[Samba] Performance Issue on Samba 3.023d with many small files

[Jens Nissen]

I am transmitting many small files from Windows 2000 to Samba as
AD-Member Server with a Gigabit LAN Adapter.
Transmitting a large number of small files brings performance down below
80 Kbyte/s.

How can I work around this?
How can I identify what makes Samba so slow (and set-up Samba parameters
 better if it is a configuration issue?)
Has there been some performance boost in some later release than 3.023d?

- I'm using a ACL-patched 2.4 Kernel
- I'm using filesystem ext3, but there is no difference with XFS.
- I have a Gigabit LAN and I'm able to transmit TCP about 22 Mbyte/s
(tested with iperf between client and server) (UDP performance is worse).
- I have a Windows Server (2000) in the same network as I am using AD:
While transmitting large files from Windows Client to Windows Server or
Samba Member Server allows approx. the same data rate, my test set of 3
GB (with the small files) takes about twice the time to transmit to the
Samba Server than to the Windows Server).

So it's not that my Samba Server is generally slow, only small files
cause trouble.

Kind regards,

Jens