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

[Peter Szmrecsanyi]

The desktop had FC1 on it, and I only mentioned it because I did the 
test initially on that one before realising that the OS version was 
different! But the results were the same as on my laptop which has FC3 
installed and a similar configuration to the ProLiant, so I decided top 
mention it. The smb.conf file was the same. The only major difference is 
that on teh ProLiant I use XFS filesystem where as on the Desktop and 
Laptop I use EXT3, but XFS is theoretically faster so I can't see that 
that hindering the performance.

I have a 100Mbps network, which can yeild a maximum tranfer rate of 12 
MB/s, if you take the TCP/IP subsystem overhead into account you'll 
realise that more than 11 MB/s is bearing on the impossible. Using both 
the desktop and the laptop I got nearlly 11 MB/s, one was 10,11 the 
other was 10,72. Using FTP I got 9,96 and 9,69. With the proliant I get 
a max of 1.6 MB/s, the same as I get with my IBM machine (acting as a 
firewal/gateway) which has RedHat 7.2...

I see your point about the file size, a 4 GB file would give a better 
overall benchmark, but I used a file smaller than the RAM on purpose, I 
wanted to measure how fast I could read the file from the server, and 
not have to worry about writting the file on the other end. Admitedly I 
don't think it would matter as bothe the laptop and the desltop have 
disk which are much faster, but just in case...

I quite convinced that my problem isn't software, for if it was I should 
have gotten a lot more variation (on the transfer rate) when I tried 
diferent variations of samba... I'll resume my testing when I install a 
new NIC on the ProLiant, if that doesn't do it then I'll try a diferent OS.

Peter.


AragonX escreveu:

><quote who="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%!
>>    
>>
>
>Wait, I'm confused.  Did you use different versions of Fedcora Core?  If
>so, that makes the test results somewhat suspect.  I would suggest
>installing FC3 on all the systems involved and make sure they are all
>updated to the same versions.  Also make sure you are using the same or
>very similar Samba configurations.
>
>Once you do that, you can pretty much exclude software issues.  I also
>suggest shutting down any services that are not involved in the test
>before benchmarking.  Finally, I suggest benchmarking with a much larger
>file (I usually use a 4gb .tar.gz).  The reason is, with a 350mb file,
>much (if not all) of the file can be cached in RAM and thus not really
>testing your drive subsystem.  I've found that my test results are much
>more predictable with the large file as opposed to when I was using a
>smaller file.
>
>I realize it's a lot of work to do a fresh FC install on all the machines
>but you really do have an odd issue.
>
>Also, what was the speeds you got with all your machines?
>
>
>  
>