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A good article describing the configuration of samba for file/record locking can be found here.

Basically you must add these directives to the smb.conf file:

[data] 
oplocks = False 
level2 oplocks = False

The default oplock type is Level1. Level2 oplocks are enabled on a per-share basis in the smb.conf file. Alternately, you could disable oplocks on a per-file basis within the share: 

veto oplock files = /*.dbf/*.DBF/*.ndx/*.NDX/*.dbx/*.DBX/*.dbt/*.DBT/

You can further tune samba by following this guide.

If you specify the Common Internet File System (CIFS) when you mount the samba share then you must specify the following options
mount -t cifs {mount-point} -o username=name,pass=pass,directio
The directio option is used to not do inode data caching on files opened on this mount. This precludes mmaping files on this mount. In some cases with fast networks and little or no caching benefits on the client (e.g. when the application is doing large sequential reads bigger than page size without rereading the same data) this can provide better performance than the default behavior which caches reads (readahead) and writes (writebehind) through the local Linux client pagecache if oplock (caching token) is granted and held. Note that direct allows write operations larger than page size to be sent to the server.

If you get the following error when trying to mount the {mount-point}
Apr 22 16:57:39 bailey kernel: Status code returned 0xc000006d NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE
Apr 22 16:57:39 bailey kernel:  CIFS VFS: Send error in SessSetup = -13
Apr 22 16:57:39 bailey kernel:  CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -13
The you need to create the Samba user specified on the mount command
smbpasswd -a username
FYI - Make sure you umount all the Samba {mount-point(s)} before shutting down Samba.
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If you have software packages which you wish to share with others or simply between your own personal machines, a neat and easy solution is to create your own YUM repository and provide your .repo file for download.

YUM is by far the easiest method of installing software on Red hat, Centos and Fedora. Not only does it mean you don't need to trawl the web looking for somewhere to download the packages, YUM does a great job of satisfying any package dependencies. As long as the required packages are available in the enabled repositories on your system, YUM will go out and get everything you need.

To create your own YUM repository, you will need to install the yum-utils and createrepo packages:

yum install yum-utils createrepo

yum-utils contains the tools you will need to manage your soon to be created repository, and createrepo is used to create the xml based rpm metadata you will require for your repository.

Once you have installed these required tools, create a directory in your chosen web server's document root e.g:

mkdir -p /var/www/html/repo/recital/updates

Copy the rpm's you wish to host into this newly created directory.

The next step is to create the xml based rpm metadata. To create this use the createrepo program we installed earlier.

At the shell type the following command:

createrepo -v -s md5 /var/www/html/repo/recital/updates


This will create the required metadata in the repodata directory of your /var/www/html/repo/recital/updates directory.

root@test repodata]# ls -l
rwotal 44
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 28996 Jan 13 21:42 filelists.xml.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   284 Jan 13 21:42 other.xml.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1082 Jan 13 21:42 primary.xml.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   951 Jan 13 21:42 repomd.xml

To do a final consistency check on your repository run the following command:

verifytree /var/www/html/repo/recital/updates

We now have a fully functioning YUM repository for our hosted rpm packages.
The next process is to create a .repo file in the client systems /etc/yum.repos.d directory.

Navigate to the /etc/yum.repos.d directory on your system as root.

Using your preferred text editor to create the .repo file. In this example I will call it recital.repo.
Now paste in the following lines:

[Recital]
name=Recital Update Server
baseurl=http://ftp.recitalsoftware.com/repo/recital/updates
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1

Once that is saved, at the shell prompt on the same machine (YUM client system).

$ yum repolist
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
repo id                  repo name                                 status
Recital                  Recital Update Server                     enabled:      1
adobe-linux-i386         Adobe Systems Incorporated                enabled:     17
fedora                   Fedora 12 - i386                          enabled: 15,366

As you can see the Recital repo is now being picked up and we have access to all the packages it is hosting.

See how easy that was!

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In this article Barry Mavin, CEO and Chief Software Architect for Recital, details how to use the Client Drivers provided with the Recital Database Server to work with local or remote server-side OLE DB data sources.

Overview

The Recital Universal .NET Data Provider provides connectivity to the Recital Database Server running on any supported platform (Windows, Linux, Unix, OpenVMS) using the RecitalConnection object.

The Recital Universal JDBC Driver provides the same functionality for java applications.

The Recital Universal ODBC Driver provides the same functionality for applications that use ODBC.

Each of the above Client Drivers use a connection string to describe connections parameters.

The basic format of a connection string consists of a series of keyword/value pairs separated by semicolons. The equal sign (=) connects each keyword and its value.

The following table lists the valid names for keyword/values.


Name Default Description

Data Source
-or-
Server
-or-
Nodename

 

  The name or network address of the instance of the Recital Database Server which to connect to.
Directory   The target directory on the remote server where data to be accessed resides. This is ignored when a Database is specified.

Encrypt
-or-
Encryption

false When true, DES3 encryption is used for all data sent between the client and server.
Initial Catalog
-or-
Database
  The name of the database on the remote server.
Password
-or-
Pwd
  The password used to authenticate access to the remote server.
User ID   The user name used to authenticate access to the remote server.

Connection Pooling
-or-
Pool

false Enable connection pooling to the server. This provides for one connection to be shared.
Logging false Provides for the ability to log all server requests for debugging purposes
Rowid true When Rowid is true (the default) a column will be post-fixed to each SELECT query that is a unique row identifier. This is used to provide optimised UPDATE and DELETE operations. If you use the RecitalSqlGrid, RecitalSqlForm, or RecitalSqlGridForm components then this column is not visible but is used to handle updates to the underlying data source.
Logfile   The name of the logfile for logging
Gateway  

Opens an SQL gateway(Connection) to a foreign SQL data source on the remote server.

Using Gateways, you can transparently access the following local or remote data sources:

  • Recital
  • Oracle
  • ODBC (Server-side ODBC data sources)
  • JDBC (Server-side JDBC data sources)
  • ADO (Use this to connect to SQL Server and other Native Windows OLEDB data sources)
  • MySQL
  • PostgreSQL

The gateway can be specified in several formats:

servertype@nodename:username/password-database

e.g.

oracle@nodename:username/password-database

mysql@nodename:username/password-database

postgresql@nodename:username/password-database

-or-

odbc:odbc_data_source_name_on_server

oledb:oledb_connection_string_on_server

jdbc:jdbc_driver_path_on_server;jdbc:Recital:args


To connect to a server-side OLE DB data source, you use the gateway=value key/value pair in the following way.

gateway=oledb:oledb_connection_string_on_server

Important
When specifying the connection string be sure to quote the gateway= with "...".

You can find examples of connection strings for most ODBC and OLE DB data sources by clicking here.

Example in C# using the Recital Universal .NET Data Provider:
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// include the references below
using System.Data;
using Recital.Data;
 
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// The following code example creates an instance of a DataAdapter that 
// uses a Connection to the Recital Database Server, and a gateway to
// the SQL server Northwind database. It then populates a DataTable 
// in a DataSet with the list of customers. The SQL statement and 
// Connection arguments passed to the DataAdapter constructor are used 
// to create the SelectCommand property of the DataAdapter.
public DataSet SelectCustomers()
{
	string gateway = "oledb:Provider=sqloledb;Initial Catalog=Northwind;
		Data Source=localhost;Integrated Security=SSPI";
	RecitalConnection swindConn = new 
		RecitalConnection("Data Source=localhost;gateway=\""+gateway+"\");
	RecitalCommand selectCMD = new 
		RecitalCommand("SELECT CustomerID, CompanyName FROM Customers", swindConn);
	selectCMD.CommandTimeout = 30;
	RecitalDataAdapter custDA = new RecitalDataAdapter();
	custDA.SelectCommand = selectCMD;
	swindConn.Open();
	DataSet custDS = new DataSet();
	custDA.Fill(custDS, "Customers");
	swindConn.Close();
	return custDS;
}
Example in Java using the Recital Universal JDBC Driver:
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// standard imports required by the JDBC driver
import java.sql.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.net.URL;
import java.math.BigDecimal;
import Recital.sql.*;
 
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// The following code example creates a Connection to the Recital 
// Database Server, and a gateway to the SQL server Northwind database. 
// It then retrieves all the customers.
public void SelectCustomers()
{
    // setup the Connection URL for JDBC
	String gateway = "oledb:Provider=sqloledb;Initial Catalog=Northwind;
		Data Source=localhost;Integrated Security=SSPI";
	String url = "jdbc:Recital:Data Source=localhost;gateway=\""+gateway+"\";
	// load the Recital Universal JDBC Driver
	new RecitalDriver();
 
	// create the connection
	Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection(url);
	// create the statement
	Statement stmt = con.createStatement();
	// perform the SQL query
	ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("SELECT CustomerID, CompanyName FROM Customers");
	// fetch the data
	while (rs.next()) 
	{
		String CompanyID = rs.getString("CustomerID");
		String CompanyName = rs.getString("CompanyName");
		// do something with the data...
	}
    
	// Release the statement
	stmt.close();
	
	// Disconnect from the server
	con.close();
}
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Hdparm can be used to view or set many hardware characteristics of IDE or SATA drives including optical drives (and even some SCSI drives).  For example, the read-lookahead feature can be enabled or disabled.  Also of interest is that the on board write caching can be disabled.  This may or may not be of use when trying to optimize the writing of data to the drive especially when the operating system and/or file system itself may also perform write caching.

Some options of hdparm are dangerous and are generally listed as such in the man page.

Hdparm is available from SourceForge and there is even a version for Windows.
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Recital 10 enhances the way updating tables with indexes is done. The Recital engine will now evaluate each index individually to determine if any changes being made to the row effect it. If this is not the case then the index is flagged not to be updated. This enhancement helps speed up performance of updates and is particularly noticeable in cluster/network installations.
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lslk lists information about locks held on files with local inodes on systems running linux.

Install it with:

yum install lslk
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In an interesting article at Linux Magazine, Sam Ockman discusses the origin of the term "Open Source". Check it out here.
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Recital is a proven and cost-effective database solution that will help reduce the cost of your database and application software infrastructure substantially. As an added benefit, Recital can run many legacy applications with little to no change as it understands FoxBASE, FoxPRO and Clipper languages as a subset of it's overall capability.
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This is a good primer for getting familiar with using Infiniband with Redhat/Centos Linux.
http://people.redhat.com/dledford/infiniband_get_started.html

Getting Started with InfiniBand

The first step to using a new infiniband based network is to get the right packages installed. These are the infiniband related packages we ship and what they are there for (Note, the Fedora packages have not all been built or pushed to the repos yet, so their mention here is as a "Coming soon" variety, not an already done variety):

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It would appear that gigabit LAN is not! In fact it often runs at the same speed as 100Mbps LAN. Let's look at why exactly.

After configuring your network you can use the ifconfig command to see what speeds the LAN is connected. Even though 1000Mbps is reported by the card, the reality is that the overall throughtput may well be ~100Mpbs. You can try copying a large file using scp to demonstrate this.

As it turns out, in order to use a gigabit LAN you need to use CAT6 cables. CAT5 and CAT5E are not good enough. End result, the ethernet cards throttle back the speed to reduce dropped packets and errors.

You can find a good article here titled Squeeze Your Gigabit NIC for Top Performance. After tuning up the TCP parameters i found that it made no dfifference. The principal reasons behind low gigabit ethernet performance can be summed up as follows.

  1. Need to use CAT6 cables
  2. Slow Disk speed
  3. Limitations of the PCI bus which the gigabit ethernet cards use

You can get an idea about the disk speed using the hdparm command:

Display the disk partitions and choose the main linux partition which has the / filesystem.

# fdisk -l


Then get disk cache and disk read statistics:

# hdparm -Tt /dev/sda0


On my desktop system the sata disk perfomance is a limiting factor. These were the results:

/dev/sda1:
Timing cached reads:   9984 MB in  2.00 seconds = 4996.41 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:   84 MB in  3.13 seconds =  58.49 MB/sec

Well, that equates to a raw disk read speed of 58.49 * 8 = 467Mbps which is half the speed of a gigabit LAN.

So.. NAS storage with lots of memory looks to be the way to go... If you use the right cables!


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