[Samba] smbd using 95-100% CPU and going very slow

[Mark Adams]

Hi All,

Using Debian stable 2.4.27 with Samba 3.0.24

Currently experiencing a problem where I am trying to back up a
mailstore, which is in Maildir format. This has been working fine up
until about 2 weeks ago.

The mailstore is 88GB in total, which is 150,000+ individual mail files.
The drive is 97% full.

The server is also running exim-4 and dovecot, which appear to run fine.

Below is an example from top of the smbd process;
 
32366 mailuser  18   0  4376 4372 3288 R   98  0.5  11:07.25 smbd

Am I right in thinking this slow down is being caused by the drive
filling up? does this have any proof of reasoning from samba's point of
view?

Help appreciated,

Regards
Mark