Performance problem with samba/zfs

[Mel]

On Monday 16 February 2009 07:56:02 Jonathan Belson wrote:
> Hiya
>
> I export a few samba shares from a FreeBSD amd64 server and I've been
> editing text files on one of the shares via a Windows box.
>
> This /usually/ works fine, but occasionally I'll get a pause of several
> seconds when I save back a modified file.  No errors are generated on the
> server, but it causes the smbd process takes a few % of available cpu time,
> according to top.
>
> Could this be due to the infamous seekdir/seekdir issue between samba and
> FreeBSD?  Some of the directories do contain hundreds of files.  This post
> suggests it has been fixed though: http://www.vnode.ch/fixing_seekdir
>
> The server is running -STABLE ('FREEBSD 7.1-PRERELEASE'), as built on
> 2008/09/08.  The file system is zfs.  I'm using samba 3.0.34,1, built from
> ports.
>
> Any ideas, anyone?

If you can reproduce this behavior using local access or ssh access (taking 
samba out of the equivalent) I would take it over to freebsd-fs.
The seekdir is indeed fixed.
If not, increase verbosity for smbd, maybe it spits out a hint why it is 
taking so long (smells like locking).
-- 
Mel

Problem with today's modular software: they start with the modules
    and never get to the software part.