[Samba] Avoiding constant HDD access

[Rowland Penny]

On Wed, 7 Nov 2018 12:21:17 +0100
Reindl Harald via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:

> 
> 
> Am 07.11.18 um 12:07 schrieb Rowland Penny via samba:
> > On Wed, 7 Nov 2018 11:44:28 +0100
> > Reindl Harald via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
> > 
> >>
> >> Am 07.11.18 um 09:54 schrieb Rowland Penny via samba:
> >>> On Wed, 7 Nov 2018 05:45:45 +0300
> >>> Albert Berger via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I'm running a Samba server on Raspbian and observing that Samba
> >>>> during idle periods is constantly (every minute) writing to HDD
> >>>> (maybe doing some journaling?) what causes the HDD to constantly
> >>>> spin and never standby:
> >>>>
> >>>> root at rpi:~# pidstat -dl 20
> >>>> Linux 4.4.50-v7+ (localhost) 	11/07/2018
> >>>> _armv7l_	(4 CPU) 
> >>>> 04:10:08 AM   UID  PID   kB_rd/s   kB_wr/s kB_ccwr/s iodelay
> >>>> Command 04:10:28 AM     0  832      0.00      0.20      0.20
> >>>> 0  /usr/sbin/smbd -D 
> >>>> 04:11:08 AM   UID  PID   kB_rd/s   kB_wr/s kB_ccwr/s iodelay
> >>>> Command 04:11:28 AM     0  832      0.00      0.20      0.20
> >>>> 0  /usr/sbin/smbd -D 
> >>>> 04:12:08 AM   UID  PID   kB_rd/s   kB_wr/s kB_ccwr/s iodelay
> >>>> Command 04:12:28 AM     0  832      0.00      0.20      0.20
> >>>> 0  /usr/sbin/smbd -D
> >>>>
> >>>> Is there some way (via configuration setting or maybe recompiling
> >>>> with some parameter) to turn off this constant disk io?
> >>>>
> >>> At first glance it looks like something is trying to write to a
> >>> share, but what is unclear from the info provided
> >>
> >> no, samba all day long writes to /var/lib/samba
> > 
> > When Samba is idle it doesn't, Samba only writes when it does
> > something.
> > 
> > I have been running 'pidstat' on my computer for about 10 minutes
> > now, Samba is idle and guess what, none of the Samba deamons gets a
> > mention.
> 
> well, there are only connected 3 WinXP and 3 Win7 VM's with their
> personal folder on the sare, one has open MSIE with a website and all
> others doing nothing at all
> 
> these VMs are stripped to the bare minimum becaus etheir only purpose
> is testing websites, no unused software or services installed or even
> running
> 
> because the system is running on a micro-sd card iwas tempted more
> than once move "/var/lib/samba/private/msg.sock/" and
> "/var/lib/samba/lock/msg.lock/" in a tmpfs
> 
> but that won't solve the issue
>  20K -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  20K 2018-11-07 12:16 printer_list.tdb
>  16K -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  16K 2018-11-07 12:16 serverid.tdb
> 
> [root at nfs:~]$ backup-nfs.sh
> sending incremental file list
> sending incremental file list
> sending incremental file list
> sending incremental file list
> deleting samba/lock/msg.lock/1041903
> deleting samba/private/msg.sock/1041903
> samba/lock/gencache_notrans.tdb
>         454,656 100%  402.34MB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#1, to-chk=36/77)
> samba/lock/locking.tdb
>         491,520 100%  234.38MB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#2, to-chk=34/77)
> samba/lock/printer_list.tdb
>          20,480 100%    4.88MB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#3, to-chk=32/77)
> samba/lock/serverid.tdb
>          16,384 100%    3.91MB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#4, to-chk=31/77)
> samba/lock/smbXsrv_open_global.tdb
>          36,864 100%    8.79MB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#5, to-chk=29/77)
> samba/lock/msg.lock/
> samba/private/msg.sock/
> sending incremental file list
> 

Reindl, you are not helping, nothing you have posted seems to have
anything to do with the OP's problem and my 'pidstat' is still running
without mention of smbd, nmbd or winbind.

Rowland