Question : Windows 2000 + Samba = slow

Ok, so here is my problem.

Basically I am using Windows 2000 to access a share on a Linux box through samba : reading the Linux share from Windows is very very slow.

Linux : 2.4.20 + Samba 2.999
Windows : 2000 Pro SP3

The very weird thing is that almost the same configuration works in another place : same Linux, same smb.conf (diff shows no difference), Windows 2000 SP2 (ok windows 2000 has not the same SP)

So let's get into the details:
- reading and writing from Linux to Linux is ok (3 sec)
- reading and writing from Windows to Windows is ok (3 sec)
- writing to Linux from Windows is ok (3 sec)
- reading from Linux to Windows is NOT ok (5min)

so this cannot be a hardware problem (since Windows-Windows is ok). All interfaces are set to 100Mb/s Full duplex.
All NICs (under Linux and Windows) are the same.

SMB.CONF extract


[global]

# Do something sensible when Samba crashes: mail the admin a backtrace
   panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d

   workgroup = PRODUCTION
   server string = smartjog scheduler storage
   invalid users = root
   log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
   max log size = 1000
   syslog = 0
   security = share
   encrypt passwords = true
   passdb backend = tdbsam unixsam
   socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_RCVBUF=16384 SO_SNDBUF=16384 S
O_KEEPALIVE
   dns proxy = no

[output]
        comment = scheduler outgoing data folder
        writeable = true
        writable = yes
        locking = no  
        path = /space/output/data
        public = yes
        read only = no
        browseable = true
        guest ok = true
        create mode = 0660
        directory mode = 0770
        force user = samba
        force group = samba

If anyone could help me before I turn mad ....

Answer : Windows 2000 + Samba = slow

How much Data are you transfering with these reads or writes?
try copying a large file that will take longer>
when you copy it try it with a smb copy (meaning samba or microsoft networking)
then try it with a different mechanism like ftp to see if it is protocol specific
Also you mentioed that your nics are hard set to 100/Full on all sides.
Are you using a managed switch that alows you to set the switch ports
to 100/full.  If you cannot telnet into the switch and set switch port speeds
then your switch ports are auto and you should leave your PC NIC settings at
auto also. When auto detect tries to detect a hard set of 100/full it almost always
messes up on the duplex so your auto detect switch would come up 100/half.
You would expect that this would cause more consistant slow response but I have
see some really flaky stuff with auto detect duplex mismatches.