samba - Jan 2004 - Samba Tuning

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Following problems with samba performance on a Solaris 9 box I have traced
this to the number of files being accessed by an application... Seems when a
process is kicked off on the client it goes to a directory which has many
thousands of small files and does some processing on them, while this is
running samba performance drop dramatically.

It seems performance is fine when dealing with a small number of large files
but when dealing with many thousands of small files (4k or so) it's a
different story.

Is there any tuning I can do to improve the situation?

Samba Server: SunFire V880 running Solaris 9 (112233-08)
Samba Client: Compaq ProLient ML570 running W2K SP3

# Samba config file created using SWAT
# from pq04464.admin.nbsnet.co.uk (10.200.41.127)
# Date: 2004/01/09 12:33:30

# Global parameters
[global]
        netbios name = UXHSMSVC01
        server string         encrypt passwords = Yes
        username map = /etc/sfw/smbusers
        log level = 1
        log file = /var/samba/%m.log
        show add printer wizard = No
        socket address = 10.192.34.61
        oplocks = No

[mfs_cell_1]
        comment = File Scanning - Cell 1
        path = /mfs/Scan_Cell_1/export
        guest account         valid users = mfssvc
        read only = No

[nlife]
        comment = Life
        path = /nlife/export
        guest account         valid users = nlifesvc
        read only = No

Have set oplocks = No as many processes my access the same files at the same
time and thaught we maybe spending a lot of time oplock processing. Made no
difference...

Logs are not showing errors (at log_level 3) but have a lot of activity...

Cheers,

Simon

Simon Harris
Nationwide Building Society
Technology Support
Enterprise Servers (SAN)
* +44(0)1793 654492
*  +44(0)7764 838021
*  Simon.Harris@nationwide.co.uk




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I trying to diagnose why my PDC is consistantly
unavailabe on an intermitant basis.  I've started to
run snoop (a packet sniffer) on my Samba server in
order to see what is going on.  Question is, what
am I looking for?  I'm running 2.2.8a on a Solaris 8
box.

Before you ask, I've tried everything, including
swapping network cables.  My PDC has been pretty
much intermittant for a few months now, rendering
it useless.  All other network sevices on the machine
which runs Samba work.

-Jim

*************************************************
Jim Kreuziger
jkreuzig@uci.edu
*************************************************