[WBEL-users] Workstations pausing

[Martin Shoemaker]

I recently changed out a RH8.1 file server to a WBEL respin1 server.  
Both run Samba and a DNS server.  The new box has a 3ware SATA hardware 
RAID card running RAID5.  The only change to the Samba setup is setting 
Preferred Master to Yes.  The old box was reiserfs.  The new is EXT3.  
This is in a small engineering office running mostly AutoCAD. 

Since the upgrade we're seeing random system hangs on all four 
workstations, which are Win2K.  Typically two to four per day per 
workstation.  The workstation will just stop responding for 30 seconds 
or so.  The lockups random and are not synchronized among the 
workstations.  We've done complete scans on the workstations (NOD32, 
AdAware, Spybot S&D) and all show as clean.

Any suggestions or thoughts on what 's going on?  Also, I'd really 
rather be on reiserfs based on how well it worked for us on the old 
server, but I'm just getting started with linux, and "You can install it 
on your own (use kernel-unsupported, then load the modules)" is beyond 
my current level of understanding.  Is there a "how to" for this?  Is it 
possible to update an existing ext3 system to reiserfs without risking 
the existing data?

Thanks for your help.

Martin