Samba slow file copying
 

I'm new to Linux and Samba and have set up a network that is almost done, but I need help with this problem.

I have a Linux (RH 7.1) server set up with 3 windows clients (2 98s and 1 XP) set up on a cable modem with IP Masqing, running Samba 2.0.7 on a 10mbit Ethernet LAN. All clients are able to access the internet, shares, files - in other words, everything seems to be working just as it should except for one thing.

Copying larger files (starting about 400k it seems) FROM Linux TO windows is extremely slow. A 5MB file copies FROM Linux in about 70 seconds, and TO Linux in 4 seconds.

I've tried all sorts of different socket options, large, small, with/without raw, etc. It is currently:

socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192 SMBwriteraw SMBreadraw

I thought of updating to the newest version of samba, but being new to Linux, I'm not sure if that will cause any problems. I downloaded an RPM. Will installing this RPM break anything that IS working? Will it help the problem at all?

What else could cause this slowdown? I find it strange that writing TO Linux is fast, but FROM Linux slow.

Any ideas at all would be welcome!

Oh, one other piece of information. The file copying performance suffers the same in FTP transfers as it does in Windows Explorer copies. Fast TO Linux and Slow FROM Linux.

try still upgrading to new samba, but need to check your hardware also

I've upgraded to the newest samba version and have interesting results.

Originally, getting 5MB from linux was 70 seconds, now it's 35 seconds.

Originally sending 5MB TO linux was 5 seconds, now it's 20 seconds.

Any ideas what could be going on? I keep thinking it has to be something to do with packet sizes or acks, but I can't figure it out. Any help would be appreciated!