One less windows server in the world. (BSD/Samba)

[DnetMHZ]

I finally got around to migrating all my file serving over to OpenBSD/Samba all 80 or so gigs of files. I have to say I'm very impressed with the funtionality and most of all the speed. Browsing and moving files seems a lot faster with the new setup even compared to the other server that has 10K RPM SCSI Drives in it running Win2K server.

server specs.

P3 - 667
512 Megs PC133 RAM
120 Gigs total IDE storage
OpenBSD 3.0 w/ samba 2.2.x

anyone else have any samba experiences to share?

DnetMHZ

 

[TW2002]

What would you like to know?

 

[DnetMHZ]

<< What would you like to know? >>



Just general experiences with samba.. have you had any major problems / things to watch out for.
Success stories.. things like that.. I don't have any problem i need fixed. More of a conversation topic.

thanks
DnetMHZ

 

[robisc]

dnetmhz, I too have been contemplating going from NT Server to a BSD, probably FreeBSD as my main server OS. I haven't been able to do as a dual boot since my partitioning proggies are of the non destructive type and they don't support NT Srever OS, so I would have to either shell out big bucks for something like ServerMagic or maybe install BSD over my NT install, which I reallty don't want to do just yet until I found out how I like FreeBSD and how frinedly it is. The other thing going against BSD for me is that I believe I would have to set up Samba which seems like a nightmare to me. Right now I can access my NT shares from my Linux box, BeOS box and of course my Windows boxes, and it really is pretty simple so I guess I am just kinda leary of going to BSD as a server even though I want to try it.

 

[Nothinman]

so I would have to either shell out big bucks for something like ServerMagic

Partition Magic from DOS will work fine.

The other thing going against BSD for me is that I believe I would have to set up Samba which seems like a nightmare to me.

Samba is probably one of the easiest (minus the problems MS creates like sh!tty browsing) things to setup, the docs are great, the config file format is simple and if you want you can use a web interface to configure it.

 

[robisc]

Nothinman, you talkin about the boot disks that Partition Magic asks you to make? If so they don't work.

 

[MGMorden]

I'm getting ready to slap Samba on my Linux box (as soon as it's up and running again. I had to borrow the hard drive for a bit to do some temporary backups but I'll have it up again by tommorow). I've been using it a lot as a way to get files to my machine from anywhere on campus. I've been ftping into it from my Windows box when I actually need to get the files to their "permanent" destination though. It seems like just having a drive letter would be a lot simpler.

 

[Nothinman]

I've been ftping into it from my Windows box though. It seems like just having a drive letter would be a lot simpler.

Simpler, yes, but probably slower. FTP is a slimmer protocol and SMB is a hairy mess.

 

[MGMorden]

<< I've been ftping into it from my Windows box though. It seems like just having a drive letter would be a lot simpler.

Simpler, yes, but probably slower. FTP is a slimmer protocol and SMB is a hairy mess. >>



How much slower? I've got these machines on a 100Mbps connection and I usually get 70-90 Mbps on the FTP. I think I'd be satisfied with at least 20 if I could get that in Samba.

 

[Nothinman]

How much slower? I've got these machines on a 100Mbps connection and I usually get 70-90 Mbps on the FTP. I think I'd be satisfied with at least 20 if I could get that in Samba.

I never did time trials, but there's not going to be a 50Mb/s difference.

 

[n0cmonkey]

I use SAMBA on my Mac OS X iBook to connect to shares and whatnot at work (with the help of sharity). Works great. Right now I dont need SAMBA at home because I dont have a Windows machine, but setting it up on OpenBSD would be as simple as pulling my smb.conf file off of my iBook and figuring out where OpenBSD wants it. I use scp to exchange files between my Linux, OpenBSD, and Mac OS X machines.

 

[Nothinman]

I use scp to exchange files between my Linux, OpenBSD, and Mac OS X machines.

I do most of the time, but if the transfer is big I'll use FTP because the encryption overhead of scp hurts a lot on a P166 :/

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< I use scp to exchange files between my Linux, OpenBSD, and Mac OS X machines.

I do most of the time, but if the transfer is big I'll use FTP because the encryption overhead of scp hurts a lot on a P166 :/ >>



For large transfers that I dont want to wait for I enable ftp and use that. Generally if I am transferring gigs (I do it fairly regularly ) Ill let it run overnight and not worry about it. I dont have any machines with any hard drive space that are as small as a p166, so I dont have to worry too much

 

[Mucman]

I was initialy worried about the performance of my SAMBA server (or my network). Can someone let me know the expected amount of time that this would take?

Transfering 45Gigs of mp3's to a SAMBA server running Debian (Woody), P150, 16M, 60G 7200 w/ Promise Ultra 66. I believe it took a few hours, so I don't think the tranfer was even going at 50Mbit/s. Do you think this is the result of a slow network or just the bulky SMB protocol?

Other than that, the thing is fabulous! I got it set to be a master broswer and it works great. Samba was a snap to configure using SWAT and I was able
to create the appropriate permissions so that my bros don't delete anything and so I have admin access to the share.

I feel dumb for now using Samba years ago!

 

[Nothinman]

Nothinman, you talkin about the boot disks that Partition Magic asks you to make? If so they don't work.

The only time we ever had to buy Server Magic where I work was for NetWare, which obviously isn't supported in the normal product. I don't have a NT Server install handy, but I'll have to see if I can get ahold of one to test that on.

Transfering 45Gigs of mp3's to a SAMBA server running Debian (Woody), P150, 16M, 60G 7200 w/ Promise Ultra 66. I believe it took a few hours, so I don't think the tranfer was even going at 50Mbit/s. Do you think this is the result of a slow network or just the bulky SMB protocol?

It's probably the P150' fault, 16M isn't enough to cache very much so it'll be writing to disk a lot during a 45G transfer. Next time you transfer some files ssh in and run top and watch the drive activity, that'll tell you if the CPU or hard disk are the problem.

 

[Chatterjee]

we're using Samba 2.2.1a as a domain controller for a windows 2000 network and it's been running rock solid for over 3 months without failing.

-S

 

[Mucman]

<< It's probably the P150' fault, 16M isn't enough to cache very much so it'll be writing to disk a lot during a 45G transfer. Next time you transfer some files ssh in and run top and watch the drive activity, that'll tell you if the CPU or hard disk are the problem. >>



Thanks for the tip... I will try a large transfer when I get home and see what it reads.

 

[mcveigh]

<<

<< What would you like to know? >>



Just general experiences with samba.. have you had any major problems / things to watch out for.
Success stories.. things like that.. I don't have any problem i need fixed. More of a conversation topic.

thanks
DnetMHZ >>


The first server I set up was samba, so that was what I thought was the norm.that was a P3 850, 256MB ram, 2 raid1 arrays

I've recently setup a P3 1.1Ghz , 512MB ram, 10000 ropm scsi raid 5, running win2k server w/ exchange and it seems slower, I don't kow if it was exchange making it that slow.

I like samba better.