samba - May 2007 - Transition 3.0.14a-3sarge4 / 3.0.24-6 Performance deterioration

Hi,

we are working for many years with Samba and it was working always very 
smooth. No complaints, no nothing. Well, it still works like a charm, 
but slower. ;-)

But after the transition from Debian Sarge (2.4.27-2-686) to edge 
(2.6.18-4-686) (samba 3.0.14a-3sarge4 to 3.0.24-6) we are suffering from 
a performance deterioration.

We didn't change our smb.conf file, since we didn't have to for the 
Woody / Sarge transition. Of course we started checking it after we 
found this problem. We checked the network, changed the ports on the 
switch. The network chip in the server is an Intel eepro100, so no problem.

Our users are working mainly on one large database file (260MB), so 
oplocks are set to no.
socket options = TCP_NODELAY.
security = user

Access to single files, copying doesn't seem to be slower.

Any hints? Any further information you need?

I can send the whole smb.conf file.

Thanks and regards,

Johann