# Slow SAMBA (34 && 35) Performance on amd64



## Steve_Laurie (Jan 9, 2011)

Hi,

I recently upgraded my file server PC from a Q9650 on a P5Q-Deluxe (2GB RAM) running SAMBA34 to an i7 930 on a P6X58D-E (6GB 'Triple channel' RAM) also running SAMBA34. I used the same network card (Intel Ether Express gigabit (em0)), same cat5 cable, same switch etc. same disks - basically same everything, only in a faster CPU, better Motherboard and more RAM. (Both GENERIC kernels). I've even used the same old conf files (rc.conf, loader.conf, sysctl.conf, smb.conf etc).

What is different is the old system was 8.0-RELEASE (now 8.1-RELEASE), The OS sits on a UFS WD10EARS drive (using 4096B sectors) (Used to be Seagate 80GB). Both 7200RPM drives.

I used to get transfer speeds ~80MB/s but now I'm lucky to get ~40MB/s.

I've even tried Samba35 - no better!

I don't understand what's going on. Same SAMBA version, Same data disks, same config files, same network card, same cat5 cable, Same everything except faster CPU, better Motherboard and more, fster RAM and yet, it's slower. It doesn't make sense. Can anyone offer some type of explanation and/or suggestion on how to improve things?

Regards,
Steve Laurie


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## vermaden (Jan 9, 2011)

> WD10EARS


That may (and probably is) a problem, an unaligned partition on that drive.

There is also issue with WD Green disks, because they 'go to sleep' (head parking) after 8 seconds of idle time.


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## Steve_Laurie (Jan 9, 2011)

The thing is, I've partitioned them according to the post regarding the 4096B partition alignment. The way I'm testing it is by copying a DVD iso thats large enough (7GB) to watch the transfer rate as it copies over. There is constant activity (no heads parking) and the transfer rates now are like 40-50MB/s slower.


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## vermaden (Jan 9, 2011)

Other thing I would suspect is HTT in that Core i7 CPU, disable HTT in BIOS and repeat the tests.


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## Steve_Laurie (Jan 9, 2011)

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, that's not it. I turned of HyperThreading in the BIOS and if anything, it's a bit slower.


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## vermaden (Jan 9, 2011)

> old system was 8.0-RELEASE (now 8.1-RELEASE)


Maybe that is the problem ... I would submit a BUG.


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## Steve_Laurie (Jan 10, 2011)

Sorry. I didn't upgrade. I did a clean install. The old system disk was an 80GB Seagate 7200rpm SATA (I don't have the model number with me at the moment). The new system drive is a WD10EARS formatted and aligned correctly. 

Would a slower system disk slow down data transfer speeds? The data drives are the same but the system drive has changed.


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## vermaden (Jan 10, 2011)

You could check gstat command to see how much the disk is utilized during CIFS/SAMBA transfer.

You may also check these settings in /boot/loader.conf file, I use them to increase CIFS/SAMBA performance:

```
kern.ipc.maxsockbuf=16777216
kern.ipc.nmbclusters=32768
kern.ipc.shmall=32768
kern.ipc.shmmax=67108864
kern.ipc.somaxconn=8192
net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0
net.inet.tcp.inflight.enable=0
net.inet.tcp.path_mtu_discovery=0
net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_max=16777216
net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_max=16777216
net.inet.tcp.recvspace=65536
net.inet.tcp.sendspace=65536
net.inet.udp.maxdgram=65536
net.local.stream.recvspace=65536
net.local.stream.sendspace=65536
```


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