Slow access to samba shares from Windows XP Pro

[alayaho]

Hi everyone,

We are running SAMBA 2.2.2 on a SCO UnixWare 7.1.1 server. Access to the shared folders seems to be quite quick for our machines running Windows 9X, but when I tried accessing the same folders on a Windows XP machine, it is very slow.

The Windows XP machine is new and I have made very few changes apart from getting TCP/IP working and installing the Novell client for Windows.

It can take up to 1/2 and hour to initially access a folder, but once it has been accessed once, subsequent accesses seem to be quicker. The PC is a Pentium 4 with 256MB of RAM.

Can somebody give me any ideas to help speed things up? I have not done much to try to optimise SAMBA or the Windows machine, but I don't think that is the cause of such a huge delay.


Thanks

 

[bluegroper]

I'm not really sure, but I'm guessing this could be a WindoZe master browser election issue.

ß

 

[dazau]

Look in your /etc/samba/smb.conf and check the following options to see if your XP machine is trying to become the master browser. ** REMOVE ";" to make setting active else it's just a comment.

# Browser Control Options:
# set local master to no if you don't want Samba to become a master
# browser on your network. Otherwise the normal election rules apply
; local master = no

# OS Level determines the precedence of this server in master browser
# elections. The default value should be reasonable
; os level = 33

# Domain Master specifies Samba to be the Domain Master Browser. This
# allows Samba to collate browse lists between subnets. Don't use this
# if you already have a Windows NT domain controller doing this job
; domain master = yes

# Preferred Master causes Samba to force a local browser election on startup
# and gives it a slightly higher chance of winning the election
; preferred master = yes

I suggest you say YES to being a domain master and preferred master or else the XP machine will try to take over this function. (you don't want that to happen - it's a job for a 24x7 server not a workstation).