nfs is considerably slower than samba :(

[graham.myers]

I've currenlty got my linux box serving as my nas and the shares are offered via samba. I've had no problems so far streaming non hidef stuff using twonky and reading/writing the files to the samba shares.

however in preperation of delivery of my popcorn hour a100 they suggest I should be using nfs over smb as the speed is 33mbs compared to 25 for samba and this extra oomf is required for hidef streaming.

So I set up my /etc/exports and off I went

/data/bt 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0(rw)
/data/video 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0(rw)
/data/itunes 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0(rw)
/data/music 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0(rw)
/data/photos 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0(rw)
/data/software 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0(rw)

seemed OK, but I read that you shouldnt really have the same directories offered by samba and nfsd so I stopped samba and did all the shares in nfs.

I installed services for unix on my xp home (tweaking the msi file so it would install) and xp pro desktops.

I'm now seeing a severe drop in performance. A CD rip using dbpoweramp configured for ultra secure rips used to take 30 mins not they're over an hour

An ISO rip of a dvd now takes six hours intead of a couple.

I am currently running a benchmark using iozone but havent got the output yet. I've looked in /proc/net/snmp and I do see ReamsFails increasing but not my huge amounts.

The windows clients have thier wsize and rsize set to 32k. I am not using jumbo frames as I'm going across 200mb homplugs.

The NFSSRV_MAXBLKSIZE is set to RPCSVC_MAXPAYLOAD but I cant find this defined anywhere.

NFSSRV_MAXBLKSIZE_V2 is set to 8k

I am using nfs v4

heeeeeeelllllllppppppp

[graham.myers]

A bit more investigation.

If I rip a Cd to local drive it takes 23 minutes. To an smb share an hour and to an nfs share it now takes 1h 1/2

so it looks like I might have messed the network up when enabled nfs somehow. smb used to be a lot quicker than that.

iozone is telling me I'm topping out a 4MB/s write speed which is stupidly slow.

I'm now doing an iozone to c:\ drive see what a local write speed looks like for comparision.

I'll be running iperf on the network too to see if something has gone awry there.

Anybody any ideas what I could have done wrong? All I did was start nfs and edit /etc/export


one thing I did try yesterday was to change the r|wmem_default and max to 256 from 132k in the /proc/sys/net area (and did a reboot) - doesn't seem to have made a difference

[scotty38]

When you say you've enabled nfs do you mean you've done a "chkconfig nfs on"?

I connect to my NFS shares on my NAS but I don't need nfs as netfs is already running and it seems to work ok for me.

if you issue chkconfig --list are both of them running?

Just wondering is this is anything to do with it...

Of course if none of this is relevant then please just ignore me

[graham.myers]

You might be onto something there. Yes netfs is running.

Does that nfs then? I shouldnt have both running - one or the other. That could be the problem - both competing.

I'll turn off nfs and leave netfs running and see what happens. Presumably if netfs also does the smb stuff too I dont need the smb process running?

thanks for that

[edit] just shutdown the smb daemon for the test share I had for iozone and I cant connect even with netfs running. I had to start smb to access the share
[edit again] Now stopped nfs and cant get access to the shares. Do you still configure netfs with /etc/exports?

[and thrice edit] It seems netfs is the client side nfs not the server. I need to run nfs for the server side of things by the look of it.

[scotty38]

Ah ok.... I should have read your post more clearly - I told you to ignore me...

[graham.myers]

well I still havent sussed it completely but it looks like the homeplugs are playing a major part.

I powered off everything in the house and tested the speeds and got upto 65mbs across the homeplugs. It was down as low as 40mbs before I started tinkering. A laptop plugged into the same hub as the server is getting 90+ mbs.

so 65mbs is 8MB/s so I was getting approx 1/2 the bandwith for my copies to the smb/nfs shares

I just think the network is busy for the amount of data I am trying to push down the wire simultaneously.

Even at the full 100mbs I can only push 12.5 MB/s. I am running quite a bit around the wires and maybe the slow down has just crept up on me. I've streaming from my home cinema, two pcs writing cd/dvd rips (one with 2 drives). I have wifi security cameras grabbing 5fps x 3. A roku box on wifi. etc etc etc.

I did try and restrict the wifi cameras by putting them on a differnet ssid which help other wifi use, but at the end of hte day they all end up at the same netgear router. I suspect the router cant cope with that much traffic simultaneously.

Think I'm going to have to go gigabit using external wiring up the side of the house.

Strangly if I rip the file locally and then copy the 4gb file to the nfs share its much much quicker. This is what I'm going to do until I install gigabit.

I'm suspecting noise on the network coupled with short write packets is playing havoc. If i could tune that it may help but I think that it maybe a dead horse and gigabit will solve my probs.

[scotty38]

Blimey, no wonder the national grid dips when you switch that lot on!

Have you considered Token-Ring?

[RRB]

You can always try another NFS client on the windows boxes and see how that performs also. Worth a shot.

[graham.myers]

Could do. I've gone back to smb at the moment and it does appear faster.

what I am going to do is shuffle around the switches I have. I am going to put the gigbait hub in the cinema room and hang the homeplugs, dsl router and cinema router off that. Perhaps that will do a better job switching things around than the 100mbs dsl router I am currently using.