Can you get us a wire trace from when the connection terminates (I realize this may mean running a trace for a while)? I suspect the keep alive isn't working. For example: tcpdump -w /tmp/smb.out -s0 port 445 Also, would it be possible for you try a newer kernel? I believe there were some recent fixes to cifs.ko keep alive that I think may be related to what you're seeing here. You can get latest stable kernel here (zypper repo): http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Kernel:/stable/standard/ Or you could try the latest unstable kernel: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Kernel:/HEAD/standard/ Obviously you'll want to do that on a test machine, not something in production.