Samba Limitations...

[Edmund Lam]

> We are investigating a rather large Samba implementation (15.000 users).
>
   We too are thinking of a large Samba rollout. 40,000 users, 500-5000
concurrently.

> Is there any built'in limit in Samba we should be aware of ?
>
   AFAIK, there is no Samba limit as such, but there are certainly
issues which should be considered.

   In particular, the total number of users might overwelm the
flat-text file smbpasswd if you are using encrypted password. The Samba
group is currently developing a TDB backend, which should increase
performance.

   As Blue mentioned, memory is also an issue. There is the absolute
_minimum_ requirement of approx 500-600KB per user. 3MB would not be
uncommon. A suggestion would be to use shared memory where possible.
Also have a great deal of swap space and maybe enable over-commit mode
(which can be dangerous if you don't know what you are doing).

   There are also various tuning parameters which can be set in
smb.conf.

> Max sessions, max shares...
>
   There might be max shares, but we are currently looking at sharing
out home directories at present.

===

   Incidentally -- though I should really post to samba-technical --
the TDB stuff in Samba-HEAD is broken again. As TDB is potentially very
useful, I would like it fixed ASAP. Since this IS Free Software, I
guess I should help out rather than moan about it. :) Can Jeremy or
anyone else suggest what I can do. Testing and debugging at this stage
isn't an option because Samba-HEAD doesn't even compile.

Cheers

Edmund Lam
---
Systems Programmer                          Email: <epl at unimelb.edu.au>
Systems and IT Infrastructure, Information Division Tel:+61 3 8344-3718
The University of Melbourne, Vic 3010, Australia    Fax:+61 3 9347-4803