samba - Aug 2004 - Slow samba performance when writing many files into single directory

Hello,
I met with this problem - we use a groupware app on Win PCs that stores its 
data on samba share. The app uses many directories with large amount of small 
files (emails) in each. App performance is teribly slow - compared with data 
stored on netware share that we were using succesfully for many years. The app 
is unsuable now.
I tried to simulate with these results:
1. ftp access read/write of anything is ok
2. samba reading and writing of big files (250MB) is ok
3. samba reading of 3000 small files (total 100MB) in one directory is ok
4. samba writing of 3000 small files (total 100MB) into one directory is POOR
5. samba writing of the same 3000 files splitted into 15 directories is better 
but stil slow.

I think it is related to case (in)sensitivity. I have no chance to change app 
behaviour so I need to tune samba settings.

It is SLES 8, kernel k_smp 2.4.21-241, samba 2.2.8a
It is independent on filesystem - tried with very similar results on ext3, 
reiser, xfs.

Thanks.

Hi,
winxp has a service running called windows xp Webclient
disable it for a better performance browsing networks,
also windows will try to use show you the right icons for every file type
this may slow down performance toowith many files, this can be adjusted 
by settings explorer...hope this helps
Regards

Jan Brychta schrieb:
> Hello,
> I met with this problem - we use a groupware app on Win PCs that stores its
> data on samba share. The app uses many directories with large amount of
small
> files (emails) in each. App performance is teribly slow - compared with
data
> stored on netware share that we were using succesfully for many years. The
app
> is unsuable now.
> I tried to simulate with these results:
> 1. ftp access read/write of anything is ok
> 2. samba reading and writing of big files (250MB) is ok
> 3. samba reading of 3000 small files (total 100MB) in one directory is ok
> 4. samba writing of 3000 small files (total 100MB) into one directory is
POOR
> 5. samba writing of the same 3000 files splitted into 15 directories is
better
> but stil slow.
> 
> I think it is related to case (in)sensitivity. I have no chance to change
app
> behaviour so I need to tune samba settings.
> 
> It is SLES 8, kernel k_smp 2.4.21-241, samba 2.2.8a
> It is independent on filesystem - tried with very similar results on ext3, 
> reiser, xfs.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> 
> 
>