At my work, I've been pushing linux as a server solution for quite some time. They've decided to give it a go, and the main company file server is now a piii 933 with 512Mb RAM, a promise 6 channel RAID5 controller (IDE), and 6 x 80Gb drives. It's running RedHat 7.1 (with the usual kernel updates to 2.4.10), with samba 2.2.1a and the latest Reiser FS... Now at the moment, we haven't mapped in any security (this is to come) and are using various shares for various groups, mapping them in a Novell login script via the 'net use' command. Now the problems begin. We have around 250 employees, and around 50 or so of them are heavy excel/word users. When opening a small excel file, the operation can take up to 2 minutes. Most of this time appears to be network (read samba) related. The application (in this case Excel) will just sit there waiting. If I copy the file from the samba share and place it on a local disk or another network share that is not samba based, then everything works as it should. As you can imagine, I'm copping a lot of flack because of this "upgrade" to "superior equipment" and I'm at a loss to explain why the delays are happening - I have done a log level 5 and looked through, but can't find anything significant to figure out what the hassles are. A log level 10 is not really possible with the number of users on the system. HELP! Signed, Steven Haigh Out the 100Base-T, off the firewall, through the router, down the T1, over the leased line, off the bridge, nothing but Net. The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
This is another area that concerns me. I've been reading a lot about problems with Office files. Does anyone know of the specific circumstances where these problems arise? Or is it a mystery? Charles> -----Original Message----- > From: samba-admin@lists.samba.org > [mailto:samba-admin@lists.samba.org]On > Behalf Of Steven Haigh > Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 9:52 PM > To: samba@lists.samba.org > Subject: Delays opening Excel/Word files off samba shares. > > > At my work, I've been pushing linux as a server solution for > quite some > time. They've decided to give it a go, and the main company > file server is > now a piii 933 with 512Mb RAM, a promise 6 channel RAID5 > controller (IDE), > and 6 x 80Gb drives. > > It's running RedHat 7.1 (with the usual kernel updates to > 2.4.10), with > samba 2.2.1a and the latest Reiser FS... > > Now at the moment, we haven't mapped in any security (this is > to come) and > are using various shares for various groups, mapping them in > a Novell login > script via the 'net use' command. > > Now the problems begin. We have around 250 employees, and > around 50 or so of > them are heavy excel/word users. When opening a small excel file, the > operation can take up to 2 minutes. Most of this time appears > to be network > (read samba) related. The application (in this case Excel) > will just sit > there waiting. > > If I copy the file from the samba share and place it on a > local disk or > another network share that is not samba based, then > everything works as it > should. > > As you can imagine, I'm copping a lot of flack because of > this "upgrade" to > "superior equipment" and I'm at a loss to explain why the delays are > happening - I have done a log level 5 and looked through, but > can't find > anything significant to figure out what the hassles are. A > log level 10 is > not really possible with the number of users on the system. > > HELP! > > Signed, > Steven Haigh
Gerald (Jerry) Carter
2001-Dec-17 09:16 UTC
Delays opening Excel/Word files off samba shares.
On Fri, 14 Dec 2001, Steven Haigh wrote:> Now the problems begin. We have around 250 employees, and around 50 or > so of them are heavy excel/word users. When opening a small excel > file, the operation can take up to 2 minutes. Most of this time > appears to be network (read samba) related. The application (in this > case Excel) will just sit there waiting.Check the default printer. Word/Excel attempt to grab printer properties wen opening a document for formatting purposes. Also grab a level 10 debug log and look at what is going on. chau, jerry --------------------------------------------------------------------- Hewlett-Packard http://www.hp.com SAMBA Team http://www.samba.org -- http://www.plainjoe.org "Sam's Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours" 2ed. ISBN 0-672-32269-2 --"I never saved anything for the swim back." Ethan Hawk in Gattaca--
I was forced to disable oplocks after we had another instance of an
unkillable smbd three days after our server went live - ouch! (I had a bad
time with 2.2.19/2.2.2/acls and Win2000 clients and got unkillable processes
almost on demand - recompiled everything with 2.2.20/2.2.2/acls). I had
read on this list that disabling oplocks would fix this unkillable process.
Incidentally. we had had oplock errors messages littering the logs.
We have now been up for eight days without a problem (and long may it
continue - unkillables won't allow the raid array to be unmounted...) and
the logs are clean of errors.
Moving on to the main point though, in disabling oplocks we have had little
or no performance degradation (about 30 clients thus far) and have had no
trouble at all with several users opening Office 2000 files. I believe that
NT/2000 clients will request locking the file themselves and smbstatus seems
to report the files as locked. As a case in point, we have a shared Excel
spreadsheet we fill in hours spent on projects. If someone has this open
then Excel throws up the 'This file is locked - Notify etc etc' and it
works
without a hitch. We also are running the Sage accounting suite off the
Samba shares and similarly have had no problem with file locking.
I would be tempted to examine the users claims that files were being
overwritten - they didn't get the Office 'this file is read-only'
message ?
Hope this is of some help. Do the files open quicker when you try and
disable oplocks ? Or is this thread becoming a red-herring for you ?
Noel
-----Original Message-----
From: Mitch McNeel [mailto:mitchm@mwh.com]
Sent: 21 December 2001 21:51
To: Rashkae
Cc: Pierre Belanger; Samba
Subject: Re: Delays opening Excel/Word files off samba shares.
Hmm, interesting point.. I tried disabling oplocks all together, but that
caused more problems then it was worth. Users were complaining that changes
made to documents were being overwriten when there were two users using the
same
document (windows didn't report locks on the file). This is the reason I
had to
find a solution to the delay of opening documents and spreadsheets. I'm
including the man page documentation for oplock break wait time. What I
understand from reading this, is that this is a setting to help with the
windows
clients missing the oplock break request.
Man page:
oplock break wait time (G)
This is a tuning parameter added due to bugs in both Windows 9x and
WinNT.
If Samba responds to a client too quickly when that client issues an SMB
that
can cause an oplock break request, then the network client can fail and not
respond to the break request. This tuning parameter (which is set in
milliseconds) is the amount of time Samba will wait before sending an oplock
break request to such (broken) clients.
DO NOT CHANGE THIS PARAMETER UNLESS YOU HAVE READ AND UNDERSTOOD THE
SAMBA
OPLOCK CODE.
Default: oplock break wait time = 0
Mitch
Rashkae wrote:
> Hmm, this is more than a little out of my area of expertise (which is, in
> truth, very very narrow :) ), but I do know from painful experience that
> oplocks can be dangerous, even without adding Samba to the mix....
>
> If you have to tinker with oplock break time out settings, you might be
> much safer to disable oplocks entirely for your environment, otherwise,
> there might be some file inconsistences or lost changes from the client
> that is not releasing the oplock on a break request.
>
>
>
> On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Mitch McNeel wrote:
>
> We have had this problem also. What I did (found) was to change the
smb.conf> parameter "oplock break wait time" to 10 milliseconds. This
seemed to
reduce> the number of clients have the delay on opening Word and Excel documents.
Try> this out and let me know.
>
> Example:
>
> [global]
>
> oplock break wait time = 10 (default is zero 0)
>
> Mitch
>
> Pierre Belanger wrote:
>
>
>>>it takes about 1 minute to open a excel-file
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>This really looks like the problem I am having with the traffic
>>on port 135/UDP (Microsoft Localisation Server ... loc-srv).
>>
>>When I open a Word file which has a link to a visio file, I see traffic
>>coming on port 135 from the Windows workstation. Because there's
>>nothing on my Samba server listening on port 135, the Windows
>>station "times out" and then finishes reading the files.
>>
>>Does your Excel file has external links to another file? Can you
>>check with tcpdump what's the traffic between your samba server
>>and your windows client box and let us know what's going on... ??
>>
>>Pierre B.
>>
>>Anders Widman wrote:
>>
>>
>>>2001-12-17 18:14:32, "Gerald (Jerry) Carter"
<jerry@samba.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>On Fri, 14 Dec 2001, Charles Marcus wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>This is another area that concerns me.
>>>>>
>>>>>I've been reading a lot about problems with Office
files.
>>>>>
>>>>>Does anyone know of the specific circumstances where these
problems
>>>>>arise? Or is it a mystery?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>We attempt to do regression testiong specifically against Office
>>>>97/2000/XP and are not seeing these delays in our tests.
>>>>Doesn't mean that they aren't real. We just are seeing
them during
>>>>development.
>>>>
>>>>To the original poster: Can you try to reproduce this against
the
>>>>latest SAMBA_2_2 cvs code?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>chau, jerry
>>>>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>Hewlett-Packard
http://www.hp.com
>>>>SAMBA Team
http://www.samba.org
>>>>--
http://www.plainjoe.org
>>>>"Sam's Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours" 2ed.
ISBN 0-672-32269-2
>>>>--"I never saved anything for the swim back." Ethan
Hawk in Gattaca--
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>--
>>>>To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read
the
>>>>instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Well.. I have this problem also. This does not happen verry often,
but
when it does, it takes about 1 minute to open a
excel-file.>>>
>>>//Anders
>>>
>>>--
>>>To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the
>>>instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>
--
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----------------------oOO0-----0OOo---------------------------------
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Unix Systems Administrator # Phone Num. 858-831-2210
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