Very slow browsing samba shares
 

Ok, I just did a major revamp of my linux server and network layout. I have a wireless router that is connected to my Clearwire modem (a wireless broadband provider) and the router also acts as the DHCP server. I set up my linux server to receive its ip and host name from the router, but the router is set to statically assign the ip. My laptop is running windows vista and uses the linux server to host it's my documents files and has them client side cached as well. I have a desktop running windows xp that uses the linux server as it's my documents location as well, but they are always online, not client side cached. Now, whenever I go to browse the linux server for anything, it takes a loooooong time to open the samba folders, but once it's initially done, it traverses them just fine. Does anyone know the cause of the delay? I didn't have it previously. I just upgraded the hard drive in my server and also went from Fedora core 5 to Fedora core 6 at the same time. SELinux is disabled and the only other things I have running on the server are SSH and FTP. My wife uses the desktop and if I don't get this delay fixed soon, she may put a foot through it. Thanks!

how long is "looooong?" it almost sounds like there is some sleep function enabled for the HD (hdparm, bios, etc.) and it's just taking a long time to wake up. ?

I don't think that's it. It takes about 30+ seconds from the XP box and 15ish from the Vista laptop. I browsed from the both in a the span of a minute or two and it behaved the same way.

does anything look weird in the logs? (they're in /var/log/samba/ on FC, i think.) if not, you can set the log level higher in the config to see if anything shows up.

you could maybe also try some net tools like strace, tcpdump, netstat, etc. to try to track down a faulty connection. even pinging the server or vice versa might detect something. there might be some name resolution problem somewhere. if nothing is showing up, posting your smb.conf might be helpful to see what you've got in there, or output of testparm.

Ok, I don't know how, but I think the problem is somehow tied to my internet connection being on the fritz. My internet connection was being slow, and at sometimes not working at all for the last few days. Today it was magically fixed and is 100% again, and so is the slow samba browsing problem. I have all of the networked computers set to look to my router for DNS. How could the problem with the slow server response be tied to the slow/broken internet connection? I don't get it... Too much of a coincidence to just shrug off. Maybe I need to set up my linux box to act as DHCP and DNS server to avoid this problem in the future? I have never seen this happen before. Anyone that has an explanation - I would appreciate it. Thanks!