[Samba] Very slow execution of programs from a SAMBA share

Stuart Nixon Stuart at NixonWeb.com
Wed Sep 26 08:33:50 GMT 2007


Hi.

I've run into a significant performance problem,
where Samba shares are fine except for programs executed
from the shares, which take about 100x longer to launch
than expected.


Copying local Windows directories with large files to the
Samba share is getting 30 Mbytes/second. However, trying 
to run programs from the same samba share is taking 30 seconds
to 5 minutes to launch the application (compared to sub-second
launch time from shares from Windows XP 64 Pro systems for the
same programs).


I'm trying to set up Samba 3.0.24 under Ubuntu 7.04 as WINS master
workgroup (not domain) server, to share to a dozen systems running
Windows XP Pro 64 SP2. Network switch is a Netgear 16 port Gigabit switch.
The ADSL modem is acting as DCHP / DNS server for the network.
For now firewalls are disabled on the Ubuntu server. 
Disabling firewalls on the XP Pro 64 clients is making no difference.


I've tried many different things, and nothing seems to make any
difference.

I'm wondering if there is a SAMBA / XP 64 bit client problem,
or if the problem is somehow related to the switch, because NBTSTAT
is reporting a "MAC Address = 00-00-00-00-00-00" for the
Samba server.


I can't see any obvious problems. I can browse the samba server.
The shares are visible and having no access problems. Other applications
have no problem with UDP broadcasts working across the switch.


The show-stopper problem is that application load time
is horrible if an application is run from the Samba share
(around 100x slower than it should be).


The clients are standard XP Pro 64 with latest SP2 patches.  They
have no problem running applications from another XP Pro share.


Any help or hints would be greatly appreciated.

Output from nbtstat looks fine except for the MAC address:

---------------------------
C:\>nbtstat -a snsix

Local Area Connection 3:
Node IpAddress: [10.1.1.7] Scope Id: []

           NetBIOS Remote Machine Name Table

       Name               Type         Status
    ---------------------------------------------
    SNSIX          <00>  UNIQUE      Registered
    SNSIX          <03>  UNIQUE      Registered
    SNSIX          <20>  UNIQUE      Registered
    ..__MSBROWSE__.<01>  GROUP       Registered
    SNS            <1D>  UNIQUE      Registered
    SNS            <1B>  UNIQUE      Registered
    SNS            <1E>  GROUP       Registered
    SNS            <00>  GROUP       Registered

    MAC Address = 00-00-00-00-00-00
-----------------------------


The smb.conf file is pretty standard, unless I've missed something obvious:


----------  smb.conf ---------------
#
# Samba for Linux
#

[global]
   workgroup = SNS
   netbios name = SNSIX
   server string = %h

   wins support = yes
   name resolve order = wins lmhosts hosts bcast
   domain master = yes
   local master = yes
   preferred master = yes
   os level = 35
   dns proxy = no

   security = user
   encrypt passwords = true

   hosts allow = 10.1.1.0/255.255.255.0 127.0.0.1 EXCEPT 10.1.1.1
   hosts deny = ALL

   socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY

# Logs
   log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
   max log size = 1000
   syslog = 0
   panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d

# shares
[data]
    path = /mnt/data
    writable = yes
    user = sns
--------------------------------------



Thanks in advance for any suggestions on how to resolve
this problem. I want to move our servers over to Samba/Linux,
but can't until this problem is resolved.


Stuart





More information about the samba mailing list