Comments on: Samba + Windows XP performance tunning (especially for slow operations with a lot of small files)

By: Jan

Jan — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:12:21 +0000

This helped me a lot. After figuring out a lot of samba / nfs / vmware shit, I ditched NFS, use SAMBA for internal file sharing between fileserver and webserver, use samba also for my webdevelopers to connect of course.
Subversion small file caused it to run verrry slow but with the changes made, it changed from +/- 200kb/s to 450kb/s

Still, not too fast but a double increase in speeld. Which is nice.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:57:20 +0000

We use a Microsoft Access 2000 / VBA database application (running on Windows XP machines) to run our business. The data is on a fast (core I7 / 6GB memory) Ubuntu 9.04 Linux server, running on gigabit Ethernet network.

Using a slow report as a reference (pulls a lot of data together):
* Before your suggested changes: 32-seconds to display
* After making changes you suggested: 7-seconds to display

These changes affect copying of small files. It did not affect the copy time of a large (527MB) file either to or from the Linux server / Windows XP machine. IPERF showed identical results before & after.

I found making the changes listed in: http://emergesync.com/resources/tips-for-samba-and-windows-xp/ also improved performance.

I was on the verge of abandoning SAMBA till I saw your article & tried your suggestions. Thank you very much for your help !!!

By: Огнян

Огнян — Sat, 02 May 2009 19:00:30 +0000

I thank you too for the good and helpful article!

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By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:27:12 +0000

Seems like it\'s a locking issue… I am getting excellent performance for this type of use scenario on this samba share with oplocks = no now.

By: Огнян

Огнян — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:45:30 +0000

@Josh
Did you try to edit your files with different windows program (I suspect that your current program is not releasing locks immediately after save). Just for the sake of test -- try something simple as Notepad to change and save a file. If the problem persist -- yes it looks like samba-win problem.
Also try to stop your antivirus software and test again. I had similar problems with Norton antivirus a while ago…

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:30:15 +0000

I run into oddities using Samba/Apache/Windows. Here\'s my basic approach:

- Linux Server running Apache and Samba
- Web dev files on linux server, served to HTTP by apache
- Edit web dev files in windows via mounted samba share

I don\'t have general speed problems. Rather, what happens is when I change a file and save it, then reload the local web page, I experience a delay of about 15 seconds before the page renders. This only occurs when I change a file, not between page reloads with no file changes. I also do not get this behavior if I change the file directly on Linux using vi or the like, so my assumption is that this is a samba issue that\'s somehow delaying apache\'s access to the files if they\'ve just been written.

Ideas?

By: corteplaneta

corteplaneta — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:23:54 +0000

Adding TcpAckFrequency & TcpDelAckTicks did improve my performance GREATLY. Before, I had to wait around ~5-10 seconds when using mplayer on a file (mounted through an SMB share). Now, the cache is instantly being filled up, though Amarok is still having difficulty playing without a delay. Thanks for the tips!

By: Огнян

Огнян — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:34:52 +0000

Frankly, network usage is not something that means much… Speed of copy and read operations is the primary concern and I had to benchmark with different tests to be sure what is working and what is not working.
For me setting TcpAckFrequency and TcpDelAckTicks improved performance with about of 400%.
I don't know if slow performance is WinXP's fault or Samba's fault -- once I had WinXP SP1 with old Samba server both without any optimizations and they worked lightening fast. I am still struggling to achieve same speed.