I have set up a file server using Ubuntu 12.04 Server. The purpose is to serve several network drives to Windows users that have heretofore been served by numerous NAS drives.

I have Samba set up with one share defined so far. I can connect to it fine from my test Windows 7 and Windows XP machines.

When I do a directory listing on the share from Windows, it can take up to two minutes to get all the files listed--would have taken about 1.5 seconds when I was using the Buffalo NAS. Sometimes it times out with no response at all.

I have used the default smb.conf and simply added the following for the share I have set up so far:

[engineering]
comment = Ubuntu File Server Share
path = /networkdriveshares/engineering
browsable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = no
create mask = 0755

I have tried changing the workgroup setting to the Active Domain name our Windows computer use but didn't notice any difference.

The only other change I made to the default smb.conf was adding in the recommended socket settings:

     SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
     socket options = TCP_NODELAY

Lots of information about slow Samba shares online but I have tried all of the solutions I have found and none have made a lick of difference. If there is no solution, is there a better way to set up a file server to be used by Windows clients?