[Samba] Poor performance on open/copy/close/rename file operations via remote/VPN connection

[Dave Kempe]

gianfranco pra floriani wrote:
> Other services using the VPN such as SCP, SSH, HTTP, FTP work very 
> good on the same connection, with no slow issues at all. I tried 2 
> kinds of VPN connections (OpenVPN and a router-proprietary VPN 
> gateway-to-client), and both have the same issue, both only with Samba.
> I wonder if there is something I'm missing in client or server 
> configuration that makes Samba talking very slow when connections are 
> not coming from the LAN. The file transfer process works fine: once 
> the "saving file" or "copying file" process has begun, it takes the 
> same amount of time needed by a SCP or a FTP transfer command using 
> the same VPN connection. I tried to copy a 2MB file from client to 
> server and the time needed using SCP and using SAMBA (once the copy 
> process was started) was the same.
I have only got this to work nicely by using a WINS server pushed to 
OpenVPN clients.
add something like to your openvpn config:
push "dhcp-option WINS 192.168.0.64"

and setup the samba server to be the wins server, and make sure everyone 
on the lan points to it too (dhcp can do this)

then name resolution seems to work better, the client avoids broadcasts, 
which don't flow over the VPN, and everthing is much faster.

dave