Samba doesn't utilize Gigabit Network

will_k · 12-29-2003, 10:09 AM

I have 3 boxes: 2 windows XP and 1 Gentoo Linux running Samba 2.2.8a. All have gigabit network cards and are plugged in through a gigabit switch. The Linux box is using the e1000 driver loaded as a module.

The 2 XP boxes can transfer a 10GB of video from one to the other in 4 minutes. However to and from the linux box takes 30 minutes.

Samba must not be utilizing the gigabit connection. And, I'm not sure why. Here is my smb.conf:

[global]
workgroup = THE_CONCLAVE
netbios name = black-box
server string = Will Gentoo
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 50
encrypt passwords = yes
socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_SNDBUF=8192 SO_RCVBUF=8192
ssl require server cert = no
domain master = no
preferred master = no
max packet = 0

[homes]
comment = Home Directories
browseable = no
read only = no

Any advice would be appreciated.

Will

chort · 12-29-2003, 12:12 PM

Samba does not strictly speaking decide what network speed to use. The media options are handled by the ethernet drive. You should check that the ethernet driver is properly configured to use 1000Mb speed and full duplex.

Now aside from that, I have seen a lot of rumors that newer versions of Windows purposely break themselves for Samba compatibility. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but supposedly something has changed since Win2K that makes Windows a lot slower when interfacing with Samba.

will_k · 12-29-2003, 05:16 PM

Thanks, good input. I've have no problems with 100b/s between winxp and samba. I'll look into my drivers and connection configuration.

wdingus · 12-29-2003, 07:14 PM

Do some searching on this site, there has been a lot of discussion on this topic. Biggest thing I've found so far is Norton AntiVirus 2004. AntiVirus apps will of course slow things down some, nature of the beast. NAV2004 though causes a 5:1 speed decrease in tests I've performed.

Other things include the QOS packet scheduler in WinXP not playing well with SAMBA and the "webclient" service. Do some research on these...

will_k · 12-30-2003, 10:17 AM

Thanks, good advice wdingus. I did experience a performance gain transfering files from the xp box to the linux box. But, still the same slow speed vice versa after removing the qos packet scheduler on my xp boxes. I think not having the qos will help transfering both ways once i locate my initial bottleneck. Antivirus and webclient weren't an issue since I don't have those.

I'll do some more research and post back here again if i find a solution.

Will

wdingus · 12-30-2003, 10:22 AM

"webclient" is a Windows XP service which installs and is enabled by default.. If you're using XP, check and make sure...

will_k · 12-30-2003, 10:44 AM

Ah, your right. You'll have to excuse me, I'm actually a roofing contractor by trade. Just a computer enthusiast by hobby.

I shutdown the webclient service and changed it to start manually.

I had also tried the advice of BruceCadieux.

"On the XP machines.
regedit
Browse to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\parameters
Create a new DWORD value called
SizRegBuf
with a dword value of 0000ffff
This will speed up all connections to the machine.
It is a fix for large directory access speeds. "

I'm still at the same speeds with samba. I'm going to try and upgrade to samba 3 after looking at the gentoo portage tree. And experiment with it for a while.

(apache2 is transfering at 10MB/second --thats megabytes-- so I believe my ethernet driver is properly configured)

will_k · 12-31-2003, 12:55 PM

Just an update for anyone having these same issues. After upgrading to samba 3.01, windows xp and linux with samba are still not utilizing the potential of the gigabit network between the pair of systems.

I'm still experiencing the same poor performance.

Does anyone know a good way to allow windows xp to access and share via nfs? I've heard of "unix services for windows". Possibly there is an open-source version?

Will