[Samba] Horrendously slow transfer speeds in FC3 is driving me crazy!!! Please help...

[AragonX]

<quote who="peter">
> Hello,
>
> I recently posted a message with the subject: "Strangely slow transfers
> speeds with samba 3.0.10 and FC3..."
>
> My problem is basically that I've setup a samba server with Fedora Core 3,
> the version used is 3.0.10-1.fc3.
>
> I can put files on the server at reasonable speeds, but getting them from
> the server with a Windows 2000/XP client is another matter, the speeds
> drop
> to a pathetic rate. With smbclient (in Linux) it's even worse; the speed
> falls to 1/10 of the rate!
>
> OK, the figures: a 540MB file when transferred via FTP or NFS (Linux
> client)
> takes about 61 seconds (rate is around 8MB/s), via samba (win 2k/XP) takes
> over 4 minutes, via smbclient (Linux) takes about 20 minutes!!!
>
> Does anyone have any idea why smbclient is so slow? Note that I'm using
> CIFS
> as SMB with Samba 3 is even worse!
>
> Is there something drastically wrong with the Fedora versions of Samba?

Hello,

I've seen several people post similar issues as yours.  Perhaps it is
hardware related?  Can you post your hardware specifications?  I've done
some benchmarking over the past few days and I'll show you what I have:

Samba Server
AMD Duron 1.3ghz
Abit (?) k7a or something like that motherboard (KT133 chipset)
512mb PC133 SDRAM
Intel gigabit NIC
WD 120gb hard drives
Netgear gigabit switch (no jumbo frames)

Fedora Core 3
Kernel 2.6.10-1.766_FC#
Samba 3.0.10-1.fc3

Now I can FTP to and from the server getting in the 14.5 - 15 MB/sec
range.  When I use Samba I get from 12.6 - 14.4 MB/sec.  I use a 4gb .gz
file for testing.  Since my server does many things, I've noticed that it
can take a minute or so for the transfer rates to settle down.

hdparm -tT /dev/hdc average results:
     Timing cached reads: 306.785
     Timing buffered disk reads: 33.785

Given my hdparm results, I should be able to do better than 14MB/sec. 
Next I'll try copying from one drive to another and see how long that
takes.

If needed, I could post my smb.conf file but there really isn't anything
in there.  I just used the default one and added my share info.

So, in short, I don't think there is a problem with Fedora Core 3.  There
could be some issue with your hardware or configuration.  Perhaps the new
version of Samba is a memory hog and requires 256mb or more to run
smoothly?  I guess you could take a look at top and see if you have any
high states.