[Samba] Poor performance between linux boxes using Samba 3

[Roger Lucas]

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for the info.  I ran another test with a 100MB file as below:

	mount -t smbfs //machineb/share /mnt/machineb ....
	cp test-100mb.dat /mnt/machineb/test1.dat
	umount /mnt/machineb

The above copy took 60 seconds.

	mount -t cifs //machineb/share /mnt/machineb ....
	cp test-100mb.dat /mnt/machineb/test2.dat
	umount /mnt/machineb

This copy took just 20 seconds.

I am running kernel 2.6.8 which apparently has CIFS built in.

I am amazed by the performance increase, so CIFS definitely seems the way to
go.  Is there a deep reason for why this is, as CIFS seems to be part of the
SAMBA team (http://linux-cifs.samba.org/) so it seems weird that they have
both the smbclient and CIFS client with such massive performance
differences....

Thanks again,

Roger

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeremy Allison [mailto:jra at samba.org] 
Sent: 10 October 2005 19:23
To: Roger Lucas
Cc: samba at lists.samba.org
Subject: Re: [Samba] Poor performance between linux boxes using Samba 3

On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 07:22:45PM +0100, Roger Lucas wrote:
> I mean "TCP" not "TFTP" in the mail.  All hail the automatic
spellchecker...
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: samba-bounces+roger=planbit.co.uk at lists.samba.org
> [mailto:samba-bounces+roger=planbit.co.uk at lists.samba.org] On Behalf Of
> Roger Lucas
> Sent: 10 October 2005 18:27
> To: samba at lists.samba.org
> Subject: [Samba] Poor performance between linux boxes using Samba 3
> 
> I have a network with two machines on it, both running Debian and updated
> with the latest Debian stable samba (3.0.14).  Both machines are
reasonably
> high spec (512MB RAM and Athlon 2200+ processors) and have little else
> running (console mode, no KDE/Gnome/etc).  They are connected by a Netgear
> FS108 100-Base-T ethernet switch.
> 
>  
> 
> When I try to copy a large file (500MB) from machine A to machine B using
> FTP (Machine B running vsftpd) then I get 9.5 MB/sec throughput, so my
> 100-base-T network is running at full speed and full duplex, as I would
> expect.
> 
>  
> 
> When I instead try to copy the same file from machine A to machine B using
> FTP (Machine A running "smbmount -t smbfs //machineb/share /mnt/machineb
-o
> user=xxx,password=xxx") then I get much lower throughput - around 3
MB/sec.

Can you try using Steve French's cifsfs client instead of smbfs. Steve
is actively maintaining cifsfs and is working on performance issues.

Jeremy.