# samba on Gentoo

## krk

hi everybody,

I am a total newcomer in Gentoo (haven't installed it yet). I want to provide a Samba Server to our small office network that would be used by several Windows XP, 1 MAC OSX and sometimes 1 Linux client.

As far as I understand I have to go for samba in order to make it work for the Windows people, right? NFS would be better if I play with Unix clients only but that is not yet the case. I am new to this in general and learned through my first inquires on how to set this up that Samba can be noticeably slow (especially in a GBit Network) compared to a Windows Share. As I understand this is mainly due to samba's complexity. I heard now about Gentoo and wonder whether samba can be 'simplified' while compiling in order to only provide the features I need and so to gain speed.

this would be such an incentive to really getting started with this. As I am a long time Ubuntu Users without very profound Linux inside I still have a little respect of the compiling and stuff. On the other side I am enthusiastic about the Gentoo approach.

looking forward to hearing your comments about the above

thanks ...Bela

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## bobspencer123

If you are just looking to share folder (data) then it appears you can set up a nfs client on windows as talked about  here 

If you want to give samba go its a little complicated to set up but not too bad. Check out the unofficial gentoo wiki entry  here  or google for the official (bit dated) docs.

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## krk

hi there & thanks for you comment,

 *bobspencer123 wrote:*   

> If you are just looking to share folder (data) then it appears you can set up a nfs client on windows as talked about here 

 

will check that out thanks

 *bobspencer123 wrote:*   

> If you want to give samba go its a little complicated to set up but not too bad. 

 

I don't fear it is too complicated to set it up (did that successful in an ubuntu machine already). I just read somewhere that the performance of a samba server is slow (compared to a Windows Share i.e) because it offers very much features. So I wonder if I can compile samba in way that turns off all features I don't need and so gain speed.

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## Anarcho

You might consider these settings: http://ogre.ikratko.com/archives/347

I get ~ 55 MM/s with these settings (from Gentoo-Host to Windows 2003 VM on KVM), which is not lightning fast, but it's OK.

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