Hi folks - got a strange little issue coming up on an FC2 server, just hoping someone might have seen something like it before and might be able to suggest an angle to attack it from.
We're seeing pretty dismal transfer rates when copying files onto the server. We noticed it first via Samba, but tested and it occurs when using SCP as well. Not sure on the exact card in the server, but it's using the sk98lin module. We've tested on both the 2.6.5-1.358smp and 2.6.6-1.435.2.3smp kernel packages.
The switch is a big Cisco thing, but we've tried it in isolation with just a Windows XP client on another switch too (Netgear, I think. Certainly not another Cisco.) - same deal. The switch ports are showing it's negotiated full-duplex and so forth, and we forced the setting manually too - no difference.
The really odd thing is that the transfer rates pick up dramatically if we start ANOTHER copy to the server at the same time. Don't have the numbers to hand, but we figured that one single copy to the server was running at about 1/10th or less of the network's capacity, but if we started another one from either the same client machine or any other one on the switch, they were getting about half each.
Any suggestions as to what might be happening here? We're pretty confident it's something at the server's end, and we're still poking at it, but if anyone's seen anything like this before I'd love to hear about it.
sk98lin module seems to have problems with the FC2 kernel. On my Athlon64 3200+ Asus A8V motherboard with x86-64 I get maximum speeds of only about 350KB/sec. I did not notice this until I was transferring stuff on my local LAN though, because coincidentally 350KB/sec is the average speed of my cable modem.
Have you tried the FC3 or rawhide kernel? I haven't tested it for a while.
Warren Togami wtogami@xxxxxxxxxx
