Check out http://drouillard.ca/Tips&Tricks/Samba/Oplocks.htm for some advice on tuning your file server for database applications.
Regards ------------------------- Gerald Drouillard Owner and Consultant Drouillard & Associates, Inc. http://www.Drouillard.ca > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On > Behalf Of Dan Phillips > Sent: Saturday, December 07, 2002 6:02 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [Samba] SAMBA slower than MARSNWE... > > > I actually find Samba a very kewl server app so the subject isn't > coming from > someone that has a preference for Netware over samba. My issue > is actually > two-fold, one being the record locking problems in Samba and the > other being > the slowness of dos apps in samba. > > I'm not going to post any log messages here as I don't feel that > for this post > they're really very relevant. What I am going to post is some > information > about the system, configuration, problems, and my solution. > > Server: > P4-2ghz Dell Poweredge Srvr > RAID 5 w/ 56GB useable drv space > 1GB RAM > > Wkstations: > All P4 1.6Ghz Dells or faster > 256MB Ram > 40+gb drv space > All Win2k SP3 > > All boxes are running at 100mb on a 10/100mb switch > > Ok, that's the bulk of the hardware that should be relevant, now for the > software: > SRVR: > Linux (SuSE v8.1) > Samba v2.2.5 lock stock and barrell from the SuSE installation > Kernel 2.4.19-4GB lock stock and barrell from the SuSE installation > > The workstations are all running the standard install from MS of > Win2k SP3 and > TCP only. This company uses an old DOS application called OPTO. The > program when first fired up opens roughly 50 files, mostly .db > and of course > the .idx files relating to all the various parts of the database system. > Within the application, you can call a routine that will show you > information > about your client station, the network system as well as how many > users are > currently running on the shared database system. While running > this program > from the samba share mapped to a drive letter, we noticed two > very obvious > problems, one was that going from one screen to the next in OPTO was > extremely slow. Even fireing the program up took way too much time as > compared to the old Netware 3.12 srvr running on a PII233 w/ > 128mb ram and > only a 10mb lan card. (Before you guys get to harping on my > samba config, I > will add that all of our windows functions, IE. copy files, list files, > read/write word/excel docs, are extremely fast as they should be). > > Now, that was the problem of the slowdown, next is the record > locking problem. > As I mentioned before, OPTO has the ability to see how many > workstations are > currently talking to the database. However, OPTO could not > always see that > other users were in the database and therefore would not perform the > necessary record locking to prevent database corruption. I spoke > with the > OPTO software technicians and they could not provide an answer, > much less a > solution, to why this was happening. I read and learned more > about oplocks > and various other record and file locking information than I > should ever have > had to know. Anyway, no matter what I changed in Samba (using > swat) and even > restarting samba, made any difference. I therefore have come to the > conclusion of two things, one, dos apps are not able to run within samba > without suffering slow performance. And record locking also > seems to be a > problem under samba, at least for dos apps. > > Now, I still have the problem of getting a srvr for the OPTO program. I > stumbled on MARSnwe and decided to give it a try. I installed > Mars off the > SuSE distro disks, made the necessary changes for: > srvr name > login info > volume info > > I installed MS's netware client on each of the win2k boxes and logged in > mapping a new drive for the mars volume. Ran opto directly from that new > location on each machine and noticed two things: One, the speed was > lightning fast as it should have been, and two, the record > locking problems > were completely illiminated. Now the server is still Linux, the > files are > still located on the same raid 5 drive, the workstations are the > same, the > software is still the same, the only difference is OPTO is now > running from > the novell emulation instead of samba. > > What the heck is with samba and its dos compatibility. There are > two very > obvious problems that Mars on the SAME linux box was able to > solve: speed and > record locking. > > Now I'm not the best linux guru by any means and I don't claim to > be, that's > why I spend most of my time reading the samba posts rather than posting. > However, I have built 1000's of computers and installed 100's of > networks and > I would have to say that I have a pretty darn good understanding > of computer > hardware and software. The other thing I need to point out is I'm not > knocking the samba guys especially the developers of samba > because I find it > extremely useful and I've converted several locations to Linux > from either > Netware or MS now and I'll continue doing so. What I am looking > for in this > post is for some insight to various things to try regarding the > DOS / Samba > problems as described above. Although I don't mind running mars > and samba on > this server, I'd much rather run just samba. > > --- Thanks, Dan Phillips > -- > To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the > instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba