[Samba] Vista performance (uggh)

Fri Dec 21 12:50:24 GMT 2007

Apparently, there is known issues with Vista copying files around the
network and also on to CD's etc.. See

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/26/vista_copying_bug/

Mark

On Tue, Oct 30, 2007 at 09:37:46AM -0500, samba at lists.rupa.com wrote:
> On 10/26/2007 8:28 AM, Doug Tucker wrote:
> > I didn't see anyone answer this.  We noticed a tremendous slowdown of
> > our samba server the minute we put our first Vista client on it due to
> > IO.  Turns out that by default, Vista has an indexing feature turned on
> > that sits there and loops continually indexing every file it can find.
> > So if you have mapped drives, and they have a lot of content...this user
> > had about 2gb in their home directory, it just murdered our samba
> > server.  I'm no vista expert, but why you don't see a noticeable
> > performance hit when it indexes the local drive of the pc, I have no
> > idea, but when it was sitting on that mapped drive, it slowed the samba
> > server down for everyone.  We turned that feature off on the Vista
> > machine, and the problem went away.
> 
> This theory would apply if I was seeing lots of disk I/O even while the
> vista client wasn't actively transferring files.  That isn't the case.
> I only see increased I/O during a file copy from the samba server to the
> vista client.
> 
> Speaking of vista issues.  You may want to considering disabling
> "Offline Files" which also keeps an eye of what files are new/changed on
> the fileshare and copies them locally.  This kicks in automatically if
> you set any of your special folders (Documents and Pictures is what I
> had done) to be on the samba server rather than local).
> 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, 2007-10-18 at 09:57 -0500, samba at lists.rupa.com wrote:
> >> Issue: Vista reads slowly from a samba server.  This appears to pop up
> >> periodically here and elsewhere.
> >>
> >> My samba.conf file has:
> >>
> >> [homes]
> >>  ...
> >>  vfs objects = readahead
> >>
> >>  As suggested elsewhere.
> >>
> >> Writes are approximately 17-18MB/s which is acceptable.  Reads are in
> >> the 8MB/s range which is appalingly slow.  Using linux smbclient and
> >> windows XP clients I can read at 25+MB/s.  I've enabled vfs objects =
> >> readahead to get better performance in vista.
> >>
> >> The biggest difference I notice between vista and other clients is that
> >> the %iowait is MUCH higher than with the other clients.  Logs show the
> >> readahead module being loaded but I have no idea if it is actually doing
> >> anything.
> >>
> >> [2007/10/18 08:24:48, 2] lib/module.c:do_smb_load_module(64)
> >>   Module '/usr/lib/samba/vfs/readahead.so' loaded
> >>
> >>
> >> Server Config:
> >>
> >> CPU: Amd Athlon 2600+
> >> Ram: 1G
> >> Disk: software raid5 across 5 250G ide drives each on dedicated channels
> >> Kernel: Linux shakti 2.6.22 #1 SMP Wed Oct 17 15:32:01 CDT 2007 i686
> >> GNU/Linux
> >> Distro: debian etch
> >>
> >> Network: Gigabit (though cheapo)
> >>
> >> Any suggestions on where to go from here?
> >>
> >> iostat 5 output for the physical devices below:
> >>
> >> Using a new quad core running Vista client on gigabit
> >>   - Reads at 8MB/s
> >>
> >> avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
> >>            2.81    0.00    9.62   73.95    0.00   13.63
> >>
> >> Device:            tps   Blk_read/s   Blk_wrtn/s   Blk_read   Blk_wrtn
> >> hda              51.10      3033.27        20.84      15136        104
> >> hde              53.91      3028.46        16.03      15112         80
> >> hdg              49.90      2993.19        19.24      14936         96
> >> hdi              47.49      3036.47         6.41      15152         32
> >> hdk              49.30      2993.19        14.43      14936         72
> >>
> >>
> >> Using a midrange Laptop running Windows XP on gigabit
> >>   - Reads at 20MB/s
> >>
> >> avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
> >>            3.80    0.00   23.80   14.20    0.00   58.20
> >>
> >> Device:            tps   Blk_read/s   Blk_wrtn/s   Blk_read   Blk_wrtn
> >> hda             199.80      8366.40        25.60      41832        128
> >> hde             187.20      8380.80         8.00      41904         40
> >> hdg             190.80      8377.60         9.60      41888         48
> >> hdi             178.20      8376.00        16.00      41880         80
> >> hdk             188.80      8377.60        20.80      41888        104
> >>
> >>
> >> Using same host, smbclient, writing to a firewire drive
> >>   - Reads at 26MB/s
> >>
> >> avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
> >>            7.58    0.00   38.92   30.74    0.00   22.75
> >>
> >> Device:            tps   Blk_read/s   Blk_wrtn/s   Blk_read   Blk_wrtn
> >> hda             224.75      8693.01        20.76      43552        104
> >> hde             214.37      8713.77        12.77      43656         64
> >> hdg             212.97      8657.88        19.16      43376         96
> >> hdi             195.61      8629.14        23.95      43232        120
> >> hdk             197.01      8688.22        22.36      43528        112
> >>
> >> Using dd to firewire drive
> >>   - Reads at 27MB/s
> >>
> >> avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
> >>            6.40    0.00   59.40   34.20    0.00    0.00
> >>
> >> Device:            tps   Blk_read/s   Blk_wrtn/s   Blk_read   Blk_wrtn
> >> hda             310.80     12844.80        17.60      64224         88
> >> hde             317.80     12820.80         9.60      64104         48
> >> hdg             308.60     12779.20        14.40      63896         72
> >> hdi             294.00     12779.20         9.60      63896         48
> >> hdk             294.80     12796.80        19.20      63984         96
> >>
> > 
> 
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