Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!

Fix for slow Samba performance on G3 Macs (10.3) Network
For those running OS X 10.3 on legacy hardware, this tip might solve your Samba performance issues. The OS 10.3 install was a breeze (using XpostFacto 3.0 and an install of OS 9.1). The aim of putting this modern OS on such old hardware was to run a personal web, file, and printer server. I knew 10.3 client could handle these tasks easily. But I immediately ran into problems with Samba. Specifically, no matter what I tried, the write performance (to the Beige G3's hosted shares) was a terrible 100-300KB/s. sftp performance was pretty good, as was scp. But I wanted Samba!

Digging through the man smb.conf help pages, I came accross this option: large readwrite. The man page clearly stated that this was the default setting. However, a 64bit capable kernel/OS is needed! So I set large readwrite = no in the smb.conf file, restarted the deamon, and bingo!

I now am able to juice the Beige box from my XP and OS X clients. Performance is great:
  • Write to SMB share: About 4MB/s
  • Read from SMB share: About 2.5MB/s
Quite an improvement from the original 100KB to 300KB I was getting.

I have only tested it under a heavy load for a few days -- but it is doing great so far. BTW, I have my L2 cache enabled via Sonnet's utility, and I am _not_ using old NDRVs with on-board video (XpostFacto options).
    •    
  • Currently 1.75 / 5
  You rated: 4 / 5 (4 votes cast)
 
[17,550 views]  

Fix for slow Samba performance on G3 Macs (10.3) | 8 comments | Create New Account
Click here to return to the 'Fix for slow Samba performance on G3 Macs (10.3)' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Fix for slow Samba performance on G3 Macs (10.3)
Authored by: dezell on Mar 04, '05 11:47:30AM

I'm struggling to find smb.conf. Can anyone help?



[ Reply to This | # ]
smb.conf
Authored by: goatbar on Mar 04, '05 11:58:33AM

/etc/smb.conf

Got it this way:

sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
# wait a couple minutes for the database to be build

locate smb.conf

-kurt



[ Reply to This | # ]
Fix for slow Samba performance on G3 Macs (10.3)
Authored by: bluehz on Mar 04, '05 04:59:17PM

Just curious - whats the best way to measure the throughput - so I can test before/after as you have shown in your data?



[ Reply to This | # ]
Fix for slow Samba performance on G3 Macs (10.3)
Authored by: aMacUzur on Mar 04, '05 05:15:36PM
The free application HELIOS LanTest can be used to test filesharing performance and local disk performance capabilities.

[ Reply to This | # ]
re: gauging throughput
Authored by: jdash on Mar 04, '05 06:14:00PM

You can also roughly gauge your throughput using Apple's suppied Activity Monitor utility. Click on the network tab and it will give you an idea of current performance (I love graphs).



[ Reply to This | # ]
Works a charm
Authored by: riskychicken on Mar 05, '05 12:06:13AM

I have an old iMac server and this works very well. You don't have to measure anything to notice the speed-up.

I had used SharePoints to set samba up, so maybe it could be added to that handy utility.

---
Making wild-assed guesses so you don't have to



[ Reply to This | # ]
Works on My G4 Too
Authored by: shaman75 on Mar 07, '05 07:45:46AM

I've always been disatisfied with the transfer speeds I had been getting when moving files between my G4 tower and FreeBSD box.

I'd given up hope tring to fix it, but this worked for me.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Fix for slow Samba performance on G3 Macs (10.3)
Authored by: bluehz on Mar 07, '05 05:44:37PM

Hmmm - I have several older Macs (G3/G4) and an old 100MHz Slackware Linux box on our LAN. Changed all the smb.confs as shown and restarted all - and the throughput tests using HELIOS actually got worse all around. I tested several times just to make sure... same results.



[ Reply to This | # ]