Samba write cache (was: Samba 2)

[Grotnes Per Kjetil PBE-SIT]

> In theory, it can help, as your cache flush requests will then write an
> entire stripe evenly. In practice, I wouldn't bother - any decent
> hardware RAID card will have on card cache RAM, and will buffer requests
> in that cache until it can write a stripe anyway, so I'd be very
> surprised to see any difference at all.

Would it not reduce the serverload regardless of RAID card cache?  The samba write 
cache would fill up until enough data to send to the RAID.  This could reduce the amount of 
write-calls for the server?  Am I way off here?

> > 2) how do I find the stripe size easily ( I am using hardware raid-5
> >    because software raid-5 was alpha when I put the box up 2 yrs ago)

We have a configuration diskette which contains the setup of our raid.  I think you have to 
use a RAID configuration program to read it.  You could take a look at that file in an editor 
mayhap.  If this does not work I would be happy to hear any other way to find out the stripe 
size.

Regards
Per Kjetil Grotnes 
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