Filesystem question

Ulf Bertilsson ulf.bertilsson at adcomdata.no
Tue Oct 17 06:54:38 GMT 2000


> > I belive it will search for htm/.ini files for that folder as well.
> > No matter your tried turn all html crap off.
> > 
> > This matter for Win98/ME/2k, or maybe all Inet Explorer system.
> > 
> > May we address this in Samba ?
> 
> BTW, but is the OS filesystem cache was introduced for this!?
> I see that all unices around me (linux, solaris, sco) have very
> intelligent fs cache, that can work far better than samba 
> implementation.

I installed a new filesystem on a test partision, with very good result.
I might thinking "cache" on a "higher level", like in the VFS consept.

Hopefully my OS get a proper filesystem in the next realease.

> For our site, I see disk access only when the first client accesses
> the directory, subcequent accesses takes results from fs cache
> (for all other clients also) -- there is no disk activity there.

Yes, I now see your point.

In my music partision i have 4000 small files (SID C64 music songs)
in very small size.

Bu using plain boring filesystem, this takes 10 minutes before
the hole operation times out.

Seems like Samba do a "seek()" thing on every file.

The HD go crasy, and it can't finish in time before it timeout.

> If samba will have its own cache implementation, then on this system
> this actually will _decrease_ performance, will require more 
> additional
> resources (notably RAM) and decrease stability.

Ok, then what about some logic stuff on the VFS layer ?
The VFS should have a "dummy mecanism" to handle filesystem
calls with custom "wrappers" for eash OS.

Might sounds bad, but each OS has _it_ way of handling filesystem
information.

Identifying Wintel's noice such as this "htm/.ini" path search stuff,
and supplying with the correct/dummy data to allow this to take minimum
resources
will prove effective on small OS such as mine, and even give performance
hits on enterprise level.

> I recall that kernel
> know far more information about filesystem than samba can have, and
> kernel knows also available RAM size that can be used for caches,
> and it keeps cache only once while samba will keep it in each smbd
> process...

Then I guess my Kernel is just plain stupid :)
It's quite hard this days, having an none Posix system.

Cheers
Ulf




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