SAMBA 2.2.2 - slow print queue update

[Klaus Jungbauer]

Hello List Members,

a customer of us asked me to analyse the performance problems at his 
Samba 2.2.2 (Solaris 8) print server (E250 single CPU, 1GB Mem).

The first issue is a huge amount of 390 (!) network printers to serve. 
Using the new SpoolSS feature, he needs printer driver download support, 
we found problems using the printer folder below server view, as it  
needs an inacceptable time to get the result (some minutes and server 
CPU at 100%). 
Some times it looks like a timeout will be reached and the client may
freeze. Same behavior can be seen while viewing properties of a printer.

Looking into source and using smbd debug level 3 shows, that most time 
would be used at printing/printing.c->print_queue_status. truss shows,
the most time will be consumed by a very hugh amount of fcntl() system
calls.

As i could see in source the smbd have to do update the print queue
status by itself. That would be fine for only a few printers, but gets
very complex for a greater amount of printers. 

Are there any ideas to update print queue status in a more efficient
way, e.g. a dedicated process/thread?

Any hint to config, a workaround or a patch to speed up printing service 
would be welcome.

Thank you in advance!
-- 

Regards

--------------------------------
CLASS AG - http://www.class.de

Klaus Jungbauer
Senior Systems Engineer
Projects
Tel   +49 (0) 8151/991-241
mobil +49 (0) 172/82 130 25
mailto:Klaus.Jungbauer at class.de