[Samba] SAMBA slower than MARSNWE...

[Gerald Drouillard]

Check out http://drouillard.ca/Tips&Tricks/Samba/Oplocks.htm for some advice
on tuning your file server for database applications.

Regards
-------------------------
Gerald Drouillard
Owner and Consultant
Drouillard & Associates, Inc.
http://www.Drouillard.ca

> -----Original Message-----
> From: samba-admin at lists.samba.org [mailto:samba-admin at lists.samba.org]On
> Behalf Of Dan Phillips
> Sent: Saturday, December 07, 2002 6:02 PM
> To: samba at lists.samba.org
> Subject: [Samba] SAMBA slower than MARSNWE...
>
>
> I actually find Samba a very kewl server app so the subject isn't
> coming from
> someone that has a preference for Netware over samba.  My issue
> is actually
> two-fold, one being the record locking problems in Samba and the
> other being
> the slowness of dos apps in samba.
>
> I'm not going to post any log messages here as I don't feel that
> for this post
> they're really very relevant.  What I am going to post is some
> information
> about the system, configuration, problems, and my solution.
>
> Server:
> P4-2ghz Dell Poweredge Srvr
> RAID 5 w/ 56GB useable drv space
> 1GB RAM
>
> Wkstations:
> All P4 1.6Ghz Dells or faster
> 256MB Ram
> 40+gb drv space
> All Win2k SP3
>
> All boxes are running at 100mb on a 10/100mb switch
>
> Ok, that's the bulk of the hardware that should be relevant, now for the
> software:
> SRVR:
> Linux (SuSE v8.1)
> Samba v2.2.5  lock stock and barrell from the SuSE installation
> Kernel 2.4.19-4GB  lock stock and barrell from the SuSE installation
>
> The workstations are all running the standard install from MS of
> Win2k SP3 and
> TCP only.   This company uses an old DOS application called OPTO.   The
> program when first fired up opens roughly 50 files, mostly .db
> and of course
> the .idx files relating to all the various parts of the database system.
> Within the application, you can call a routine that will show you
> information
> about your client station, the network system as well as how many
> users are
> currently running on the shared database system.  While running
> this program
> from the samba share mapped to a drive letter, we noticed two
> very obvious
> problems, one was that going from one screen to the next in OPTO was
> extremely slow.  Even fireing the program up took way too much time as
> compared to the old Netware 3.12 srvr running on a PII233 w/
> 128mb ram and
> only a 10mb lan card.   (Before you guys get to harping on my
> samba config, I
> will add that all of our windows functions, IE. copy files, list files,
> read/write word/excel docs, are extremely fast as they should be).
>
> Now, that was the problem of the slowdown, next is the record
> locking problem.
> As I mentioned before, OPTO has the ability to see how many
> workstations are
> currently talking to the database.  However, OPTO could not
> always see that
> other users were in the database and therefore would not perform the
> necessary record locking to prevent database corruption.  I spoke
> with the
> OPTO software technicians and they could not provide an answer,
> much less a
> solution, to why this was happening.  I read and learned more
> about oplocks
> and various other record and file locking information than I
> should ever have
> had to know.  Anyway, no matter what I changed in Samba (using
> swat) and even
> restarting samba, made any difference.  I therefore have come to the
> conclusion of two things, one, dos apps are not able to run within samba
> without suffering slow performance.  And record locking also
> seems to be a
> problem under samba, at least for dos apps.
>
> Now, I still have the problem of getting a srvr for the OPTO program.  I
> stumbled on MARSnwe and decided to give it a try.  I installed
> Mars off the
> SuSE distro disks, made the necessary changes for:
> srvr name
> login info
> volume info
>
> I installed MS's netware client on each of the win2k boxes and logged in
> mapping a new drive for the mars volume.  Ran opto directly from that new
> location on each machine and noticed two things:  One, the speed was
> lightning fast as it should have been, and two, the record
> locking problems
> were completely illiminated.  Now the server is still Linux, the
> files are
> still located on the same raid 5 drive, the workstations are the
> same, the
> software is still the same, the only difference is OPTO is now
> running from
> the novell emulation instead of samba.
>
> What the heck is with samba and its dos compatibility.  There are
> two very
> obvious problems that Mars on the SAME linux box was able to
> solve: speed and
> record locking.
>
> Now I'm not the best linux guru by any means and I don't claim to
> be, that's
> why I spend most of my time reading the samba posts rather than posting.
> However, I have built 1000's of computers and installed 100's of
> networks and
> I would have to say that I have a pretty darn good understanding
> of computer
> hardware and software.  The other thing I need to point out is I'm not
> knocking the samba guys especially the developers of samba
> because I find it
> extremely useful and I've converted several locations to Linux
> from either
> Netware or MS now and I'll continue doing so.  What I am looking
> for in this
> post is for some insight to various things to try regarding the
> DOS / Samba
> problems as described above.  Although I don't mind running mars
> and samba on
> this server, I'd much rather run just samba.
>
> ---  Thanks, Dan Phillips
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