[Samba] Files That Constantly Change

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> Does anybody have any tuning tips for a samba 3.0.23 server that is  
> acting as a PDC with ldap backend and file server. The problem I'
> having is a certain program runs in XP workstations that accesses  
> files on one of the shares, it apparently opens lots of files and is  
> constantly making changes to them. When I run top, I see each smbd  
> process for each workstations is consuming about 30% of the cpu and

This can be the result of many issues include types of drives, drive
controller, and network card driver.  Using the correct filesystem
helps, and setting noatime on the mount may help a great deal as well
(atime is just stupid).

> there are 3 workstations, the owner for the processes is the domain  
> user logged onto the workstation. I have the same setup at a  
> different site running samba 3.0.10 with just a smbpasswd backend and  
> each workstation consumes about 2% of the cpu at most. These are in  
> the samba logs for the workstation and are constantly being output:

Is this server the PDC or a member?  If it is a PDC is ldapsam trusted
enabled?  That can be a huge win if your configuration meets the
requirements.  If it is a member are you using winbind or NSS?

> [2007/09/21 10:17:47, 3] smbd/process.c:process_smb(1091)
>    Transaction 17604 of length 150
> [2007/09/21 10:17:47, 3] smbd/process.c:switch_message(886)
>    switch message SMBtrans2 (pid 4972) conn 0x80b9b50
> [2007/09/21 10:17:47, 3] smbd/trans2.c:call_trans2findfirst(1359)
>    call_trans2findfirst: dirtype = 22, maxentries = 1366,  
> close_after_first=1, close_if_end = 1 requires_resume_key = 1 level =  
> 0x104, max_data_bytes = 16384
> [2007/09/21 10:17:47, 3] smbd/dir.c:dptr_create(491)
>    creating new dirptr 256 for path Share, expect_close = 1

-- 
Adam Tauno Williams, Network & Systems Administrator
Consultant - http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com
Developer - http://www.opengroupware.org