SMB2 on Windows and OSX

Tyberious Funk · 17. Juni 2015

For a while now, I've found the performance of Samba when being browsed by a OSX client to be really painful. For example, when opening a network folder on my macbook, it can take several seconds to get a directory listing. Whereas, on Windows it's pretty close to instantaneous. A number of online forums suggest the issue is with OSX Mavericks and SMB1, so it's recommended to push samba to use SMB2. So I added the follow;

min protocol = SMB2

... to my config. I suddenly found a HUGE leap in performance on my Macbook. Only problem is that my Windows 7 desktop can't access anything. I was under the impression that W7 supports SMB2?? If I change the setting to;

max protocol = SMB2

... Windows starts working again. But I seem to lose the performance gain on my Macbook.

Am I missing something?

subzero79 · 17. Juni 2015

Maybe the windows session is still cached? what does net use indicates in windows?

I don't have a windows station anymore so i can't try. But i do remember having the SMB2 option for a while in OMV, windows didn't complain

votdev · 17. Juni 2015

Maybe this helps: https://www.cybersecure.com.au/support/?p=1842

cglhu · 17. Juni 2015

That sounds interesting, because I have a similar occurrence with OS X clients. But when I add
"min protocol = SMB2"
to my config, the samba demon reports
"ignoring unknown parameter server min protocol"

Do you have any hints?

subzero79 · 18. Juni 2015

The min protocol leaves me out in windows and OSX. I was under the impression that it was recommended to force SMB1 in Mavericks not the server. At least I recall from a year ago before the switch to yosemite

Tyberious Funk · 22. Juni 2015

So I played around a bit over the weekend, and here are a couple of combinations;

1. Set min protocol = SMB2 -- works on my macbook (Yosemite), fails on Windows 7, and fails on OpenELEC
2. Set max protocol = SMB2 -- works on my macbook (Yosemite), fails on Windows 10 (preview)... didn't try it on OpenELEC
3. Leave the setting blank -- works on everything, but macbook (Yosemite) is painfully slow

In the case of Windows, I rebooted to ensure the existing sessions weren't being cached.

I'm not really sure what to do now. Samba performance on OSX isn't disastrously bad when transferring files. But directory listings are pretty slow and painful.

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