To Compress or not to Compress - SLOW transfers

[Matt Tyree]

In the future if you're seeking help with this share on the forums, make sure you indicate that you've made case sensitivity changes. I'm not aware of any problems being caused by these changes (it's a fairly typical samba workaround for performance problems with small files), but it'd be a useful datapoint if you do have problems.

Will do. Thanks!

 

[bestboy]

Just reading this thread and have to wonder: "Why is this share setup [dataset=insensitive, share=sensitive] not the default for Windows shares"?

For my understanding there are no caveats when dealing with shares in/for the Windows world. And given the fact that FreeNAS is already "steering" or "presetting" the creation of a Windows share to suite its intended, typical use case in a "Windows world" by enforcing Windows permissions instead of Unix permissions, couldn't we also add this "small file" optimization? IMHO the creation wizard in the GUI could be asking something like "Are you going to use this CIFS share exclusively with Windows machines?" and then apply the small files optimization on a "Yep".
Given the fact that we are dealing here with home users clicking through the wizard, I guess most CIFS shares holding small files will indeed see exclusive Windows access (e.g. user homes or scratch drives for Windows desktops).

 

[anodos]

Just reading this thread and have to wonder: "Why is this share setup [dataset=insensitive, share=sensitive] not the default for Windows shares"?

For my understanding there are no caveats when dealing with shares in/for the Windows world. And given the fact that FreeNAS is already "steering" or "presetting" the creation of a Windows share to suite its intended, typical use case in a "Windows world" by enforcing Windows permissions instead of Unix permissions, couldn't we also add this "small file" optimization? IMHO the creation wizard in the GUI could be asking something like "Are you going to use this CIFS share exclusively with Windows machines?" and then apply the small files optimization on a "Yep".
Given the fact that we are dealing here wit

Make a feature request. :D

 

[bestboy]

done.
https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/18264

 

[Dice]

Are you copying via samba? It might be a permissions issue (you can check /var/log/samba4/log.smbd for NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED messages). Try copying using winscp and see if the problem goes away. You can speed up transfers via SCP/SFTP if you use a crap cipher like arcfour128.

On the other hand, operations with lots of small files can be a pain point for Samba. If you look at 'top' output you'll probably see that you have a single thread pegged at around 100%. There are some operations that samba performs synchronously and this can harm performance when dealing with tons of tiny files. For instance, see discussion here: http://marc.info/?l=samba&m=146175662822813&w=2

There are some things you can do to improve performance with lots of small files. Jeremy Allison outlines one strategy here: http://marc.info/?l=samba&m=139336252926228&w=2

If you want to try out JRA's advice, please do it in the following way:
1) via WebGUI create new dataset with "Case Sensitivity" set to "Insensitive"
2) via WebGUI add auxiliary parameter to samba share "case sensitive = true"

This will significantly improve samba performance with small files (but may not improve speeds for initial transfer). Don't do the above steps if Case Sensitivity is important for you.

This might be something for your CIFS tips&tricks thread!

 

[anodos]

This might be something for your CIFS tips&tricks thread!

Done. Made it in Comic Sans font as well. @JoshDW19 I noticed that "Comic Sans" isn't in the font dropdown in the text editor. This needs to be fixed.