[OpenIndiana-discuss] [discuss] which to use: smb/server or samba

[Christopher Chan]

On Friday, March 28, 2014 07:05 AM, Ray Van Dolson wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 01:06:00PM -0400, Harry Putnam wrote:
>> Running oi -b 151_a8
>>
>> I'm having a problem with smb/server in that it falls into
>> maintenance mode and logs say:
>>
>>    [...]
>>    smbd: kernel bind error: Address already in use
>>    [...]
>>
>> But before I dig into that problem, and just from laziness, I want to
>> ask if there is any reason not to just go to samba?
>>
>> I have seen a few arguments on the openindiana groups, saying that
>> the smb/server is not really as stable and possibly may not have the
>> actual thruput for some reasons I did not understand, as samba.
>>
>> OK, so being a beginner of sorts... and lazy, not really craving to
>> dig into something I know little or nothing about.  That is, I am not
>> well versed in any stretch of imagination in these discussions.
>>
>> I kind of lean to samba since I've run it for years on linux and at
>> least have some familiarity with it.
>>
>> What do experienced users say about it?
> I have nothing too scientific to add.  smb/server has always *felt*
> slower, and it also only does SMB 1.0 (well, at least in NexentaStor
> 3.1.5, though I believe they're adding SMB 2.x support in 4.0 which
> we're looking forward to).  I always kind of wondered why Samba wasn't
> used -- seems to be faster, have far more features and of course is
> quite mature.  Seems like a lot of redundant effort, though perhaps
> there were some good reason (licensing, etc.?)
>
>

It is really funny that you heard or felt that smb/server is slower. I 
don't use smb/server and the one time I did, it had the lowest latency 
of all and users felt it was snappy.

I have had problems with both smb/server and samba. The problem I had 
with smb/server seems to have been an edge case (accessible only through 
\\ip.addr and not through \\shortname or \\fqdn; see 
https://www.illumos.org/issues/1087) but other than that it was 
'blazing' fast.

samba has the features I want but the packaged samba gave me no end of 
trouble. The main issue with 3.5.x of samba on illumos was getting a 
long list of detached smbd processes over time that were doing nothing 
but were somehow slowing things down whether by taking up slots or doing 
something else and required a cron job to kill them off. Then there was 
the major winbind bug in the versions below 3.5.12. 
https://www.illumos.org/issues/2172

I am currently running 3.6 and will soon switch over to 4.1 for file 
serving. I have a 4.1 instance acting as an AD DC in production.