File Sharing between Win & *NIX: Samva vs. NFS

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10/25/2004 6:52 PM

bob p

File Sharing between Win & *NIX: Samva vs. NFS I'm looking for advice on implementing reliable file sharing between *NIX platforms (various flavors of Linux in my case) and Win platforms.     I've already implemented Samba, primarily because its been my only option. Its freely available for deployment on a Linux platform and can effectively get the job done if you bang on it hard enough -- but I've run onto a couple of problems with it:     First, when Samba works properly its painfully slow. NFS has got to be a better option, if I could only find a way to deploy it on the Win boxes.     Second, Samba tends not to be set up properly with most out of the box Linux installations. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, its a real PITA to figure out why and troubleshoot. I have run into too many flavors of Linux (Gentoo, Knoppix) where the Lisa daemon just doesn't work (even though it has been properly installed, the system has been updated, and the daemon has been initialized) and too many flavors of Linux (Suse, Mandrake) where,even if you get it to run out of the box, the Samba server or client app breaks in short order, resulting in one-way file sharing. (Just for reference, I'm always running KDE as my X app on the Linux boxes).     So is it worth the effort to investigate using an NFS client or server on the Windows boxes? Even though Samba has some serious performance, security and reliability shortcomings, its free and sometimes it works. Unfortunately, I haven't found an NFS client for a Win box. I'm hoping that I could avoid some of the Samba problems by setting up the Linux shares using NFS.     One pesky question remains though -- is the lousy performance of the Samba system attributable to the Samba protocol itself, or to the lousy performance of the underlying Win OS? If the later is the case, could an NFS client on Windows even result in a performance improvement?     In the Win-Win situation (what a misnomer!) file sharing is reasonably fast. The performance impediment only seems to come in the Win-Lin situation, which makes me think Samba itself is the culprit.     Fwiw, this is a home network, not a business network, and I'm trying to decrease my dependency on Win apps, not increase them.     Thanks!     bob

 

10/25/2004 7:32 PM

SpeedRacer

1 - SAMBA is generally considered to be a lot faster than the native MSFT file sharing bits and is often 'de-tuned' in order to work more reliably with a variety of windows boxes. My nephew put himself through school (and then some..) swapping in nix boxes for file services at small companies. I would check on the various settings and look for tweaks. Have you joined a local LUG? Highly reccomended. I wonder what is breaking your Samba?? Wierd.. I would look at duplex issues on the linux nics as well. if autoneg is not happening, you can run into a number of interesting problems - slowness just being one of them. Try forcing 100-FDX on your switch if possible. (both ports - server and client, and both machines)     2 - NFS client on windows - check out Hummingbird. Works great. We used it here for years, until I replaced my Solaris-served NFS volume with an NFS share on Netware. You need to run PCNFSD on the server and the hummingbird client on the windows box. It's pretty straight forward. If you decide to try it I can send you some notes I have on setting it up.

 

10/25/2004 7:48 PM
Bryan James	Gee I new you were going to beat me to the answer as I was typeing mine     Bryan

 

10/25/2004 7:47 PM

Bryan James

This might not be a samba issue? do you have slow copy times with scp?     I would check,and I've had this issue at home. Is check your speeds and duplexing. I've had issues with netgear and other cheaper hubs not detecting speeds right.     the linux command you need is mii-tool. 'mii-tool -r' should reset the speed of the card by re-autonegtiting the connection. the other good comman is 'mii-tool -F 100baseTx-FD' this will force the card to 100 full duplex.     there's also a good tool to test your speed connection calledd iperf to test your throughput between to boxes.     I have two main samba box running at my work no problem. one is on an old RH7.3 box that it's just running as a printer to convert Printed PS spools to pdf's. and the other just put in a 1.75TB server on Fedora core 1. that file server i'm not having any perfomace issues, and it's been up for over two months. (daul 2.66ghz xeon's with 2gb ram.) I've actualy get better file tranfer then to my win2000 box.     I never use out of the box samba confs, I've always wrote them by hand. there are some good howto's over on samba.org.     at home i have samba 3 running as a PDC and doing all my windows and file shareing.         Bryan

 

10/25/2004 9:12 PM

SpeedRacer

the linux command you need is mii-tool. 'mii-tool -r' should reset the speed of the card by re-autonegotiating the connection. the other good comman is 'mii-tool -F 100baseTx-FD' this will force the card to 100 full duplex.     there's also a good tool to test your speed connection calledd iperf to test your throughput between to boxes.       ..I did not know that. That's going in the admin toolkit.     fwiw - In Solaris it's a lot different.. I'm used to this kind of thing when one has to force speed/duplex: (this would work on hme0)     ndd -set /dev/hme instance 0   ndd -set /dev/hme adv_100fdx_cap 1   ndd -set /dev/hme adv_100hdx_cap 0   ndd -set /dev/hme adv_10fdx_cap 0   ndd -set /dev/hme adv_10hdx_cap 0   ndd -set /dev/hme adv_autoneg_cap 0     Generally you would make a script, say S99_Duplex and stick it in rc2.d so it autoruns on every boot.     thanks! - Joe

 

10/26/2004 2:35 PM

Bryan James

haven't played with solaris yet, (though a friend has a spare ultra 5 box he's going to lend me)     But found that tool trouble shooting my home network. I have a baynetworks managed router, that doesn't have autosencing ports. samba and internet work fine intill large files are trying to stream video with myth.     My favorite current problem is I have a small netgear switch on my desk, for the three computers there, but found out that if you plug the netgear into a now autodetecting switch, you'll only get 10baseTx-HD.     Bryan

 

10/27/2004 3:56 AM

Carl S.

I've actually been moving away from NFS to SMB for my Windows/Linux/Solaris environment.     The biggest reason is that SMB is easy to put through firewalls and packet filters where NFS is much more difficult. SMB uses one port where was NFS uses several, and IIRC the client and server negotiate the port to be used.     I've not noticed too much performance degredation by going to SMB.     The product I use to allow me to mount SMB shares just like NFS shares on Solaris is called Sharity. Works very well and is cheap.     FTP software used to make a good NFS client for Windows. Not sure if they still do or not.

 

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