[linux-cifs-client] Slow Folder Traversal on One system, Fast on Another

[Jeff Layton]

On Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:53:44 -0800
Tanthrix The Great <tanthrix at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've got cifs mounted windows share on two linux systems here, an older
> system running Arch Linux with kernel 2.6.21, and a newer Ubuntu system with
> kernel 2.6.31-17.
> 
> If I do "ls -R" on the cifs mounted share (which is on a Windows 7 machine)
> on the older Arch linux system, it takes about 1/4 of a second to list some
> 3000 files in 50 or so folders. If I do the same on the newer system, it
> takes 6-7 seconds to read all the files out. These times are repeatable and
> consistent, and both systems mount the share using the same command. (mount
> -t cifs -o username=X,password=X //system/share /mountpoint)
> 
> This delay is causing a program I use to playback media files (the MythVideo
> plugin of MythTV) to take 6-7 seconds to load the full directory tree each
> time I open it, something I do quite frequently.
> 
> Are there any tips/tricks out there to speed up the traversal of cifs
> mounted shares? If not, what would you recommend I would to do try and
> figure out what the cause of this delay is?
> 
> Everything else on both systems works perfectly, and file transfers from the
> Windows machine to linux machines go pretty much the exact same speed. This
> makes me think the network is not to blame, though I'm open to any
> possibilities.
> 
> Anything you could recommend would be very much appreciated, thanks.

Do the times go down if you mount with '-o noserverino'?

Thanks,
-- 
Jeff Layton <jlayton at samba.org>