[Samba] Revisiting slow explorer.exe connections

[Mark]

Not really Samba related in a true sense (other then the fact that the
web client service causes issues with XP and network shares)

This website has some info on the web client service and what is
supposed to used for. 
 http://www.theeldergeek.com/webclient.htm

Regards,
Mark


Hi:

I recently encountered a problem reading directories via an XP Pro
client shared from a samba server (redhat's rpm samba-2.2.7-5.8.0). File
listing was sometimes VERRRY slow.  It was not a DNS issue in this case.

The symptoms, and my fix is below, but I wanted to ask, is there a way
to deal with this from the server? (I dunno- like redirecting port 80 or
something).

>From the client, on a security=domain system, connecting to the share
via 

net use N: \\smbserver\ashare

Worked snappy fast when I did a directory listing after "mount"ing the
drive letter.  But explorer.exe took 30-40 seconds to yield the same
information.  Obviously is was something on the client end if the
command line worked fine.

A Google on the topic yielded hints that it had something to do with the
webclient service attempting to connect to port 80, as attempting WebDAV
is apparently a default setting from the box.

I originally thought that setting the iptables firewall to REJECT
connections at port 80 would solve this problem, and I did exactly that.
Maybe it did help (caching confused the issue), but the real solution is
apparently to stop the webclient service on the WinXP PC.

To query if it's on (as local administrator):

C:\>sc query webclient

To stop this madness, I stopped the service:

C:\>sc stop webclient
C:\>sc config webclient start=demand

( Note that you can start and stop it it via the net command also, eg:
C:\>sc start webclient 
C:\>net start webclient )

So far it's looking good.  I'd rather not deal with messing with the
client pc's, although it's a real fix, can the server be set up to
quickly tell the client "don't bother using webDAV".

Another posting (from me) on this is at:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/69744


/a

-- 
Allan Peda

Programmer, Gene Array Resource Center
Rockefeller University
Box 203
1230 York Ave
New York, NY 10021-6399

(tel) 212-327-7064
(fax) 212-327-7065

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