question about samba client on linux

["Robert P. Goldman" <goldman@htc.honeywell.com>]

I've been having some new problems with my linux samba client.  When
trying to list a long directory, I'm getting the following flavor of
errors:

Jun 15 10:46:41 mn65-zippy kernel: smb_proc_readdir_long: Looping in FIND_NEXT??
Jun 15 10:46:41 mn65-zippy kernel: smb_refill_dircache: readdir failed, result=-5
[these from /var/log/messages]

I infer that this is a time-out error from two things:

1.  some traffic on samba mail lists a while ago ('98) indicating that 
this error was returned by some Win95 servers and
2.  the fact that this only occurs when trying to ls directories with
a large-ish number of files.

Question:  is it possible to somehow detune the samba client so it'll
be less fussy and wait a little longer?  Reference #1 referred to a
patch to smbfs in the kernel, but it was specific to Win95 matters.

On a similar note, does anyone clearly understand what happens with
the file "masks" when you samba mount a directory?  These don't seem
to behave like true masks --- rather they seem to actually BE the
permissions.  It's hard for me to tell what I should be setting these
to.  

Thanks,
Robert