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I can't change much about the general setup, but try to do the best working with it:

General Setup

A .mdb backend Microsoft Access, for VBA, is placed on a computer. Other computers access that backend, read and write. All computers are windows PCs

Past: Samba

All computers were in a workgroup. This does still work, but due to the troubles of getting workgroups to work on Windows and the changes that came over the years + the possible security implications, we thought about switching to NFS.

Also, I had some issues setting samba up on a Linux which is something I would like to do for various reasons. One being that I prefer configuring a samba server on Linux. Read more about that here: Setting up Linux Samba server (general problems): No permission

Future: NFS

A Linux computer provides the NFS server. All other computers are windows computers and NFS clients. The backend is shared, everyone can access.

I thought this wouldn't make a big difference access time wise, but it takes literally ages (10 seconds+) to access the data. Downloads take up to 1mb/s. Why is it so slow? We use NFS for other purposes (Linux to Linux) as well and it hasn't been that much of an issue there.

Is there some setting magic that allows us to improve this or is it just not a viable solution?

My current NFS configuration is:

/mnt/myshareddir 192.168.178.0/24(insecure,rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
Natan
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1 Answers1

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This isn't a perfect answer in any way but for me it got at least rid of the issue that every file takes forever to open. Doing a benchmark on the net-drive revealed though that the read/write speeds are still terrible with Random write speeds being as low as 1-2 MB/s while they should be above 100 easily for the particular drives I use.

Nevertheless I hope this leads someone into the right direction and they add to it and possibly resolve this for everyone (including me).

My particular setup is Debian Host to Win11 VM. All of the below is from various sources and applying it step by step with lots of trial and error.

Here is what I did in the Windows VM (NOTE: don't confuse powershell and win cmd):

Windows Powershell as Admin:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -FeatureName ServicesForNFS-ClientOnly, ClientForNFS-Infrastructure -Online -NoRestart

Then follow this guide from "Stop the NFS client" which is (still in powershell):

C:\Windows\System32>nfsadmin client stop

When it says "As a non-Administrator account" switch to win cmd as normal user basically (win/start type cmd)

If you can't edit the registry (or you have some things greyed out) then follow this guide on how to enable it.

If this works for you (for me it did) I would also recommend to create a windows batch file like so. Press Win + R and type "shell:startup" which will open the startup directory. Create "YOURFILE.bat" in there and use the same "mount" syntax as from the guide above. That will link the netdrives at every startup.

When you boot windows the first time you open win explorer it will take some time but then it will all be fairly snappy. For normal file use it is fine. However for large write speeds it is not and I don't know why. It is a mystery to me.

I've used "all_squash" in my host exports file but other than that it is basically all structured normally. Example:

/exports/FOLDER 192.168.0.0/16(rw,sync,no_subtree_check,all_squash)

The above is a start but if anyone has ideas on how to improve on this and get actual normal speeds I am all ears. Thanks and Good luck!

sebieire
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