[Samba] Running a sleepy server (was: smbd on a battery-powered device)

On Thu, 2010-12-16 at 13:36 -0800, Liam wrote:

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 1:31 AM, Andrew Bartlett wrote:

> On Mon, 2010-12-13 at 12:37 -0800, Liam wrote:
> > I'm setting up samba service on a battery-powered WiFi device. The
> > plan is to have it wake-on-lan, handle request, sleep. Anyone have
> > experience with this?
> >
> > Are there smb protocol aspects that preclude server sleep between
> > client-initiated exchanges?
> >
> > My server won't be awake to respond to netbios broadcasts, e.g. for
> > name resolution. Can I shut off that service, and have clients access
> > \\192.168.0.10\share? Can I shut off everything but the smb session
> > service?
> >
> > Alternatively I could start/stop the server on demand, since I know
> > when a client wants a file via smb. Is samba startup efficient, or
> > cpu/disk-intensive?
>
> The inetd mode would seem to be the best way to handle this. Then your
> inetd or replacement can handle starting smbd. Just watch out that
> clients may keep a connection open for quite some time while not
> actually using it.


Thanks for the input, Andrew.

Can I disable nmbd if clients use \\192.168.0.1\share style addresses?

Yes, or they use DNS names.

And when an smb connection is active but the client is idle, does the client
expect anything from the server? If not, the next client msg will trigger
wake-on-lan and the connection will be fine...

If the client is truly idle, then it's down to what the TCP layer may or
may not do (keep-alive etc). Also (but others who deal with the Samba3
code would be more qualified to comment) I think Samba when running will
do a number of periodic tasks, which is just as likely to keep your box
awake as the client itself.

Andrew Bartlett

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