Samba beats faster using new 2.2.8 release

A beta test patch for the file-sharing application Samba can improve performance, especially if shared directories contain thousands of files.

HP’s Mark Bixby reported that after updating from Samba version 2.0.7 to 2.2.8a, “a customer with 5,000 files in a shared directory found that the initial connection to the shared directory as well as directory refreshes were taking several times longer on 2.2.8a compared to 2.0.7, and the SMBD processes were consuming large amounts of CPU time.

“This problem was caused by 2.2.8a being built with a porting library that was not used for 2.0.7. The porting library had an inefficient alternative implementation of the POSIX stat() function, which Samba relies on heavily for generating directory listings. Multiplied by 5,000 times in a customer environment, the inefficient stat() becomes quite noticeable.”

Bixby said HP has rebuilt a new 2.2.8a “with an improved stat() wrapper that yields the same directory listing performance as 2.0.7.” Patch numbers are SMBMXP8A for MPE/iX 6.5, SMBMXP8B for MPE/iX 7.0 and SMBMXP8C for MPE/iX 7.5

“If your shared directories have small numbers of files, then you probably won’t see much, or any, performance improvement from this patch. There is zero change in performance for transferring actual file content.”

The beta patch is available from the HP IT Response Center.