samba - Feb 2000 - Performance Samba 2.0.6 / FreeBSD 3.4 vs NT and NetWare

I'm getting samba setup, and it seems to be working. I have PDC/BackupPDC
issues to resolve, and want to change things so the NT PDC authenticates
users instead of setting them up using smbpasswd. Right now, I can access
the samba box from Win98 and WinNT workstation with "manually setup"
smbpasswd's.

I have been testing performance and am a little disappointed, I hoped samba
would be faster. Here are the servers I'm testing against:

Netware 4.10
386 80 MHz
20Meg RAM
SCSI
IPX/SPX

NT4 Server
Pentium 150 MHz
32Meg RAM
SCSI
NetBEUI (Default) & TCP/IP & IPX/SPX

FreeBSD 3.4 / Samba 2.0.6
486 DX2/66 MHz w/ Evergreen Pentium upgrade  (approx 100/133 MHz, at least
faster than it DX2/66 )
64Meg RAM
VLB IDE
TCP/IP

To test I have been copying a directory branch containing subdirectories of
about 74Meg back and forth between  the servers and a Win98 and WinNT
workstation using Windows Explorer. Times below are in MM:SS

NetWare to Win98 (read)	1:40 (consistent)
Win98 to NetWare (write)	1:38 (consistent)
NetWare Erase			0:02 (consistent)

NTServer to Win98 (read)	1:32 (consistent)
Win98 to NTServer (write)	1:23 (consistent)
NTServer Erase			0:02 (consistent)

Samba to Win98 (read)		1:40, 1:45, 1:50
Win98 to Samba (write)		2:00, 3:50, 3:50,
Samba Erase			0:05 (consistent)

The NetWare and NT Servers are consistent, and pretty much the same w/ NT
slightly faster which is understandable given that NetWare is only running
on an 80MHz 386 w/20Meg RAM.

Samba however is consistently slower than both, and its "write" time
is much
slower, and quite inconsistent. I was hoping Samba/FreeBSD would be at least
as fast as the NetWare box (which I'm considering replacing w/ the Samba
Box), given that it's running on faster processor w/ more ram.

Samba is being started in inetd. Does this only affect startup time at
login/connection, or all performance time?
Obviously the NetWare/NT times are not affected by processor/memory/or other
hardware bottle necks. I'm using a very simple test smb.conf. I hope to
eventually integrate into the NTDomain better so it gets its passwords from
there, and acts as a BDC, and possibly DHCP too.

# Simple Test smb.conf
[global]
	workgroup = SAMBATEST
	netbios name = SAMBA01
	encrypt passwords = Yes
	guest account = pcguest

[tmp]
	comment = Temporary file space
	path = /tmp

[root]
	comment = full drive
	path = /
	read only = No

Clarence Brown writes:
| I have been testing performance and am a little disappointed, I
hoped samba
| would be faster.

You got:
Read		Seconds	KB/S    % of 10Mbit/S
NetWare		100	740.00		66
NT		92	804.35		72
Samba 		105	704.76		63

Write		
to NetWare	98	755.10		67
to NT		83	891.57		80
to Samba	230	321.74		29

Erase 		
NetWare 	2	
NTServer	2	
Samba		5

	I would have expected something closer to 725 KB/S on write,
	1100 KB/S read, (From my wife's Win95 machine).

	I initially thought it was a bsd bug, but Dan O'Connor
	(dan@jgl.reno.nv.us) wrote:
| The slow write times in FreeBSD seems to have been fixed late in the
Samba 
| 2.0.5a life-cycle. Make sure you're using the latest Samba (and
rebuild the 
| port so the patches take effect) and the latest FreeBSD. I find that
Samba 
| 2.0.6 humms along quite nicely under FreeBSD 3.4-STABLE.
	...and you have 2.0.6 and 3.4 	

	You might try playing with socket options: Martin Welk 	
	(mw@freibergnet.de) reports "Reading was quiet quick, 
	but writing to the server (especially many small files)
	was sooo sloooow." He's using
socket options = IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY SO_SNDBUF=262144
SO_RCVBUF=262144 
	and getting better results.

	Experiment carefully with buffer sizes: performance goes
	back down again if you get too large... see
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba/chapter/book/appb_02.html#appb-34738

--dave
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | Always do right. This will gratify some people
185 Ellerslie Ave.,   | and astonish the rest.        -- Mark Twain
Willowdale, Ontario   | //www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba/author.html
Work: (905) 415-2849 Home: (416) 223-8968 Email: davecb@canada.sun.com