Samba consumes a lot of resources

Claude Marinier claude.marinier at drdc-rddc.gc.ca
Fri Jan 17 20:14:06 GMT 2003


On Fri, 17 Jan 2003, Jan-erik Söderholm (QAC) wrote:
> I'm using :
> Samba 2.2.7a
> TCPIP Services 5.1 (I think)
> VMS 7.3-1
> AlphaStation 250 4/266 (EV4, 266 mhz) with 128 Mb.
>
> Now, to compare performance with your system, could you be
> a little more specific ? Such as :
>
> "It takes x sec to open a folder with y files."

It takes 8 seconds to open my home directory which has 413 files
(including sub-directories, i.e. *.DIR files).

> "It takes x sec to open a file of y bytes with notepad."

It takes 4 1/2 seconds to open a file of 413 lines and 8975 characters.

> Then I could see if it is similar to my system.
>
> And what is GVIM ?

It is a GUI version of vim which is "vi improved".

> How large was the file ?

Somewhat less than 1K. The file was corrupted. I will try again (after I
log out and backup since the xterm now displays line drawing characters).

The new test.c file has 333 characters. It takes 6.6 seconds to open with
WordPad and the VMS is quiet. It takes 1 monute and 33.86 seconds to open
with GVIM and VMS is very busy now after is has been opened. Now, over 3
minutes later, VMS is still busy with MONITOR SYSTEM showing nearly
identical numbers. I have now logged off the MS Windows 2000 Pro PC (name
is ANTIOCH-SP) and more over two minutes later VMS is still busy (same
numbers). SMBD_ANTIOCH_SP is stuck. SHOW SYSTEM says

     Pid Process Name    State Pri    I/O     CPU       Page flts  Pages
000000A0 SMBD_ANTIOCH-SP HIB     6 513698 0 00:01:15.98 3259         783  N

SHOW PROCESS /CONTINUOUS /ID=A0 shows me that the 'Current user SP' does
not change (it is 7AEE44B0), the CPU time and both I/O counts continue to
climb, and the 'Current PC' is often 80001934 and 800D3B30. It is stuck.
After stopping the process, the system is quiet again.

Well, this is interesting. I just logged back in to the PC and mounted the
share from loriot to drive letter G. from a 'Command Prompt' windows, I
used vi (Elvis 1.8pl4 another vi clone which I also use on VMS) to open
the same test.c file. This time it opened quickly. Lesson: do not use GVIM
to edit files on VMS shares. VMs is quite. The interesting part is that
the file is see with elvis is full of strange characters. This is what I
see.

        ÇFILE *fd;Ç^FÇint s;^VÇstruct stat stat_data;ÇÇ^[Çs = stat(name, &stat_d

This is what I should see.

	FILE *fd;
	int s;
	struct stat stat_data;

	s = stat(name, &stat_data);
	if (s == -1)  {
	    if ((fd = fopen(name,"w")) != NULL)
	        fclose(fd);
	    else
	        fprintf(stderr, "cannot create %s\n", name);
	    return;
	    }
	if (fd = fopen(name, "a"))
	    fclose(fd);
	else
	    fprintf(stderr, "touch: can't touch file %s\n", name);

The file was originally
	Record format:      Variable length, maximum 0 bytes, longest 91 bytes
	Record attributes:  Carriage return carriage control
it is now
	Record format:      Stream, maximum 0 bytes, longest 58 bytes
	Record attributes:  Carriage return carriage control
I can read (TYPE) the file while elvis is running. When I told elvis the
":q!" the file was already changed. Is this expected? Does the action of
reading the file convert it to stream?

Could it be that DOS and Windows programs handle files in a variety of
ways and that some of these ways are hard to handle for Samba on VMS?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Claude Marinier [mailto:claude.marinier at drdc-rddc.gc.ca]
> Sent: den 17 januari 2003 17:22
> To: samba-vms at lists.samba.org
> Subject: Samba consumes a lot of resources
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I am testing on loriot: VMS 7.3, Samba 2.2.7a, and MultiNet V4.4 Rev A
> on DEC 3000 Model 600 with 384 MB memory. After solving the "Flags =
> UCX_SERVER" problem and the authentication problem, I am now actively
> testing.
>
> I am testing from MS Windows 2000 Pro with SP3. From Windows Explorer
> through My Network Places / Entire Network / Microsoft Windows Network /
> DREO / loriot, I went into the marinier share (from homes) and tried to
> edit a file with GVIM (right click ans Send To). The system is sluggish
> (slow to respond). Doing MONITOR SYSTEM produces.
>
> 	Node: LORIOT             17-JAN-2003 10:54:21
> 	Statistic: CURRENT       SYSTEM STATISTICS
> 	CPU Busy (79)
> 	Cur Top: SMBD_ANTIOCH-SP (11)
> 	Page Fault Rate (972)
> 	Cur Top: SMBD_ANTIOCH-SP (1)
> 	Free List Size (25497)
> 	Mod List Size (1587)
> 	Direct I/O Rate (247)
> 	Cur Top: SMBD_ANTIOCH-SP (23)
> 	Buffered I/O Rate (1856)
> 	Cur Top: SMBD_ANTIOCH-SP (859)
>
> When I logged out from the PC and stopped the SMBD_ANTIOCH-SP process,
> things settled down to a normal state (it took several seconds).
>
> Generally, things are a bit slow, opening a directory (clicking the plus
> sign) in particular; there is a noticeable delay when opening a file but
> it is only a few seconds (3 or 4).
>
> Notepad seems OK.
>
> >From previous messages, it may be that we must be careful which Windows
> applications we use to access files on the VMS system. It this true? Is
> there a list of recommended applications?
>
> Thanks.

-- 
Claude Marinier, Information Technology
Defence Research & Development Canada (Ottawa)
claude.marinier at drdc-rddc.gc.ca
http://www.ottawa.drdc-rddc.gc.ca





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