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

[Peter Szmrecsanyi]

OK, I've done the tests I'd said I'd do and here are the results... The
tests were simple, set up a samba share on the computers in question and use
a windows PC and a Linux (smbclient) PC to read a 350 MB files of the share:

Setting up a samba server (to share files) on both my notebook (FC3 w/ Samba
3.0.10) and my desktop computer (P4 w/ 512 MB of RAM, FC1 w/ Samba 3.0.7)
yielded transfer rates better than in Windows (both are dual boot) and very
surprisingly slightly better than FTP, I was amazed!!!

Installing Samba 3.0.14a on the ProLiant 2500 without ACL support did not
make any difference on the transfer rate. Removing samba 3 and installing
version 2.2.12 actually worsened the transfer rate by 25%!

The conclusion is yet unknown... I failed to see how a Pentium 133 MHz with
32MB of RAM (IBM Aptiva), can yield transfer rates which are virtually the
same as Compaq ProLiant 2500 Server, which has Dual Pentium Pro 200 MHz with
256 MB of RAM and a RAID device which by hdparm standards is twice as fast
as the IBM's IDE disks! Of course, FTP is a whole different story, and the
ProLiant performs as expected. My only guess is that samba much prefers the
DEC 21140 (Tulip) NIC on the IBM Aptiva as opposed to the Netintellingent
(TLAN - ThunderLAN) NIC found on the ProLiant.

My next step is to try another adapter on the ProLiant, probably a 3c905 or
maybe a DEC 21140 if I can find one... I'm hoping that will solve my problem
and allow the samba transfer rate to match the FTP one, but if it fails to
do that I'll be stuck and will have to assume that there is some basic
hardware issue on the ProLiant that disagrees with samba, that will be must
upsetting.

Peter.


-----Original Message-----
From: samba-bounces+peter=totallinux.com.br at lists.samba.org
[mailto:samba-bounces+peter=totallinux.com.br at lists.samba.org]On Behalf Of
AragonX
Sent: sexta-feira, 13 de maio de 2005 09:03
To: samba at lists.samba.org
Subject: re: [Samba] Horrendously slow transfer speeds in FC3 is driving me
crazy!!! Please help...

<quote who="pb">
>
> When trying to improve upon the 7 Mbyte/sec I found that nothing helped
> at all. Compiling with different flags (O3, etc), made no difference
> (cpu load very low anyway) Kernel made no difference (I used Slakware's
> v.8, v.9 and currently use v.10) With or without Hyperthreading on the
> P4 enabled (via custom kernels) made no difference.Different 100TX patch
> cables made no difference.
> It was the crap switch in my case.

Following the advice from you and others, I tried a new switch.  The time
to open the application went down from 3 minutes to about 1.5 minutes.
This is a great improvement but I fear it treated the symptom and not the
problem.  A minute and a half to open an application is still far too
long.  The amount of data going over the network is huge.  The network
light flashes constant for the entire 1.5 minutes.  Next I'll try a
network sniffer and see what is being transmitted.

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