Amahi Forums

Hey guys, got a bit of a weird one for you.

Standard transfer rate between HDD on the PC and HDA = ~85MB/s. Great.

However, transferring files within shares on the HDA, I get a max of 10MB/s (typically between 5-13Mb/s if you want to be exact).

Now, I thought "ah, that's just Windows 7 being a bit of a pain", so I tried it on the HDA itself on locally mounted shares..............13Mb/s.


Any ideas on how to make this quicker? Surely being on the same system, I should get max speed (at the very least beyond 10mb/s, especially being on an internal system......)

Note: If I move the files locally on unmounted local shares, I get pretty much instant transfer.


Clarification of matters:

mnt/samba/downloads to mnt/samba/anime = 13mb/s (also if I move files on Windows computer from share to share (HDA to HDA) I get same speed, not the high speed I get when going from PC HDD to HDA).
var/hda/files/downloads to var/hda/files/anime = full speed.



Any ideas on how to make this quicker? Surely being on the same system, I should get max speed (at the very least beyond 10mb/s, especially being on an internal system......)

(also, before anyone asks why I'm not just moving things in var/hda/files/ instead of mnt/samba/, it's because Greyhole seems to delete the files when it does it's fsck).

Many thanks!

Is this slowdown simply the write speed when using greyhole?
What happens if you copy a local file from a pc to a share? Is it slow also?
I don't use greyhole, so I'm not sure if it has a slow write behavior.

how are you measuring?

it would be interesting to compare a transfer to the /var/hda/files/ShareName vs the /mnt/samba/ShareName

assuming they are on the same disk, the only difference would be samba's involvement

here's our older epic thread about transfer speeds.

http://forums.amahi.org/viewtopic.php?f ... fer+speeds

it's a decent read.

how are you measuring?

it would be interesting to compare a transfer to the /var/hda/files/ShareName vs the /mnt/samba/ShareName

assuming they are on the same disk, the only difference would be samba's involvement

I think this is what I'm seeing atm (samba's involvement).

Measuring: via what Linux and Windows tell me (16gb of files in just over an hour).

What is the best way of testing the hard drives to make sure that they are OK (unsure on how to do this w/ the whole mount situation)? might as well check hardware first, then dig around software.


Sgtfoo, that thread seems to be more for networking issues. Internetwork the speeds are gorgeous (transferring from PC to server), however transferring files from share to share is horrendously slow.

If the samba mounts are slow, I would imagine it's because they are conflicting with what greyhole is trying to see in the shares.

For all movement, I do believe it's suggested to only move shares around using their /var/hda/files/ paths to make sure samba and greyhole both read what changes happened. If you move files outside of greyhole knowing, then the fsck would seem like it's deleting files (while they may not be actually deleted, but removed from sharing because the symlinks have been moved; if you are moving symlinks for your files, then everything will get screwed up)

If the samba mounts are slow, I would imagine it's because they are conflicting with what greyhole is trying to see in the shares.

For all movement, I do believe it's suggested to only move shares around using their /var/hda/files/ paths to make sure samba and greyhole both read what changes happened. If you move files outside of greyhole knowing, then the fsck would seem like it's deleting files (while they may not be actually deleted, but removed from sharing because the symlinks have been moved; if you are moving symlinks for your files, then everything will get screwed up)

So just to double check, if I'm going to be moving files, do that in /var/hda/files/ and not in mnt/samba?

Many thanks!

I am actually confused by this.

It is my understanding that you should use the samba share.

Greyhole does not "monitor" /var/hda/files. The only way files get processed by greyhole is if samba logs the write. That does not happen if you go direct to /var/hda/files

If you dont use the samba share, the file stays there and is not pooled until the next --fsck

Yes, move files using /var/hda/files mounts because those are where Amahi's whole system expects the user to move files with.

If moving shares on the amahi server itself, auto-mount the shares locally and move them that way.

If moving shares from a client, mount the shares and move them (should only work with /var/hda/files/)

Using anything else such as a second non-Amahi install of Samba which would have a seperate smb.conf file, would not have any effect on the amahi smb.conf, its database, or greyhole.
... which would explain why when moving files, they seem to disappear.

now as for speeds .. transfer speeds should be the same for either method... though depending on the usage happening on the drive in question, or any limitations in its chain of access.

Yes, move files using /var/hda/files mounts because those are where Amahi's whole system expects the user to move files with.

If moving shares on the amahi server itself, auto-mount the shares locally and move them that way.

If moving shares from a client, mount the shares and move them (should only work with /var/hda/files/)

Using anything else such as a second non-Amahi install of Samba which would have a seperate smb.conf file, would not have any effect on the amahi smb.conf, its database, or greyhole.
... which would explain why when moving files, they seem to disappear.

now as for speeds .. transfer speeds should be the same for either method... though depending on the usage happening on the drive in question, or any limitations in its chain of access.

One note: I used the auto-mount script.

What you are saying, is exactly what I expected, hence my question at the moment. If I move files within /var/hda/files, it works a beaut, nice and fast (pretty much instant). But if I move files within mnt/samba/, it's painfully slow.

I'll try moving files within var/hda/files and see if greyhole has an issue with it.


One of my work colleagues suggested that the disk could be thrashing. Do you think enabling "enable write cache" in the BIOS would increase my speeds?

Many thanks!