Microsoft Word 2003 slow with Samba

[Jeremy Allison]

On Tue, Feb 05, 2008 at 02:38:43AM -0800, Wolfgang.968 wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> the web is full of complaints about bad performance using Microsoft Word
> Documents on a Samba share, but no solution yet.
> 
> I just compared the up- and download speed with a big (500MB) file on a
> share on a Win2K3 server with that of a Samba (3.0.10) share on a Mac OS X
> machine, an they are comparable.
> 
> But when I open a Word (1 MB with some embedded graphics) document on these
> shares, the Samba server is way slower. The opening takes about twice the
> time and when scrolling the document up and down, it takes significantly
> more time to get the embedded graphics displayed. On the W2K3 server, there
> is almost no delay on graphics display upon scrolling.
> 
> There is one interesting effect: When I open the Word document in R/O mode
> (for example because it is locked by an other user) opening and scrolling is
> as fast as on the W2K3 share!
> 
> Obviously, the way Word works with documents is hardly compatible with
> Samba... I checked out all the recommended Samba tuning option (i.e. socket
> options etc.), but all to no avail regarding this problem.
> 
> A general clarification of the samba developers is advised...

3.0.10 is very old. Please upgrade to the latest supported release,
3.0.28.

Jeremy.