samba - Apr 2004 - performance problem with samba in any version and small files

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Hi There,

I got big performance roblems in here with our big file server. We got a 2.4 
ghz Intel xeon in there, 1 gb ram and 2 scsi hds in softraid 1 on an adaptec 
Adaptec ASC-29320 U320. The array is set up with standard ext3 system.

We are running samba on it with our business softwares data on it. Its a 
program which uses lots of small and some bigger text files to store info in. 
When we work on the server with 4 persons we got about 1200 files locked abd 
being read. it isnt that much of data(per client about 50 mb transferred) but 
the speed is veery slow. I get about 10 mb/s from the raid in all which is 
nothing. I also got the samba process eating all 100 % of my cpu.

I tried to move the files outside the raid but that didnt have any effect on 
the performance.

Does anyone have an idea how i can speed up the performance? Is it possible 
that the locking slows down the performance so much?

It was a windows fileserver before running win2k which was much faster on the 
same files. My other coworkers are almost lynching me cause i was the one who 
wanted linux cause of performance and security issues.

Im happy about any suggestions.

Pascal
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Did you compile samba 3.02a yourself or use the RPM packages?

I ran into a problem with the RPM packages on the Samba site for MDK 9.2,
When I installed it seemed that the packages were not valid, they were
looking for some strange name user.  Some of the commands to run were not on
my system either.  So I uninstalled them and went back to 2.28a which works
great!!

Sincerely, 

Matthew J. DiBattista
Information Technology Technicians



-----Original Message-----
From: Pascal Hahn [mailto:p.hahn@laufwerka.de] 
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 6:31 AM
To: samba@lists.samba.org
Subject: [Samba] performance problem with samba in any version and small
files

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Hash: SHA1

Hi There,

I got big performance roblems in here with our big file server. We got a 2.4

ghz Intel xeon in there, 1 gb ram and 2 scsi hds in softraid 1 on an adaptec

Adaptec ASC-29320 U320. The array is set up with standard ext3 system.

We are running samba on it with our business softwares data on it. Its a 
program which uses lots of small and some bigger text files to store info
in. 
When we work on the server with 4 persons we got about 1200 files locked abd

being read. it isnt that much of data(per client about 50 mb transferred)
but 
the speed is veery slow. I get about 10 mb/s from the raid in all which is 
nothing. I also got the samba process eating all 100 % of my cpu.

I tried to move the files outside the raid but that didnt have any effect on

the performance.

Does anyone have an idea how i can speed up the performance? Is it possible 
that the locking slows down the performance so much?

It was a windows fileserver before running win2k which was much faster on
the 
same files. My other coworkers are almost lynching me cause i was the one
who 
wanted linux cause of performance and security issues.

Im happy about any suggestions.

Pascal
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Hallo Pascal Hahn, 
> I got big performance roblems in here with our big file server. We got a
2.4
> ghz Intel xeon in there, 1 gb ram and 2 scsi hds in softraid 1 on an
adaptec
> Adaptec ASC-29320 U320. The array is set up with standard ext3 system.
> 
> We are running samba on it with our business softwares data on it. Its a 
> program which uses lots of small and some bigger text files to store info
in.
> When we work on the server with 4 persons we got about 1200 files locked
abd
> being read. it isnt that much of data(per client about 50 mb transferred)
but
> the speed is veery slow. I get about 10 mb/s from the raid in all which is 
> nothing. I also got the samba process eating all 100 % of my cpu.
> 
> I tried to move the files outside the raid but that didnt have any effect
on
> the performance.
> 
> Does anyone have an idea how i can speed up the performance? Is it possible
> that the locking slows down the performance so much?
Have you the Chance to change the Filesystem (to reiser or xfs) ?
These FS _should_ be better on a lot of Files in a Directory and 
Handling of that.

Or play with the Options 

-R stripe=stripe_size

and

-J device=other_journal_device

of mkfs.ext3.

Hope it helps
Thomas