Hi all,

I've seen many of you having trouble with samba been very slow, look at my results:

I have a Novel Netware 3.12 on a 486 DX100Mhz, 16 MB Ram, 4 GB HD, NIC 10 Mbs.

I am upgrading to samba with:

Samba 3, 1.5Ghz, 80 GB 7500 RPM Ultra Ata, 256 MB Ram, Linux Debian, NIC: 100Mbs

Results managing a 3.2MB File:

Novell Netware:

Read: 4 s
write:10 s


Samba

Read: 12 s
write: 37 s


I just couldn't believe it.

Has anyone found a solution for this?

I use many different versions of samba and have for years on all kinds of hardware and different *NIX (solaris both sparc and intel, hpux, atleast a dozen different linux distros very old and new) and have not had any kind of performance problem as you suggest.

Have you looked at the debug logs?

What is your client and what is your server?

Are you using a HUB or SWITCH in your network?

Did you compile samba or install a package/rpm?

On your *NIX box have you looked at errors on the network interface with netstat to see if maybe there is a hardware problem at layer 1?

Also, did you hand-build your configs or use the webgui? I used to hand-build them and I almost always prefer CLI but samba's webgui really work swell. I just disable it in inetd.conf/xinetd when not needed.

Just some things to think about, I hope it helps.


Dave

In my smb.conf I have an option:

socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192

If you: man smb.conf

It mensions to add this if you are having performance issues.

Also one thing I have noticed windows firewall programs cause huge problems with performance. The only one I could get to play nice with windows/samba/iptables is sygate and in the "Options" under the "Network Neighborhood" tab put a check in both boxes.

These have both caused me grief, your mileage may vary. They are both easy fixes though.




spell checkers cant correct bad usage

Thanks flashingcurser, but I already have the socket options just like you

I am using a switch, I know the NIC is 100 Mbps, just not sure about what is the actual speed than the NIC is transferring at. How do I check that out?
I don't know how to check for errors on the NIC either.

Samba was compiled, and it is on a Debian 3 distro

Thanks Dave

When you say you "didn´t have any kind of performance problem", how did you measure the througput or performance?

I would like to benchmark against another system (if possible)

thanks