[Samba] Re: Poor Samba Preformance

[Ralf Herrmann]

Hi,

Some posts above your reply, i have asked for a similar problem.
Although i only have fast ethernet i can see the same effect.

If i connect wit one client, i get about 5MByte/s, but the system
still has free resources. (Idle CPU, the disc system can do about
20MByte/s). When i do 2 simultanous connects, both get about 5MB/s.

I have to add i'm using software RAID5, but anyways as shown by 2 
connected clients, the machine and samba seem to be able to saturate the
line. Why is it that one client can not do it, but 2 (or more) can?

If you have any further hints, please let me know.
I've been searching for a solution for  long time now.

> Some information on your hardware would help.  If you have IDE drives,
> what does hdparm -i say on the share drive?  Also what does hdparm
> /dev/(hd?) for the drive say?  Are you using UDMA, 32bit, multi-IO etc?

In my case, all disc parameters are OK. I tested with bonnie
an it gave more then enough performance for read/write, at least for
large files.

> Also, take a look at top when doing the large transfer.  If you get hi hi
> and wa values (40% or higher) the problem is probably hardware related. 
> Currently my wa and hi values combined when doing a large transfer are
> about 80%.

There is also some CPU time idle while doing a transfer with 1 client.#
About 30% are left. It is an older PC so i guess saturating the ethernet 
line will almost eat its performance, but that's what i wanted.

I also want to mention that i've tested with 2 different NICs in the 
samba server, a 3Com and an Intel-NIC, both with similar results.
At the beginning i was using a rtl8139, but i replaced it as it was 
eating my CPU:-)

As a last comment, FTP form the serve can sustain about 10.5MByte/s
while reading the same files when samba only gives 5MByte/s.

Thanks!

Ralf