[Samba] Long delays when launching programs for the first timein my Windows 7 Profile (Samba 3.4.3 as PDC)

Fri Jul 2 18:07:06 MDT 2010

*SOLVED*

Hello TMSIII, hello all

Thank you all for all your help and advice that you provided me!

I did analyze with sysinternals process related tools and saw that the
system does absolutely nothing suspicious in the long "freeze-times".
Everything seemed just idle and waiting for nothing.

> maybe some antivirus interaction?

> Will check with sysinternals but assume no, because oft he
> locally-is-everything-fine thing.

This was the hint that lead me directly to the problem. Although I had the
same thought as TMIII ("can't be any software's fault, since it
locally-everything-is-fine"), I took the idea of TMSIII and tried it out and
deactivated the antivirus/firewall tool (Kaspersky Internet Security (KIS)
2010).

Result: Everything worked like a charm! So the problem was the
antivirus/firewall suite and not Samba, DNS or any other network daemon.

Kaspersky support guided me to a setting in the firewall of KIS (set local
network from "local network" to "trusted network"). Since then all programs
start quickly as they should, even in the roaming profiles. For some reason
this setting never affected local profiles but only roaming profiles. I do
not know why.

I did not try it out yet, but I expect that the very long creation times for
new profiles has exactly the same cause, as the very long startup of
first-time-launches of software. So I assume that this problem is gone now,
too.

So finally it was indeed a problem which had nothing at all to do with
Samba, but only with general networking and firewalling.

Thank you all!

Best regards

Tom

From: tms3 at tms3.com [mailto:tms3 at tms3.com] 
Sent: Donnerstag, 1. Juli 2010 00:16
To: Linda W
Cc: Tom H. Lautenbacher; samba at lists.samba.org
Subject: [?? Probable Spam] Re: [Samba] Long delays when launching programs
for the first timein my Windows 7 Profile (Samba 3.4.3 as PDC)

----
Well -- not exactly -- I have almost the same symptom -- but
on logout -- it takes up to 45 minutes for my Win7 profile to be
copied to my PDC. But I've tried Samba 3.5.2, 3.5.3 and 3.5.3.
Hey...that's something to try. Try the latest released version and
see if you have the same symptoms/problems!

I've not had these problems.  (I don't call it a problem if someone with a
10GB profile has slow login logout times...anywho).  But I typically place
profiles on a mount that does not have ACL's turned on.  More recently on
ZFS volumes.  

Be interesting to see network traffic.

TMS III 

But I am using both a Win7-64 and WinXP client to log into my 
PDC and generate continuous havoc. Just wait until you try using winbind
to authenticate security on your linux PDC! Ha! Warning -- keep
a rescue disk around in case you get locked out of your system! ;^]

On top of roaming profiles, I used the group policy client 
to create roaming profiles for all clients -- even if they were
not part of the domain! (this was when I was having problems
joining my computers to the domain reliably).

Anyway -- I have long logins on Win7 (~ 4-5 minutes, 
vs. about 20 seconds on XP). Where I get the real long pauses are
on logout -- I've seen it finsh after 45 minutes one time -- the
clients are communicating to the PDC but at speeds usually <100K/s.

I know that it is not likely to be samba's fault in regards
to the speed, since I get *up to* 100MB read/write to samba during
benchmark testing.

maybe some antivirus interaction?

Will check with sysinternals but assume no, because oft he
locally-is-everything-fine thing.

the login/logouts -- read about them on MS's website...look up
under profile loading ... it talks about how multi-gig profiles
will really slow down first time loading.

As I wrote, I am having the problem with FRESH CREATED profiles, which are
just a few kilobytes of size!

---
Ok -- that's just weird. No argument!

If you think it is a network problem,
use "wireshark" -- it will let you observe the network traffic.

(google it) it's also free.

Thank you Linda.

You need to become familiar with all these diagnotic tools
(that and get yourself a "procmail" email filter so you can filter
out all the garbage from all the email groups you have to subscribe
to to just keep things working!)...

Do you know a good windows-alternative to procmail? Isn't the new outlook
2010 able to group emails into threads?

----
You can run all the linux utils -- including procmail under
cygwin on windows. I missed all the linux utils so much -- I installed
cygwin
on windows 7 years ago and haven't done without it since! You can even run
a local IMAP server on your windows box -- let your windows box download all
your
email from your ISP -- then connect to the local server with Outlook or
Thunderbird
and use IMAP.

OR -- better -- use your server as an email server as well!
My server downloads my email from my ISP (see linux util 'fetchmail'), then
it 
calls my filter script (or it could call procmail). It also calls
spamassassin
before it tries to deliver it to me. But then my filter script (like
procmail only
different!) sorts the emails into folders in my home directory on the
linux server under 'mail'. I then use 'dovecot' (an very fast, secure IMAP 
server) to serve my email to my windows clients. Since I have multiple
machines,
I don't want the email coming to one of the windows machines. It stays on
the
server in my home directory. I have well over 100 file folders -- only about
70 of them
actively receive email (some are just archives/sorting bins). But in my
email
clients I see all the folders by email list -- I read them when I have time
--
so I don't get interrupts. 

I think you'll find it's better to leave the email on the server -- that way
if you can try differnt clients (I can switch between outlook and tbird if I
was so
perverse). Both will read my active mail. Groups that have new messages in
Tbird
light up in blue.

Seriously -- I have nearly 80 email groups I sub to...if I didn't filter

I'd just 'lose it'...but they all go into folders and I read them when
I want...if I don't, I have them setup to automatically expire after
a few months... it's just like a forum, but better....since it's
all in one place! :-)

Well I am attending to about 20 forums and I am having everything in one
place too: My email-mailbox as soon as I am getting an answer to my postings
:-) But not 10000 other emails that need further processing ;-)

----
But you can't keep track of the 20-80 forums when you want -- in your
email client -- you have to find the websites for each of them. And just now
(and day before yesterday). when I wanted to respond to someone in forums (I
read forums too -- no choice for some groups) -- I have to 'sign up', but
then
I get told that my message is going to be moderated because I don't post 
enough -- so then I have to wonder if my post will even see the light of
day.
It's a real pain.

But that's getting to be an old topic ....

Check out 'wireshark' and the sysinternals utils like 'procmon' and 'process
explorer'.
Procmon will let you monitor processes -- wireshark can let you see if your
client is waiting
for network messages...

If you know the linux utils, cygwin is a complete set -- I use it's 
'X' server all the time to display utils from my linux box so I can monitor
things. 
Cygwin will make use of the 'unix extensions' in samba if they are enabled,
BTW...

-linda

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