[Samba] Runing Samba on Raspi - was: Re: ps aux | grep smbd

[Peter Serbe]

Sven Schwedas schrieb am 17.02.2015 13:34:
>
> "More" memory, but still less than the average file server ten years
> ago. I'd rather not waste that memory for unused samba features if I
> could use it to cache files from slow USB disks…
> 

I run 4.2.0rc4 on a Raspi 1 model 2+. CPU performance isn't an issue at all. 
I notice e.g. after startup, that it needs lots of CPU cycles to write 
to the SD card. I would not recommend to use the Raspi as a file server. 
Both the awkward connection of the network adapter via USB and the lack 
of a fast mass storage option IMHO are prohibitive. 

Having said that, it is pretty OK using it as DC. At least at home for 
a family or for a shared appartment of students. ;-) Below I attached 
the 'top' output while being connected via one machine. I would estimate 
that the amount of RAM is sufficient for maybe five users - in the DC 
role. 

Nevertheless I would never ever use it like that in a professional 
envirmonment (we use quite some of them in the lab to control test 
equipment, that works pretty good). Once I got file system corruption 
on the SD card completely out of the blue. I think that especially 
the SD card as primary means to host the root file system is a big 
drawback of these devices. I also run a Cubietruck, where I moved the 
root file system on a conventional SSD. The feel of this setup is way 
waster and much more immediate than the one on the Raspi. Even though 
I run both without any graphical surface. 

To make a long thing short: I don't observe any special issues of the 
new Samba pre-4.2 on the Raspi. I would rather upgrade to a Cubietruck 
or Pogoplug (or some other out of at least ten options) than run some 
outdated Samba. Security might not be the biggest concern in the 
limited use case of the Raspi - but there are a lot of bugs fixed 
in the more recent releases of Samba, which might limit the 
selection of working client OSs. 

Best regards
Peter



----- top output, samba 4.2.0rc4 as DC + bind 9.9.6 + openvpn, 1 user -----

Tasks:  87 total,   1 running,  86 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  2,0 us,  0,7 sy,  0,0 ni, 97,0 id,  0,0 wa,  0,0 hi,  0,3 si,  0,0 st
KiB Mem:    494508 total,   407796 used,    86712 free,    75316 buffers
KiB Swap:        0 total,        0 used,        0 free.    77844 cached Mem

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
14554 root      20   0   12420   2708   2324 R  1,6  0,5   0:00.53 top
 1809 root      20   0  107928  30644  11904 S  1,3  6,2  54:50.86 samba
 1273 root      20   0    1820   1104   1012 S  0,3  0,2   4:07.66 ifplugd
 1871 root      20   0    5676   3580   2864 S  0,3  0,7   2:28.11 openvpn
 7315 root      20   0    1820   1112   1028 S  0,3  0,2   0:21.70 ifplugd
14546 root      20   0   11616   5720   5004 S  0,3  1,2   0:00.35 sshd
    1 root      20   0    2960   1460   1328 S  0,0  0,3   0:13.32 init