Increase Samba File Transfer In Ubuntu 12.04

Overview

There are 2 lines in the Samba configuration file which are commented out by default which can be uncommented out to increase read speeds. It is very easy to do and reversible as well. From personal experience it has increased the file transfer speed from 20-30MBps to 40-50MBps over a gigabit LAN connection from a Ubuntu to Windows. Both are connected at 1000bps.

The summary of the changes include:

1. SO_RCVBUF – buffer amount used by certain sockets
2. TCP_NODELAY – Send acknowledgement (ACK) messages as soon as possible. The acknowledgement messages tells the sender the receiver has got the data

Configuration Change

The 2 lines in /etc/samba/smb.conf which needs to be uncommented / added in:
SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
socket options = TCP_NODELAY

Save and exit the file and restart samba (This may discounnect any clients connected):
sudo service smbd restart

Summary

The options are very simple to turn on and off and improves the network speed of Samba running on Linux.

SO_RCVBUF on MSDN

Samba Optimization and Speed Tuning for Performance

About Danny

I.T software professional always studying and applying the knowledge gained and one way of doing this is to blog. Danny also has participates in a part time project called Energy@Home [http://code.google.com/p/energyathome/] for monitoring energy usage on a premise. Dedicated to I.T since studying pure Information Technology since the age of 16, Danny Tsang working in the field that he has aimed for since leaving school. View all posts by Danny → This entry was posted in Linux, Windows and tagged Gigabit, LAN, Linux, MSDN, optimization, Samba, smb, TCP, Ubuntu. Bookmark the permalink.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.