[Samba] samba performance issue

[Trey Nolen]

Hi, I recently installed a new samba server to replace an older Novell
machine.  Now, we are having performance issues. I have installed many
samba servers, and have not run into this problem before. Some background
info:

The server is an Athlon 1800+ w/ 512MB DDR RAM. We are using software raid
on 80GB IDE ATA 100 drives with the VIA 82C3XX chipset. When mirroring the
drives, we usually get 30+MB/sec. Filesystem is ext3. Kernel is 2.4.18.
Distro is Debian 3.0 and samba is 2.2.3a-6 for Debian.

smb.conf:
[global]
   printing = bsd
   printcap name = /etc/printcap
   load printers = yes
   use client driver = yes
   guest account = nobody
   add user script = /usr/sbin/useradd -d /dev/null -g 100 -s /bin/false -M
%u
   domain admin group = @users
  security = user
   workgroup = HHS
   domain logons = yes
   logon script = startup.bat
   server string = %h server (Samba %v)
   syslog only = no
   syslog = 0;
   socket options = IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY SO_SNDBUF=4096 SO_RCVBUF=4096
   encrypt passwords = yes
   wins support = no
   os level = 99
   domain master = yes
   local master = yes
   preferred master = yes
   name resolve order = lmhosts host wins bcast
   dns proxy = no
   preserve case = yes
   short preserve case = yes
   unix password sync = true
   passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u
   passwd chat = *Enter\snew\sUNIX\spassword:* %n\n
   max log size = 1000

[netlogon]
  path = /etc/samba/netlogon
  browseable = no
  read only = yes

[sys]
  comment = Shared files
  path = /home/shared
  writeable = yes
  op locks = no
  browseable = yes
  force directory mode = 0777
  force create mode = 0777
  public = yes
  guest ok = no

[homes]
   comment = Home Directories
   browseable = no
   read only = no
   create mask = 0770
   directory mask = 0770


[printers]
     guest ok = yes
     printable = yes
     print command =       /usr/bin/lpr  -U%U@%M -P%p -r %s
     lpq command   =       /usr/bin/lpq  -U%U@%M -P%p
     lprm command  =       /usr/bin/lprm -U%U@%M -P%p %j
     queuepause command =  /usr/sbin/lpc -U%U@%M -P%p stop
     queueresume command = /usr/sbin/lpc -U%U@%M -P%p start
     path = /tmp

[cdrom1]
   comment = Samba server's CD-ROM
   writable = no
   locking = no
   path = /cdrom1
   public = yes
   preexec = /bin/mount /cdrom1
   postexec = /bin/umount /cdrom1

[cdrom2]
   comment = Samba server's CD-ROM
   writable = no
   locking = no
   path = /cdrom2
   public = yes
   preexec = /bin/mount /cdrom2
   postexec = /bin/umount /cdrom2


Now, the problem...I'm getting very poor performance. The machine we
replaced was a Pentium I 200 with 64MB of RAM, and it was faster than this
thing.  All of my client machines are Win98 SE.  The biggest problem is
when the executable itself is on the server. If it is, the program loads
VERY slowly. I have loaded Netstat to look at the network throughput. When
I am loading an EXE from the server, my throughput is very low.  I made a
300 MB test file to copy back and forth across the network. On each
machine, I'm getting about 35Mbit. I can copy the same file to two machines
at the same time and get 35Mbit on both. I have not tested three at a time
because this was enough to show me that the network was not the bottleneck.
This network is 100Mbit on a switch.  When copying the files, the client
machine's processor always shows 100%. When loading programs from the
server the machines also show 100%.  BUT, I get the same performance from a
550 Mhz PIII machine, a 1000Mhz Athlon machine, and an 1800+ Athlon XP.
Also, like I said, the Novell server makes the clients much faster. I have
eliminated all the protocol traffic that I can -- all machines are on
TCP/IP only. I can put the EXEs on the client machines and just read the
data from the server for improved performace, but it is still not as good
as it should be (or as good as the old server).

Now for the question....does anyone know of anything I can do to improve
performance? Or do I need to go back and install Novell on the new machine
(I really don't want to)?


Thanks in advance.

Trey Nolen