Samba Upload Slow

mauldus · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2004 7:53 am Post subject: Samba Upload Slow

I just got finished installing and configuring gentoo from stage1 with a 2.6.1 kernel, samba 2.2.8a on my server. I'm not new to gentoo, just haven't been on it in a while. The server previously had Redhat on it and everything worked fine then so I know it's not a hardware problem. The problem is when I mount my samba shares on my G5 and try to copy, say, a 1gig file to the desktop, it tells me it's going to take like an hour. I have a full gigabit network in my apt. This should only take me a couple of minutes tops, which it previously had. Now, if i drop a 1gig file into that same samba mount on my G5 to copy it to my server, it takes only a minute. Now, I tested this going both ways with scp and there was no speed difference. It was the same time either way. Now, has anyone ran across this problem? I'm using OS X 10.3 if that matters and the last time I checked, NFS didn't have this problem. I also have the TCP DELAY option set in smb.conf by default so that wouldn't help. Any ideas guys? I guess I'm off to the Apple support forums. Oh, and btw, I get the same results on my powerbook also. I have yet to test it outgoing to another linux box but I will soon. Thanks in advance.

mauldus · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 1:08 pm Post subject:

Bump

mauldus · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 6:51 pm Post subject:

Ok, I tried this with nfs also, mounting a linux share on a mac and it's still at degraded speeds. This doesn't happen with nfs between two gentoo boxes. I can't imagine what the deal is but any ideas are gratiously welcome.

Merlin-TC · l33t Joined: 16 May 2003 Posts: 603 Location: Germany

I cannot tell you a solution but can you do some further testing?

I had the experience that some network drivers in the kernel are not good.
One example was that all TCP transfers (incoming and outgoing) worked fine with around 8MB/s on a 100MBit network.
I was testing this by using one machine as FTP server.
But as soon as I switched to Samba or NFS I had only 3MB/s in one direction and in the other I only had 16kb/s (no joke).
So I downloaded drivers from the manufacturer of my network card and compiled them and it worked like a charm.
You mentioned you are using a gigabit network card.
In that machine I had problems with is a gigabit network card as well (just running as a 100MBit card cuz of the rest of my network hardware).

Maybe you could test the diffrence between UDP and TCP transfers and also could tell me which network cards you own.

mauldus · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 9:23 pm Post subject:

Hmm, IC, so they can be independant of other transfers. I'm using an intell e1000 card with the builtin drivers. I'm not on the computer currently or I'd go download the drivers and manually install them right now. I'll post results when I get that done though.

It's odd that the transfer over smb/nfs is working fine between linux boxen. But the whole thing is strange also.

Thanks.

Merlin-TC · l33t Joined: 16 May 2003 Posts: 603 Location: Germany

I am really not sure if you have the same problem but it's worth a try I guess.

I have a realtek gigabit card and I guess the kernel support is not that good.

Honestly I don't understand why sometimes the kernel drivers are so bad.
I mean they must have been tested.
I experienced this with realtek cards and via cards.
The bad thing is that I really like the 2.6 kernel but there are no drivers available for it yet from the vendors

Viego · n00b Joined: 01 Mar 2004 Posts: 3

I have the same problem. If i copy a large file (>700MB) from Linux to windows or viceversa, it's incredible slow. I got something about 50kb/s. Now, I have a little surprise. I start netwatch and I get 2MB/s.

I forgot, I get this strange behaviour with samba and nfs. I will check the TCP UDP thing in the next days.

I use also a realtek Gigabit card 8169 with a kernel modul of the producer.

Do you use the kernel with the gentoo patches or the vanilla kernel. Perhaps there is the problem, but i don't hope so.

Merlin-TC · l33t Joined: 16 May 2003 Posts: 603 Location: Germany

I tried many kernels, from 2.4.2 to 2.6 and none really worked fast.
So I downloaded the driver from the realtek site itself which seems to be different from the ones shipped with the kernel because they work much better.
The drawback is that these don't work with the 2.6 kernel yet.

Viego · n00b Joined: 01 Mar 2004 Posts: 3

okay, I just compiled a newer version of the driver. And the througput was much better. I will look for the original realtek driver, too. Perhaps i can get more speed. At the Moment I get something about 8MB/s without netwatch. With netwatch the speed ist a little bit slower, but nothing unexpected.

Merlin-TC · l33t Joined: 16 May 2003 Posts: 603 Location: Germany

What newer driver did you use now?
Not from the realtek website?

Viego · n00b Joined: 01 Mar 2004 Posts: 3

It's a Digitus Network Card and so I use the driver from their homepage, but it's the same as the original realtek driver, I just checked it with diff.

Sorry for the embarrasment