samba - Jul 2003 - Raidzone, reiserfs, huge files

I posted about 2 weeks ago about problems we were having copying files 
larger than about 17.6GB from NT to Samba 2.2.8a-1 on a Raidzone 1.3TB 
system.  Since then we have done much investigation, together with the RZ 
people.  I wanted to briefly post the current situation, in hopes someone 
may have some suggestions.

One of the most recent and enlightening things we tried was to hang a spare 
SCSI drive on an external connector on the RZ box, put an ext2 filesystem 
on it, and add a share for it in the smb.conf.  A 32GB file copies 
perfectly to this share, obviously using the same Samba setup and network 
interface, which made me suspect an issue with the RZ disk array.

However, the RZ people asked us to try a different filesystem on this new 
share.  First we tried reiserfs, which is what the RZ array uses, and we 
observed a failure mode very similar to when we copy to the main 
array.  Then we tried XFS, which is also journalling, and it too failed, 
although in a different way.

However, when we just do a native copy in Linux from the SCSI drive to the 
main array, the 32GB file copies fine, so it would seem that neither 
resierfs in itself nor Samba in itself is choking on the huge files.

And yet I see in the archives a recent post from Leroy that he is using 
resierfs for 30GB files with no problems (although perhaps he doesn't have 
NT in the picture, I don't know.)

So what are the best options at this point?  Huge files are intrinsic to 
our operations, but if we go with ext2 on the main array, it will take a 
long time to start up the RZ box.  Should we try ext3, and if so, are there 
any possible complications we should be aware of?

Thanks.   -Eric




Regards,

Eric Moyer (EMoyer@LibraryTech.com)
Library Technologies, Inc.
2300 Computer Avenue, Suite D-19
Willow Grove, PA  19090
Phone 215-830-9320, FAX 215-830-9422

| I posted about 2 weeks ago about problems we were 
| having copying files larger than about 17.6GB from 
| NT to Samba 2.2.8a-1 on a Raidzone 1.3TB system.  
......
| One of the most recent and enlightening things we 
| tried was to hang a spare SCSI drive on an external 
| connector on the RZ box, put an ext2 filesystem 
| on it, and add a share for it in the smb.conf.  A 
| 32GB file copies perfectly to this share, obviously 
| using the same Samba setup and network interface, 
| which made me suspect an issue with the RZ disk 
| array.

What's an RZ Box? Is it a RAID box including a Linux 
box with samba software or a RAID box alone attached to
a Linux box of your own running 2.2.8a-1?

I've never had any problems with reiserfs 3.6 and
large files ever since I started using samba 2.2.6.
The current version is 2.2.8a-3 and it still works.
My clients are all Win2K but that should be irrelevant.

Do some logging to see what happens when a large copy
fails.

| Should we try ext3, and if so, are there any 
| possible complications we should be aware of?

Why don't you try it out. It'll probably fail too.



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