[Samba] Slooooow Samba problem

[Charles Forelle]

Hi,

I'm new to Linux (and therefore Samba), and I'm working on setting up a
Linux machine to act as a simple file server for my home network. (I've got
a couple of Windows NT/XP laptops that will need to connect to it.)

So far, I've got it working by setting up a guest account and having my NT
machines log in as the guest with the guest password. I've set guest ok =
yes and writeable = yes in smb.conf to let the NT machines store files on
the Linux machines.

It seems to work OK (though it certainly needs fine-tuning). Here's my big
problem, with which I'm hoping someone can help: It's really slow. I'm
getting transfer rates around 200 kB/sec between my laptop and the Linux
machine. (It'll take about an hour or so to transfer 1 GB, Windows tells
me.)

The laptop is connecting to a Netgear router wirelessly. My wireless monitor
indicates that the connection is established at 11 Mbit/sec. The Linux
machine is plugged into that router with a 100 base T ethernet card. The
LEDs on both the router and the card indicate that the connection is
establed at 100 Mbps. That should mean I should get transfer rates something
like 5 or 10 times higher than what I'm seeing, right?

Per the Unofficial Samba HOWTO, I set the following in my smb.conf:

socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192

Anyone have any thoughts on why the transfer rates are so slow?

Also, if anyone has any recommendations for a good book/FAQ/HOWTO that lays
out how to set up a simple Samba fileserver for a newbie like me, I'd love
to hear about it. (I'm looking for something that gives me some guidance on
strategies for where to put folders, options to tweak performance, etc.)

With deep thanks,

Charles.