[Samba] slow access to shared printers

[Philippe Strauss]

Hello,

I've a printing performance problem using samba 3.0.14a
(tested on both fc4 and debian). Accessing to the properties
of a shared printer takes ~9 seconds, while it takes only
4 seconds when accessing the printer directly.

Tested with both windows XP and win 2000.

It's a raw queue setup using cups, printer are accessed
using the embedded lpd.

Selecting the shared printer within ms-word takes ~3 seconds.

I know it's not a huge delay, but it makes the
samba experience rather sluggish and painfull.

A tcpdump during properties selection show a pretty big
network traffic: 3000 to 4000 packets exchanged during those
9 seconds.

relevant config options:

load printers = yes
printing = cups
printcap name = cups
cups options = Raw
# tried to switch the following to yes but got no change
#use client driver = no

attached is a tcpdump trace of the server traffic when
a client select the properties tab. Oops no, it's
3MB, I won't attach it but it's available on request.

any way to improve this?

thanks and regards.

-- 
Network & System Engineer
Goelaan SA, Switzerland
Tel. +41-22-960 98 20
Fax +41-22-960 98 21
http://www.goelaan.ch