[Samba] Ubuntu samba slower than red hat??

[Gary Dale]

A lot of things have changed since RH9. However, one has to question the 
wisdom of running a desktop distro like Ubuntu as a server.

I note that your new server is essentially the same speed as your old 
one, but with only one HD. Also, you don't mention how much memory you 
have or how many users are connecting to your server.

I know some people on this list are going to not like this suggestion, 
but for a server I would recommend you downgrade to Debian Sarge, which 
is running Samba 3.0.14a. This is a rock-solid distro that can be set up 
as a server. Basically, with it you will only have to restart it if you 
have a hardware problem.

To fix your speed problem, set your log level up higher in samba (it's 
in smb.conf) to generate some data. You might even find the problem by 
yourself. Samba itself is not that slow, so it is likely something about 
your local setup.

re. your ideas:
1 & 2 are not good ideas
3. quite likely, but this sounds like something fundamental
4. probably not a good idea

Ubuntu is Debian based and may follow the same security settings. When 
you copied your files, you may have copied them disk-to-disk which would 
have kept the old user & group numbers. Your new numbers may be quite 
different. You may have to look at your files on the disk and correct 
the ownerships.

Are your accounts and groups set up correctly.

Is this a domain controller? Does it farm out password checking to 
another server? You may want to set up SWAT and use the wizard to set up 
the server in its intended role (domain controller, member server or 
stand-alone).

Good luck.


Douglas D Germann Sr wrote:
> Hi--
>
> About 10 days ago I switched from a Red Hat 9.0 machine
> as my Samba server to Ubuntu. Ever since, things have 
> been slow.
>
> How do I mean, slow?
>
> 1st clue: previously, when I saved docs in OOo Writer, 
> I would go ctrl-S and once every 4th or 5th time it 
> would say it couldn't create a backup; now it is
> every time. So to save I have to go ctrl-S esc esc ctrl-S.
>
> 2nd clue: WinXP on login to the server times out before 
> connecting the three drives it tries to connect--never before.
>
> 3rd clue: WinXp used to load directories instantly; now 
> it takes 4-5 seconds.
>
> There is some other weirdness too: when logged in to the 
> server it reports the file owner and group as dean:1005. 
> dean is the name of another user on this client machine, 
> but rarely used. It should see it as doug:data, which is 
> how the server sees it. 
>
> Also it used to see the files as 
> -rwxrwSrwt  1 root root 4.0K 2003-01-25 03:18 wgetrc
>
> Now it sees them as
> -rwxrwxrwx  1 dean data   99 1993-09-28 22:07 TEST.SDW
>
>
> The new server: Ubuntu 6.06, Celeron D 2.53Ghz, one 
> 200GB HDD, 6 months old. samba 3.0.22
> The old server: RedHat 9.0, Celeron 2Ghz, one 
> 80GB HDD with OS on it, one 120GB HDD with only data 
> on it, at least 3 years old. Samba is at least that old.
> 2.2.7a-security-rollup-fix
>
> So the question is, how can I speed up the Ubuntu samba? 
> How would you troubleshoot this?
>
> Some ideas I have not yet tried:
>
> 1. Remove all the commented lines from the smb.conf 
> file.
>
> 2. Perhaps older versions of samba are just faster 
> than the newer ones, and I should learn to live with it.
>
> 3. Perhaps there are some tweaks in samba that I need to 
> learn about.
>
> 4. Copy over the old smb.conf file to the new system.
>
> Where should I start? What is most likely to have a good 
> payoff for time invested?
>
> Thanks!
>
> :- Doug.
>
>