SAMBA is slow.

[Thorsten Brabetz]

Dear List Members, 

   Sorry to bother you with this, but I really do not know where else to get 
help. Searching the SAMBA and SuSE homepage did not shed any light on this 
problem, neither did mailings on two Linux User Groups, so this is sort of my 
last hope. 

   I am trying to integrate my Linux PC into a mixed network of UNIX and 
Windows 2000 machines. Not quite a surprise, the integration with the UNIX 
part of the network was rather seamless, but I have big problems connecting 
to the Windows 2000 server. I got the connection sort of running, but only 
with a few B/s... 

   Starting smbclient manually with the -b 1200 option (i.e. restricting 
buffersize to 1200 instead of 65500), sorted this problem; network speed went 
up to about 490 kB/s (it's a quite busy 10 MB/s Eithernet). However, as 
usual, sorting one problem creates two new ones: 

   First, I do not always want to start any network service manually, 
mounting would be nice... Hence my wish to permanently reduce the buffersize 
to 1200. However, as far as I can tell, the configuratoin file for all SAMBA 
services seems to be smb.conf. I found this file, but according to the man 
entry,  there is no such parameter as buffersize. My suspicion is that "max 
xmit" serves the same purpose, but setting that parameter did not bring any 
change. So question number one: which parameter do I set to what value to 
permanently force a reduction in buffersize from 65500 to 1200. 

   Second, closely related to the first problem, I now have the suspicion 
that my SAMBA services do not find the smb.conf file, as doing changes did 
not have any impact on the SAMBA services (in fact, removing the smb.conf 
file did not cause as much as a warning message). So, how do I find out where 
SAMBA expects its configuration file to be? I checked the man pages, and the 
file is where it is supposed to be according to the manual... Alternatively, 
can I force SAMBA to look for the smb.conf file at a different location? I 
know the -l option for the SAMBA daemon, but my machine is supposed to be a 
client, not a server. How do I tell programs like smbclient where to look for 
the configuration file? 

   I have reached the end of my knowledge here (in fact I reached it already 
quite a while ago, wild guessing is going on at the moment), so any tip would 
be greatly appreciated!!! Being a complete beginner on Linux, I would 
particularly appreciate any tips that do not involve any fancy maneuvers, 
like e.g. recompiling the kernel and stuff... 

Thank you in advance!

Best wishes



Thorsten


 

--------------------------------------------------

Thorsten Brabetz
Queen's University Belfast
Electrical & Electronic Eng.
Ashby Building, Stranmillis Road
BELFAST, BT9 5AH
UNITED KINGDOM

Tel.: +44.(0)28.9027-4089
Fax: +44.(0)28.9066 7023

E-mail: T.Brabetz at ee.qub.ac.uk
UIN: 5003405

--------------------------------------------------