Kelly
2004-Sep-26 23:21 UTC
[Samba] samba, wireless, winamp or windows media libraries - slow, hangs
I'm getting really poor performance when using samba with specific applications - winamp and windows media player, when building the media library. I keep my mp3 files on a debian server (2.4.23-1-k7). It is running samba 3.0.7-Debian. Most operations seem to work OK. I can copy a 10 MB file to or from the server in about 30 seconds. My client is windows XP. It connects to the server via wireless (dlink dwl-250, 802.11b), to a speedstream 2511 powerline wap, to a some other powerline thing, to a netgear fvs318 firewall/router/hub, to the linux server. I'm shocked that this works at all, but it works fine for the most part. When I ask winamp to scan the media library, it appears to quickly build a list of the files, and then drops into a very slow mode where it is, I think, reading the ID3 tags. I believe there is a network handshake issue here. I'm watching the lights on the various network devices and little is going on. I believe something is dropped and something has to wait for a timeout before it can continue. I tried the same thing with windows media player. It too made the list of files quickly, then dropped into this very slow mode. I've run some file copy tests, and I they are acceptable. I'm getting roughly 300KB/sec, which is similar to scp performance. The file copies do not appear to suffer from this handshake/timeout issue -- the network device lights flicker rapidly. I've monitored the link with ethereal but I don't know what I'm looking for. The samba logging is at 3, but again I don't know what I'm looking for. I've tried various things with the smb.conf. My latest is below. Any suggestions? Thank you. -Kelly [global] server string = %h server (Samba %v) obey pam restrictions = Yes passdb backend = tdbsam, guest passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u passwd chat = *Enter\snew\sUNIX\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\sUNIX\spassword:* %n\n . log level = 3 syslog = 0 log file = /var/log/samba/%m.log max log size = 1000 socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_KEEPALIVE SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192 dns proxy = No wins support = Yes ldap ssl = no panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d invalid users = root [homes] comment = Home Directories read only = No create mask = 0700 directory mask = 0700 browseable = No [print$] comment = Printer Drivers path = /var/lib/samba/printers [mp3s] path = /wd/nobackup/home/mp3s/music/audio/ write list = kellyf force group = +mp3users
Kelly
2004-Sep-26 23:46 UTC
[Samba] Re: samba, wireless, winamp or windows media libraries - slow, hangs
Kelly <kellyfelkins2003 <at> yahoo.com> writes:> When I ask winamp to scan the media library, it appears to quickly > build a list of the files, and then drops into a very slow mode where > it is, I think, reading the ID3 tags. I believe there is a network > handshake issue here. I'm watching the lights on the various network > devices and little is going on. I believe something is dropped and > something has to wait for a timeout before it can continue.As a test, I connected to the homeplug/powerline network directly, eliminating the wireless hop. The performance was greatly improved. Winamp apparently generates a list of all files, then inspects each file. The file inspection is what was so slow before. Now it is doing a couple a second. Windows media player is also able to go much faster. File copies are faster, but not quite as dramatic as the media player stuff. So I still think that something is hanging and waiting for a timeout in the original configuration. Any suggestions? Thanks, -Kelly