What is the best(fastest) way to determine if a Samba mount point is dead on Linux? I need to do it in C. System calls like statfs(), statvfs() block for 30-40 sec when called on a stale mount, and they don't even return an error in this case. stat() seems to fail faster then others (about 10 sec) and returns an error. Mount point may go stale because the other host went down or Samba daemon there was killed. Any advice is appreciated.. What is the best(fastest) way to determine if a