Freebsd - Samba - WinXP client issues

[dandan]

Quick question,

I have been using FreeBSD for a home file server/router for the past 4 years and have never had any issues.
Recently I installed Windows XP Pro. Corp. on two of my workstations to play with before we upgrade at our office.
I have found that Windows XP can connect to my samba share, but if i try to copy, move, or delete files it takes Win XP many times longer then my Win 2k workstations or old Win98se laptop. Where a folder delete takes 2 seconds under Win 2k, Win XP takes minuets.
Game play, web, email and any other traffic to or through the server is the same on both 2000 and XP workstations, so I think it comes down to Samba and Windows XP not playing nicely.

My server is P3 733 with 2 WD 120GB on a 3ware 7200 running FreeBSD 4.5-Release and Samba 2.2.4.
It has 2 nic's one for my cbl modem and one for my Bay Networks 16port 10/100 switch.

My Windows 2000 and XP workstations have all of the service packs from Microsoft for either 2000 or XP.
One of the XP Workstations is a AMD 2600xp on a via 266a chipset with a 3com nic, the other is a AMD 1600xp on an Asus Nforce1 board and nic. So i don't think it is the cipset or nic's causing the issues.

Any ideas?
Should I just upgrade Samba, or am i missing a setting in Win XP?

Dan


below is the iformation from my smb.conf file:


# This is the main Samba configuration file. You should read the
# smb.conf(5) manual page in order to understand the options listed
# here. Samba has a huge number of configurable options (perhaps too
# many!) most of which are not shown in this example
#
# Any line which starts with a ; (semi-colon) or a # (hash)
# is a comment and is ignored. In this example we will use a #
# for commentry and a ; for parts of the config file that you
# may wish to enable
#
# NOTE: Whenever you modify this file you should run the command "testparm"
# to check that you have not many any basic syntactic errors.
#
#======================= Global Settings =====================================
[global]

# workgroup = NT-Domain-Name or Workgroup-Name, eg: REDHAT4
workgroup = WORKGROUP

# server string is the equivalent of the NT Description field
server string = Samba Server

# If you want to automatically load your printer list rather
# than setting them up individually then you'll need this
load printers = yes

# this tells Samba to use a separate log file for each machine
# that connects
log file = /var/log/log.%m

# Put a capping on the size of the log files (in Kb).
max log size = 50

# You may wish to use password encryption. Please read
# ENCRYPTION.txt, Win95.txt and WinNT.txt in the Samba documentation.
# Do not enable this option unless you have read those documents
encrypt passwords = yes

# Most people will find that this option gives better performance.
# See speed.txt and the manual pages for details
socket options = TCP_NODELAY

# Configure Samba to use multiple interfaces
# If you have multiple network interfaces then you must list them
# here. See the man page for details.
interfaces = 192.168.0.1/24

#============================ Share Definitions ==============================
[homes]
comment = Home Directories
browseable = no
writeable = yes

# NOTE: If you have a BSD-style print system there is no need to
# specifically define each individual printer
[printers]
comment = All Printers
path = /var/spool/samba
browseable = no
# Set public = yes to allow user 'guest account' to print
guest ok = no
writeable = no
printable = yes

# A publicly accessible directory, read/write to all users. Note that all files
# created in the directory by users will be owned by the default user, so
# any user with access can delete any other user's files. Obviously this
# directory must be writeable by the default user. Another user could of course
# be specified, in which case all files would be owned by that user instead.
[public]
path = /usr/export/public
public = yes
only guest = yes
writeable = yes
printable = no

[private]
path = /usr/export/private
public = no
writeable = yes
printable = no

 

[n0cmonkey]

Wow! The company you work for gave you two free copies of XP corp? Must be nice.

Check the smb logs. See if there is anything fishy in there when performing these actions.

 

[everman]

I'm not sure myself, I do use Samba with winxp clients and works fine. Maybe check out justlinux.com since I find that to be a nice resource.

 

[dandan]

All the curent Samba logs look clean for the past few months.
I have also looked for errors on the Windows Xp workstations also and found nothing.

Durring a file copy from a Windows 2000 workstation, the transfer speed is very stable.
Under Windows XP, the transfer speed will be very erratic and even drop to 0 for a few seconds!

If i cant find a simple solution, I may just update Samba this weekend and see if that resolves it.

We are looking at upgrading many of our workstations at work from Windows 2000 Pro. to Windows XP, and i don't want to have this issue here.
I have all of our servers now running FreeBSD 4.4 to 4.7. Four of these servers are file servers running Samba.
It was a long hard fight with managment to leave Novel and Windows NT, but it has been a very stable few years for us.

Dan

 

[n0cmonkey]

Check for NIC driver updates in WinXP.

 

[dandan]

I have updated the nic drives for the Asus Nforce board in my HTPC and it made no difference for network traffic.
And I have also installed the latest drivers from my 3com 905 in my other Windows XP computer.

I just find it interesting that they both worked great with Windows 2000 sp3, witch is what we use at our office.
I may bring in one of these computers to my office and see if it is server or Samba version specific before I go and upgrade my home server.

thanks again for the ideas,
Dan

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: dandan
I have updated the nic drives for the Asus Nforce board in my HTPC and it made no difference for network traffic.
And I have also installed the latest drivers from my 3com 905 in my other Windows XP computer.

Which model 3com specifically? I heard the 905 (not the 905[bc]) does most of the stuff in software instead of hardware.

3c905 and 3c905B are very different cards, the 3c905 has no hardware
: tcp/ip checksumming, dma access, etc.

But this should not really cause too many problems here.

I just find it interesting that they both worked great with Windows 2000 sp3, witch is what we use at our office.
I may bring in one of these computers to my office and see if it is server or Samba version specific before I go and upgrade my home server.

thanks again for the ideas,
Dan

That is interresting. You should be able to update SAMBA without getting rid of the previous version (if you compile it yourself from src) for testing. Do a search on google or marc.theaimsgroup.com for this. There may be a tweak you can make (I don't know SAMBA very well, so I haven't even looked at your .conf).

 

[calpha]

I had a problem with Samba when I first installed XP, but it was a version earlier then 2.2.4, so I don't know what could be your problem.......and on top of that the problem I had was XP not being able to even access the samba server. However, I now use samba 2.2.6 I believe and it works the exact smae for 98/2k/Xp performance wise......

INteresting problem...please follow up when yuou are able to fix it.

 

[dandan]

I believe that I have the 3c905c-tx.

The 3 work servers are running Samba versions: one at 2.0.7 and two at 2.2.2.

I will try this first and if I don?t have and issue here, upgrade at home.
If I also have the same issue here, then it?s an Xp issue, I guess.

Thanks again all.
Dan

 

[dandan]

Upgrading to Samba 2.2.8 resolved the issue on both Windows XP computers.

thanks again for the ideas,
Dan