21
mountd: 192.168.1.21
statd: 192.168.1.21
nfsd: 192.168.1.21


hosts.deny:

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# /etc/hosts.deny: list of hosts that are _not_ allowed to access the system.
#                  See the manual pages hosts_access(5) and hosts_options(5).
#
# Example:    ALL: some.host.name, .some.domain
#             ALL EXCEPT in.fingerd: other.host.name, .other.domain
#
# If you're going to protect the portmapper use the name "portmap" for the
# daemon name. Remember that you can only use the keyword "ALL" and IP
# addresses (NOT host or domain names) for the portmapper, as well as for
# rpc.mountd (the NFS mount daemon). See portmap(8) and rpc.mountd(8)
# for further information.
#
# The PARANOID wildcard matches any host whose name does not match its
# address.
#
# You may wish to enable this to ensure any programs that don't
# validate looked up hostnames still leave understandable logs. In past
# versions of Debian this has been the default.
# ALL: PARANOID
ALL: ALL


As my smb.conf file I use this:

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[global]
workgroup = Networkname
netbios name = Computername
name resolve order = lmhosts bcast wins host
map to guest = Bad user
local master = Yes

#enable usershares
usershare allow guests = Yes
usershare max shares = 100
usershare owner only = False
server string =

[Home-Jan]
comment Homefolder on computername
path = /home/jan/
guest ok = yes
read only = no
writable = yes

[Video]
comment Video folder on computername
path = /home/jan/Videos/
guest ok = yes
read only = no
writable = yes


This (well the samba part) is something I have used for several years during the time I have used Gnome 2. It works great.

Now when using KDE I have the following situations:
Using the file-manager Dolphin, or any other file-manager, on my Mint KDE laptop and connect to a Windows 7 PC works great. No problem at all.
Doing the same with the Kubuntu PC to the Windows 7 computer also works great.

BUT

Connecting the Mint laptop to the Kubuntu PC works as long as both computers are switched on. As soon as I switch off one of them the other becomes unresponsive. Opening the file-manager freezes the computer. After several minutes the Dolphin screen is build bit by bit.
Now this happens when I use samba between my 2 Linux computers as well when I use NFS. I would like to use the last one because the transmission speeds are much higher. With Samba I reach around 7mByte/sec, with NFS I reach 11mByte/sec on a 100mbit network.

Can somebody please tell me what am I doing wrong? As I wrote I do the same now in KDE as I did in Gnome: in Gnome it worked fine, in KDE I am having problems. I filed a bug report bu after a while I don't get any updates about this anymore so I expect it to be not important anymore for the developers. It is however for me.
I love KDE and since the guys at Gnome killed Gnome I don't want to use that anymore so I want to continue using KDE, especially because it looks so great.

Please if somebody knows a way to connect 2 Linux computers the right way, without these phenomenons show up then please tell me how to do it. If nobody else has these problems then I must be doing something wrong. Please help.

Thank you.

Do you unmount/disconnect your NFS/Samba drives prior to shutting the other system down?

If you do not, then the requests for operations may hang indefinitely, which is what is causing KDE applications to slow down so significantly. I do not know why GNOME applications are not affected by this.

bcooksley wrote:Do you unmount/disconnect your NFS/Samba drives prior to shutting the other system down?

If you do not, then the requests for operations may hang indefinitely, which is what is causing KDE applications to slow down so significantly. I do not know why GNOME applications are not affected by this.

No, I don't do that, as I have never done that while using Gnome. I sure can give it a try to see if that works. Well, it should work since it also works before I do mount them.
I'll let you know.

Why isn't everything so simple? It works, although I still find it strange I need to do that, while when using Gnome I didn't have to do it.
But it works so I don't complain.
Thank you very much.