[Samba] big file server

[David Morel]

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Le Jeudi 15 Mai 2003 19:34, Thierry ITTY a écrit :
> Hi
> I plan to set up a big file server, something like motherboard with 4 ide
> ports and an additional 4 ide daughter card, a PIV proc and 512 or 1024 MB
> ram, a 100 or 1000 MB NIC, with 6 or 7 200 GB ide HDDs in a sigle box. I
> don't need lightning performance, just disk space. Of course this would be
> served by some linux os and samba

John T gave a great piece of advice this week about how much processors and 
ram are needed for big servers ( serving 500+ clients ). You should look at 
the archive, he suggest that your configuration might be a bit light. But it 
all depends on how many clients you'll be serving. Still i guess if you plan 
on Gigabit, there might be a few...

> questions (relative to samba configuration and behaviour) :
> - is there a better fs type (ext2, 3, xfs...) for this ?

my advice would be xfs. Never had anything but trouble ( severe fs corruption 
beyond repair, every time, on all machines. Am i the only one ???) with 
reiser. Ext3 is fine but probably slower. Avoid ext2 unless you don't mind 
spending hours fscking 1,4 Tb of storage in case of power failure or 
whatever.

> - what about such space (1 TB at least), can i have only one fs for the
> whole ?

You definitely can, using LVM or better yet EVMS (logical volume managers, 
which are an absraction layer between the physical discs and the file 
system). You can then use these volumes in any fashion you like, even in 
software raid and so on. But hardware raid5 wouldn't hurt also, so why not 
use both?

> - what about huge files (over 2 GB)

samba is compiled with large file support most of the time. XFS has support 
for it also, as well as recent kernels for ext2 & 3 IIRC

> - any suggestions (kernel releases and patches, samba performance tips...)

dunno, 2.4.20 is fine with us.

David
- -- 
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