[Samba] Slow performance with lots of files in one directory

[Gerald Drouillard]

Unless you are a programmer, I am afraid the only thing you can do is to
modify how the files are stored in that directory.  I had the files on a
ext3 RAID5 with lots of memory config and any type of access to that
directory would bring smb to a crawl.  I even tried putting the files on a
separate XFS RAID5 server and mount the directory, but seemed to just make
it worse even with a 1Gig connection between the servers.  The files that I
store are from our in-house imaging program.  Our file names were all
numeric so it was just a case of changing the name structure from 123456.TIF
to /3/2/1/456.TIF.  In the new file name format, a directory has no more
than 999+10 directory entries.  Now the system is working better than ever.

Regards
-------------------------
Gerald Drouillard
Owner and Consultant
Drouillard & Associates, Inc.
http://www.Drouillard.ca

> -----Original Message-----
> From: samba-admin at lists.samba.org [mailto:samba-admin at lists.samba.org]On
> Behalf Of Anders Nordby
> Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 10:19 AM
> To: samba at lists.samba.org
> Subject: [Samba] Slow performance with lots of files in one directory
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I've got performance problems with copying small files over to a Samba
> share in a directory that has lots of small files (10000 to 20000
> files). It takes too long time to copy new files (they drip in at a fast
> pace), and smbd eats a lot of CPU time.
>
> Is there any way to make Samba run faster in this situation?
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Anders Nordby
> Aftenposten AS, Systemteknisk avd.
>
> Tlf.: +47 22864083
> Fax: +47 22864074
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