samba - Jun 2006 - Samba and DOS databases (oplock settings not getting same results as under NT4)

Before you reply note I have read the op-locks bit of the samba manual

We have a micro-focus Cobol (dos) database that ran on an old Novell server.
When we moved to NT4 performance bombed. We added the correct registry keys
to turn off op-locks on the NT4 server and all was OK for the next 6 years.
We have no moved to SAMBA but we can not get it to perform as well as our
old NT machine despite a huge hardware boost.

With Oplocks on performance is OK but we get more record locks than we used
to and often as the user moves to a new task there is a long delay
(presumably as other peoples op-locks are broken and the data is cached
locally)

With Oplocks off the performance is unacceptable. Reports that were taking
10 min on the old NT4 machine are now taking over an hour to run.

Using the sysinternal tools I see that the dos application is attempting to
lock individual portions of the data files. Is this possible on Samba
running on an ext3 file system. Is this a problem with samba of should I
look at my underlying file system. Any pointers welcome.

I am going to do some benchmarking over the next week all suggestions
welcome

We are running FC4 with samba-3.0.14a on the default ext3 filesystem.

Regards Robert

Robert Mortimer wrote:
> Before you reply note I have read the op-locks bit of the samba manual
> 
> We have a micro-focus Cobol (dos) database that ran on an old Novell
server.
> When we moved to NT4 performance bombed. We added the correct registry keys
> to turn off op-locks on the NT4 server and all was OK for the next 6 years.
> We have no moved to SAMBA but we can not get it to perform as well as our
> old NT machine despite a huge hardware boost.
> 
> With Oplocks on performance is OK but we get more record locks than we used
> to and often as the user moves to a new task there is a long delay
> (presumably as other peoples op-locks are broken and the data is cached
> locally)
> 
> With Oplocks off the performance is unacceptable. Reports that were taking
> 10 min on the old NT4 machine are now taking over an hour to run.
> 
> Using the sysinternal tools I see that the dos application is attempting to
> lock individual portions of the data files. Is this possible on Samba
> running on an ext3 file system. Is this a problem with samba of should I
> look at my underlying file system. Any pointers welcome.
> 
> I am going to do some benchmarking over the next week all suggestions
> welcome
> 
> We are running FC4 with samba-3.0.14a on the default ext3 filesystem.
> 
> Regards Robert
> 
Try this:
	socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_SNDBUF=65536 SO_RCVBUF=65536 IPTOS_LOWDELAY
	lock spin time = 15
	lock spin count = 100

You may have to disable some oplock settings on the client also.  Have a 
look at:
http://www.drouillard.ca/Tips&Tricks/Samba/Oplocks.htm
-- 
Regards
--------------------------------------
Gerald Drouillard
Technology Architect
Drouillard & Associates, Inc.
http://www.Drouillard.ca

To run our overnight updates the NT4 server took 15min

With the same data and oplocks enabled the SAMBA server takes 9min but in
this configuration users are complaining of initial application load times

SAMBA with oplocks 1 disabled results in a time of 11 min

Disabling oplocks 2 results in a punishing drop in performance to 57min
(this is not going to make friends in userland)

Same data was used throughout. Minor time variations were seen between runs.
As a rule the second run was fractionally faster (presumably due to
cashing).

> -----Original Message-----
> From: samba-bounces+rmortimer=bluechiptechnology.co.uk@lists.samba.org
> [mailto:samba-bounces+rmortimer=bluechiptechnology.co.uk@lists.samba.org
> ]On Behalf Of Robert Mortimer
> Sent: 27 June 2006 16:07
> To: samba@lists.samba.org
> Subject: [Samba] Samba and DOS databases (oplock settings not getting
> sameresults as under NT4)
>
>
> Before you reply note I have read the op-locks bit of the samba manual
>
> We have a micro-focus Cobol (dos) database that ran on an old
> Novell server.
> When we moved to NT4 performance bombed. We added the correct
> registry keys
> to turn off op-locks on the NT4 server and all was OK for the
> next 6 years.
> We have no moved to SAMBA but we can not get it to perform as well as our
> old NT machine despite a huge hardware boost.
>
> With Oplocks on performance is OK but we get more record locks
> than we used
> to and often as the user moves to a new task there is a long delay
> (presumably as other peoples op-locks are broken and the data is cached
> locally)
>
> With Oplocks off the performance is unacceptable. Reports that were taking
> 10 min on the old NT4 machine are now taking over an hour to run.
>
> Using the sysinternal tools I see that the dos application is
> attempting to
> lock individual portions of the data files. Is this possible on Samba
> running on an ext3 file system. Is this a problem with samba of should I
> look at my underlying file system. Any pointers welcome.
>
> I am going to do some benchmarking over the next week all suggestions
> welcome
>
> We are running FC4 with samba-3.0.14a on the default ext3 filesystem.
>
> Regards Robert
>
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