[linux-cifs-client] smbclient 8 times faster than cifs

[Kenneth Porter]

--On Tuesday, December 07, 2004 11:28 AM -0600 Steven French 
<sfrench at us.ibm.com> wrote:

> One quick thing to try when I post the slightly newer code is to mount
> with the "direct" option on the client which will bypass the page cache.
>
> I will need to look at why smbclient is much faster - off the top of my
> head - the only reason I can think of larger read and write size - the 4K
> page size caused by writing through the clients page cache made worse  by
> serialized access.  I know how to address this but only part of the code
> for it is checked in (but disabled) - fortunately mounting with the
> "direct" option helps (at least in the path writing to the server).

Note that I'm currently using the direct option. Are you saying that some 
of what that controls is not enabled in the stock kernel?

How is the read path for performance? I want to verify my backup when it 
completes, so the ability to read the data back across the LAN at a 
reasonable speed is also important.