Confused over CIFS

[Preston Kutzner]

On Jan 12, 2009, at 11:01 PM, Ted Hilts wrote:

> I've read everything you guys have posted - thanks. I think there are
> issues you have not addressed that were relevant to my particular  
> situation.
>
> 1. There are two machines, one is called "misty" (XP Home with NTFS
> formatted disks) and is the FROM machine for the data transfer.  The
> second machine is called "Ubuntu" (Linux Ubuntu 8.4 upgraded from 7.10
> with it's own partition and dual booted with another XP Home machine).
> Note that the  7 hard drives on the Ubuntu machine are NTFS formatted
> disks with one of these partitioned to create the Ubuntu system  
> which is
> all I run on this machine. Ubuntu has direct access to all these NTFS
> formatted drives as part of it's local system. Ubuntu is the TO  
> machine
> for the data transfer and the data will be placed on one those NTFS
> formatted drives.  So the data transfer is moving from "misty" (XP  
> Home
> NTFS drive) to "Ubuntu" (Ubuntu 8.4 NTFS drive).

First, just out of curiosity, how much data are you trying to  
transfer?  Second, is this data a bunch of small files or a handful of  
very large files?  This can make a difference in file copy times.   
What type of network are these computers connected to?

>
>
> 2. I used traditional "smbmount" not "mount.cifs" although it seems  
> that
> it was CIFS that was engaged in the data transfer when I looked at the
> mounts. The data transfer using "cp" worked very well and fast but  
> went
> almost dead after processing a lot of data so I tried to bring the
> transfer to an end with "Ubuntu"  responding that I should use
> "umount.cifs" which seemed to fail but thinking back was probably just
> taking a lot of time to stop. Why the data flow went very slow could  
> be
> for a number of reasons.  For example it may not have been a failure  
> on
> the part of "cp" or CIFS and then maybe it was cp or CIFS. But I often
> get glitches (I think from my IPS) which have a similar effect on
> running processes in that they almost stop or appear to stop and  
> after a
> while they are running again and in some cases they have to be
> restarted. The data transfer I was running would have taken a long  
> time
> because when I ran it I knew literally nothing about rsync and I was
> using plain old "cp".

rsync might be a better option for you.  It is proven technology that  
has been in use for many years.  Also, as mentioned by others here, it  
does have good compression as well.
>
>
> 3. Does the FROM and TO filelsystem (both being NTFS) have anything to
> do with this data transfer?

This is possible.  The ability to write to NTFS partitions under Linux  
is a fairly new development.  While it is obviously deemed ready for  
production use, I'm still not sure it's up to par compared with other  
filesystems.  That's only my take on it, though.  I'm curious as to  
why you're using NTFS for local disks under Linux.  Is there a  
specific reason you're using it?  You would be better off using a  
Linux native filesystem such as ext3 (or the upcoming ext4) or xfs.   
They're much better at preventing file fragmentation and also support  
journals.  XFS is very good at handling large files.  As I understand  
it the ntfs-3g driver was reverse-engineered and therefore might not  
be as optimized as a native ntfs driver.  Again, if you have a  
specific reason to be using NTFS drives on a single-OS linux install,  
disregard.  But if not, I would suggest reformatting the drives to a  
linux-native file format.  ntfs-3g *might* possibly be your bottleneck.
>
>
> 4. I have been looking at using backuppc but the man page mentions
> numerous tasks in setting it up. The man page does seem to indicate  
> that
> XP Pro is required and says nothing about XP Home. I should never ever
> got involved with HP Home machines as they are nothing but a big head
> ache when it comes to networking with Linux machines.

I don't think that's HP specific, but rather a Windows problem.   
Windows doesn't like to work well with anything not Windows.  But yes,  
HP consumer-end machines tend to be problematic.

If you can spare one of the 7 drives in your machine, and it's large  
enough, I would try reformatting it ext3 and trying your file copy  
again.  It would, at the very least, rule out ntfs-3g as reason for  
the file copy hanging.

>
>
> Thanks -- Ted
>
>
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