[Samba] we have domain logon authentication but profile loads SLOW

[Modus Operandi]

Hey samba friends,

We are getting really bad performance from the samba
server. Profiles are taking forever to d/l. This is in
an isolated environment: one client, one server,
attached to a 100 Mbps switch. Ping is
min/avg/max/mdev 0.174/0.190/0.309/0.036 ms. 

On irc.freenode.org #samba we have been met with some
derision for using ping to test throughput. We also
tested with rsync and the isolated test environment
seemed speedy, but the IRC guys won't talk to us
unless we test throughput with http or ftp. The
problem with that is, the sambatest server is offline
and for performance reasons we are < psyched about
installing apache2 on the box. Even trying to install
proftp on the samba server is problematic because we
have to set up a knoppix livecd next to the isolated
network, tunnel through the mailserver and firewall,
and get debs (mailserver and sambatest both Ubuntu
Breezy) which we d/l to knoppix, then unplug knoppix
from the network and plug into the test switch, and
then we still have to use dpkg instead of apt-get to
install proftpd, resolve conflicts, satisfy
dependencies, etc. Hopefully you can see why testing
the throughput of the switch is a PITA. Even if we
turn off samba to join the test server to the LAN
(we don't want the PDCs to get into a battle!) we
still have to set up apt to use our proxy server. We
can't even use apt-get install apt-proxy!

Meanwhile, we think the bandwidth benchmark is
irrelevant to the problem we're having -- IRC opinions
notwithstanding. It just seems like a lot of trouble
to test throughput on a switch we know is working fine
at 100Mbps. There must be another problem!

Default profile < 5 MB. We have domain logons. 

Also, I don't remember how to make a default profile 
on a windows box and move it to the samba PDC. I want 
to use the old profile from:
/etc/samba/netlogon/default user 
but change paths, proxy settings, etc.

-- 
/home/modus/.signature
Thu Sep 22 02:41:56 EDT 2005
The Moon is Waning Gibbous (79% of Full)

In the immortal words of Modus Operandi <modus at as220.org>:
> In the immortal words of Modus Operandi <modus at as220.org>:
> > 
> > we have been trying to move our samba box to a faster server, with better
> > NICs, faster processor and more memory.
> > 
> > both the old and new server are using samba 3.0.14A
> > both on debian based distributions (old was sarge, new is breezy)
> > 
> > here are the steps we followed:
> > install samba from the apt archives.
> > confirmed that they were the same version.
> > copied smb.conf from old server to new server.
> > changed domain name, or workgroup = domain2
> > as well as netbios name
> 
>   <snip!>
> 
>   Well, that was the problem. I set the workgroup and
> the netbios to the same name, which was causing the
> "duplicate name" error.
> 
>   Not sure why the old install worked just fine with
> netbios and workgroup set to the same thing.
> 
>   Anyway, we can now log on to the domain without the
> error. There are still problems, though ... the
> authentication procedure is incredibly slow -- and the
> reason we got a new server was so it would be faster.
> 
>   Tomorrow, I will make sure all the users are created
> with the same uid on the new server, and then convert
> our old smbpasswd to tdb format.
> 
> -- 
> /home/modus/.signature
> Mon Sep 19 18:19:45 EDT 2005
> The Moon is Waning Gibbous (95% of Full)