samba - Jun 1999 - BSDI 4.0.1 Samba 2.0.4b Performance Problems???

Hello group,

I have a BSDI 4.0.1 box running Samba 2.0.4b.  The box is a dual 350mhz,
256MB RAM, 2 36Gig Shares, 1 18Gig Share,1 9Gig root, Intel onboard SCSI
controller (Symbios?) and is on a fully switched full duplex 100MB fast
ethernet network.

The NT box is running 4.0 SP3, dual 400mhz, 256MB RAM, 2 4Gig Seagate SCSI
Drives, Adaptec 2940UW and is on the same network as above.  (full duplex
switched)

We have an NT Server copying >200,000 tiny files (4GB total) to one of the
36 Gig shares.  Its been running for 22 hours now and has copied about
80,000 of the files (1.4GBish).  I am not sure where the bottleneck is.
Before this operation we were able to copy a 200MB file from the NT Server
to the same share on the Samba box and this took less than a minute.

I've read through the performance suggestions and none seemed to address
this issue.  Performance seems great for large files or small numbers of
files per directory, but lots of tiny files seems to be a problem.  My
uneducated guess would be that it is somewhere in the read or write
operations of Samba.  Or possibly locking (although I did check this in the
performance doc and we have default locking).

During the operation we tried to copy a 3.5MB file from the NT Server to the
Samba/Unix box.  It took about 20 seconds.

During the operation we tried to copy a 3.5MB file from a different NT
Server on the same network to the Samba/Unix box, same share, and it took
less 2 seconds.

It could be NT trying to read a very large directory and taking its sweet
time. Or it could be the Samba/Unix server trying to write to an
increasingly larger directory and taking its sweet time?

Has anyone heard of this before and what suggestions, if any, can you
make???
(Besides not putting 200k files in a directory!)  :)

Thanks in advance...

Sean
snowdog@bigfoot.com
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You wrote:
| During the operation we tried to copy a 3.5MB file from the NT Server
to the
| Samba/Unix box.  It took about 20 seconds.
|
| During the operation we tried to copy a 3.5MB file from a different NT
| Server on the same network to the Samba/Unix box, same share, and it
took
| less 2 seconds.

	While your major concern was the speed of copying many small files,
	this one test with a larger file indicates a real problem: you
	shouldn't see a power-of-ten speed difference between NT and Samba.
	You shouldn't even see a power-of-two (except perhaps in Samba's 
	favor (;-))

	Look at tuning the common case first, and try to distinguish
	between TCP and Samba tuning: start by comparing ftp speeds
	between the boxes.

	Feel free to send mail: I'm curious.

--dave
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | Always do right. This will gratify some people
185 Ellerslie Ave.,   | and astonish the rest.        -- Mark Twain
Willowdale, Ontario   | http://java.science.yorku.ca/~davecb
Work: (905) 477-0437 Home: (416) 223-8968 Email: davecb@canada.sun.com