Push vs. Pull

[TeeJayHoward]

Edited. (I'm amazed anyone could understand my drunken postings.)

I had a problem reading files from an SMB share. I can write to the share at regular speeds, but can only read at rediculously slow speeds. The file I would like to access is on a Windows XP64 box. The machine I'd like to access it with is a MacBook Pro running 10.4.8. How can I speed up the read speeds?

 

[unhappy_mage]

What OS on the MBP?

SMB is generally difficult to diagnose. I'd use another protocol if you have the option - scp, maybe? NFS?

 

[TeeJayHoward]

What OS on the MBP?

SMB is generally difficult to diagnose. I'd use another protocol if you have the option - scp, maybe? NFS?

OS X 10.4.8.
Never used SCP or NFS before. I'll do some reading up on them during my English class tonight.

Edit: There's no SFU for Windows XP x64, so I guess I can't run NFS. Debating putting Linux on the PC - Modern distros support NTFS Read-Write yet? Or is it still "experimental"?

 

[TeeJayHoward]

Fixed my slow SMB reads / fast SMB writes problem - I added the following two lines to my /etc/smb.conf on my macbook pro:

(Both under [global])
TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY
large readwrite = no

Still can't stream .mpg files from the file server to the MBP, but I can now copy files from the server at the same speed I write them.

 

[unhappy_mage]

Edit: There's no SFU for Windows XP x64, so I guess I can't run NFS. Debating putting Linux on the PC - Modern distros support NTFS Read-Write yet? Or is it still "experimental"?

There's a program called "captive-ntfs" that uses the native NT driver for ntfs, read/write. It's generally very reliable; sometimes while reading or writing very large files it crashes, but it hasn't caused problems for me.

 

[drizzt81]

There are -arguably- better performing alternatives to captive-NTFS:
http://www.linux-ntfs.org/
http://www.ntfs-3g.org/
The latter was highly recommended. Neither of these use the NTFS driver, therefore ought to be quite a bit faster with less CPU overhead. However, they do not support NTFS permissions, i.e. the whole drive is writable.

 

[unhappy_mage]

There are -arguably- better performing alternatives to captive-NTFS:

<argue>

The captive-ntfs driver is my recommendation because it's the same code used by MS. Thus, whether it's right or wrong, it's the definitive implementation of NTFS.