File Server Software?

[AtlantaBob]

Hi all,

I'm trying to keep a lot of MP3's (all ripped legally, I'm happy to say) on a Linux server and access it using OS X (10.6.4). Right now I'm accessing it through a SAMBA server, and it's very slow. If I SSH into the machine, I can "ls" large directories almost instantly; in SAMBA a refresh of a directory with a lot of files, etc. can take 20 seconds or more.

It seems like I might want to be using a different file server here -- I don't necessarily have to have Windows machines access it -- although it would be a nice option. Is there something else I should be looking at?

Edit: Some info that I forgot to include. The Linux server is an Atom processor w/ only 512 MB of RAM, running Ubuntu server 10.04. It seems like it's processor-limited. Running 'top' on it shows that just trying to view files in the Finder on the Mac is taking 93-100 % of processor time.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Nothinman]

I don't know about Finder, but Explorer's performance is pretty bad with large directories. You could try NFS, it's more lightweight than SMB but you may have to fix permissions.

 

[Khyron320]

What about dlna?
Samba performance is hit or miss. 8.04 lts 64-bit is unusable imo.

Why not make an empty folder called rips where you can dump new music. Then setup dlna for playback.

sudo apt-get install ushare
nano /etc/ushare.conf
#change server name and directories
/etc/init.d/ushare restart
# cpu usage will be high for a few mins while it indexs then low after.
# connect itunes to the dlna server (?) I don't use itunes but if it doesn't have dlna I would be shocked can someone confirm.

This may not be a workable option for you but dlna let's me play movies/mp3s on my ps3 with no speed issues.

 

[joetekubi]

I'm really not sure about the performance of your Atom CPU, but I'll bet that Ubuntu 10.04 is hogging a bunch of your (massive) 512 MB ram.

Top can show you the memory usage, or you can just exec "free -o -m" on the command line while idle and while attempting to play from the remote system.
If you are using a lot of swap memory, that's probably the root of your issues.

If you can't upgrade the ram, or don't want to, I'd suggest a low-ram distro - my favorite is AntiX:
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Depending on your Samba file sharing setup, you may be able to boot a low-ram distro as a live cd and start the Samba mp3 share. If successful, you can check possible solutions without changing anything on your disk.

 

[Nothinman]

I'm really not sure about the performance of your Atom CPU, but I'll bet that Ubuntu 10.04 is hogging a bunch of your (massive) 512 MB ram.

Top can show you the memory usage, or you can just exec "free -o -m" on the command line while idle and while attempting to play from the remote system.
If you are using a lot of swap memory, that's probably the root of your issues.

If you can't upgrade the ram, or don't want to, I'd suggest a low-ram distro - my favorite is AntiX:
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Depending on your Samba file sharing setup, you may be able to boot a low-ram distro as a live cd and start the Samba mp3 share. If successful, you can check possible solutions without changing anything on your disk.

It would be simpler to just disable the things that are using memory than to reload with a whole new distro...

 

[sourceninja]

if ssh is fast, why not just mount the directory via ssh with macFUSE and sshfs?

sshfs username@192.168.1.100:/home/username/mymusic -p 22 '/Users/username/mnt/music/' -oauto_cache,reconnect,volname="My Music"

You could even write a little gui script if you wanted http://tacticalcoder.com/blog/2009/05/accessing-remote-machines-via-ssh-with-finder/