samba - Oct 2007 - Performance Issue on Samba 3.023d with many small files

I am transmitting many small files from Windows 2000 to Samba as
AD-Member Server with a Gigabit LAN Adapter.
Transmitting a large number of small files brings performance down below
80 Kbyte/s.

How can I work around this?
How can I identify what makes Samba so slow (and set-up Samba parameters
 better if it is a configuration issue?)
Has there been some performance boost in some later release than 3.023d?

- I'm using a ACL-patched 2.4 Kernel
- I'm using filesystem ext3, but there is no difference with XFS.
- I have a Gigabit LAN and I'm able to transmit TCP about 22 Mbyte/s
(tested with iperf between client and server) (UDP performance is worse).
- I have a Windows Server (2000) in the same network as I am using AD:
While transmitting large files from Windows Client to Windows Server or
Samba Member Server allows approx. the same data rate, my test set of 3
GB (with the small files) takes about twice the time to transmit to the
Samba Server than to the Windows Server).

So it's not that my Samba Server is generally slow, only small files
cause trouble.

Kind regards,

Jens

Hi Jens,

I have also had an issue with slowness in lots of small files. I'm using
a 2.6.22 kernel with the most recent debian testing samba 3.0.26. I have
been backing up a store of Maildir files that is around 120GB (approx
600,000+ files) and it takes around 24 hrs for this to complete. This is
on cat5e cabling with Gigabit LAN such as yours. If I rsync this data it
takes just under 2 hrs.

I posted to this list a while ago and had no response, and have not
corrected the issue, so unfortunatly can not help. 

If you do get anywhere please let me know.

Are there any senior samba guys or people that have fixed this issue
that could comment?

Mark

On Fri, Oct 19, 2007 at 03:57:15PM +0200, Jens Nissen
wrote:
> I am transmitting many small files from Windows 2000 to Samba as
> AD-Member Server with a Gigabit LAN Adapter.
> Transmitting a large number of small files brings performance down below
> 80 Kbyte/s.
> 
> How can I work around this?
> How can I identify what makes Samba so slow (and set-up Samba parameters
>  better if it is a configuration issue?)
> Has there been some performance boost in some later release than 3.023d?
> 
> - I'm using a ACL-patched 2.4 Kernel
> - I'm using filesystem ext3, but there is no difference with XFS.
> - I have a Gigabit LAN and I'm able to transmit TCP about 22 Mbyte/s
> (tested with iperf between client and server) (UDP performance is worse).
> - I have a Windows Server (2000) in the same network as I am using AD:
> While transmitting large files from Windows Client to Windows Server or
> Samba Member Server allows approx. the same data rate, my test set of 3
> GB (with the small files) takes about twice the time to transmit to the
> Samba Server than to the Windows Server).
> 
> So it's not that my Samba Server is generally slow, only small files
> cause trouble.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Jens
> 
> 
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