[Samba] Re: Frustrated...Samba on linux w/xfs SLOW problem

[Dragan Krnic]

|>> it starts out at a decent speed for a second, then slows and slows
|>> and eventually stops.  I then get the message "The specified
|>> network name is no longer available."
|>
|> Are you getting a lot of collisions when this happens?  This sounds
|> suspiciously like a network problem, maybe mismatched duplex settings.
|>
|> Try FTPing or SCPing a file to the server from your Windows machine.  If
|> that transfer is affected as well, it's a network problem, not a Samba
|> problem.
|
| I had tried scping and that does work fine.
|
| I tried the following test.  
| I created a new ext2 file system on the computer, 
| made it a samba share, and turned off all other 
| samba shares except the ext2 one.  I then wrote 
| a 35M file from my windows machine to the linux 
| server.  It worked like it used to.
|
| This seems to prove to me that 
| a) there is no network problem, 
| b) samba is working correctly, 
| c) there is DEFINATELY an issue with XFS and samba.  
| From what I've read in some other places, 
| it appears there is also an issue with ReiserFS and samba.  
|
| What is it with samba that it only appears to like ext2/3 fs's?
| Is *ANYONE* using XFS with samba and having it work 
| at a normal rate of speed when writing to it?
|
| Before anyone asks, I also did try mounting a drive 
| from my windows machine via smbclient and copy
| a file on the linux box from the windows machine.  
| That works fine, even to the xfs drives.
|
| It seems to me that there's got to be some option 
| in the samba configuration that I just don't
| have correct.  If someone is currently successfully 
| using linux xfs w/samba, please, share your config!

Your mileage may vary. There is nothing about samba to 
prefer one fs over another. There are too many variables
involved, hardware, software, configuration. I had myself
some problems with ext3 and reiserfs in connection
with sata drivers in kernel 2.4.20. With the same 
hardware and drivers xfs made a much better impression
in writing speed so I set up an array of 6 disks in
raid5 configuration and formatted it as xfs with an
external journal. And this is a copy transaction from
a client which is connected to the server with xfs
via a cheap Gigabit LAN Switch:

   U:\>dir
   26.06.2004  20:02    <DIR>          .
   18.06.2004  15:08    <DIR>          ..
   25.12.2003  23:44             73.515.932 pmn90g.tarlist
                  1 File(s)      73.515.932 Bytes
                  1 Dir(s), 347.053.490.176 Bytes free
   U:\>timethis copy pmn90g.tarlist C:\Temp\pmn90g
       TimeThis :  Elapsed Time :  00:00:01.601
   U:\>timethis copy C:\Temp\pmn90g
       TimeThis :  Elapsed Time :  00:00:01.892
 
Which means 46 MB/s from the server to the local
file and 39 MB/s from the local file back to server.
Not too bad for an xfs. Nothing special in smb.conf.

I'm not convinced that there is a problem between
Samba and xfs. As I mentioned in a letter yesterday
some problems go away after a reboot. If you have
added a disk to format as ext2 then you have also
rebooted your system. If there were any problems
with WINS resolution due to stale cached entries
they might be gone after reboot. I don't say that
there can absolutely be no problems between samba
and xfs, only that it is not very likely. It is
difficult to see what's wrong with your setup.