samba - Oct 2013 - Samba4 - PDC - RHEL6 - Slow browsing from Mac clients

Hi,

I'm in the process of rolling out a brand new server as a Samba4 PDC to a
customer with about 30 users. It's going well except for the fact that I now
have some serious slow browsing issues from Mac clients, and that?s when only a
handful of them are connected to the server.  Note that if I install software
such as Dave from Thursby on the Macs, the speed issues vanish. Also, browsing
speed is instant from the pcs on the network. Some details of the setup are
below. I will post log files if that's useful but didn't want to clutter
this communication if there is an obvious point I'm missing. Thanks in
advance for assistance.

- Installation completed using guidelines here:
https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba_AD_DC_HOWTO
- the Macs are NOT bound to the directory, nor are most of the pcs (yet) but
they are browsing fine
- Running RHEL6.4
- Using Samba internal DNS & LDAP
- Running on HP Proliant ML350p Gen8 with 8GB RAM
- uname: Linux hostname 2.6.32-358.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Jan 29 11:47:41 EST
2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

smb.conf:

[global]
        workgroup = CLIENT
        realm = CLIENT.LOCAL
        netbios name = TSCSRV01
        server role = active directory domain controller
        dns forwarder = 8.8.8.8
        idmap_ldb:use rfc2307 = yes
        interfaces= eth0
        bind interfaces only = yes

[netlogon]
        path = /usr/local/samba/var/locks/sysvol/CLIENT.local/scripts
        read only = No
        hide unreadable = Yes

[sysvol]
        path = /usr/local/samba/var/locks/sysvol
        read only = No
        hide unreadable = Yes

[Other Shares]
        path = /mnt/data/
        read only = No
        hide unreadable = Yes

Can anyone help advise if I'm missing something please?

Thanks,

Paul

I think I'm unravelling the mystery  I have on this one. I believe the
situation to be as follows:

  *   Apple used to deploy the actual open source Samba system with it OSX.
  *   A few years ago, Samba made changes to their licensing meaning Apple could
apparently no longer use it in a commercial release (so I've read)
  *   In OSX 10.6 Apple dropped Samba and implemented their own version of SMB
client software
  *   These early releases of Apple's SMB have been a bit ropey, hence the
need for things like Dave from Thursby which replace the SMB client
  *   At this time from personal recent experience it seems that Apple's SMB
implementation in OSX 10.8 is more happy working with Windows Server than it is
with Samba4
  *   Apple will be releasing a version of the SMB client that supports SMB2 in
forthcoming Mavericks and is expected to solve a number of current SMB issues

I have a 100% reproducible use case for testing purposes which simply involves
slow listing times in a directory with about 80 images.

In OSX 10.8 the listing time is about 60 seconds and then scrolling that
directory listing is a very laggy
In OSX 10.9 (pre-release) the listing time is about 3 seconds, scrolling is fine
In OSX 10.8 running Dave, the directory listing is near instant and no issues
with scrolling

So, for my current situation I have two verified client side solutions:

  1.  Wait for OSX Mavericks to be released and gently roll that out
  2.  Deploy "Dave" or similar

I am now going to investigate two server side solutions:

  1.  Run NFS alongside the existing Samba setup
  2.  Run AFP using Netatalk software

I'm slightly wary on Netatalk as we've had a nightmare with various NAS
boxes recently, including QNAP and I believe these run Netatalk.

I'll report back in case it's useful for someone searching the archives
in the future.

Paul