I believe I mentioned that the local network file transfer speed was sub-optimal. I tried both Samba and NFS, neither of which really gave me the speed I hoped for. It also didn't matter whether it was from Linux dom0 to a networked computer, or from Windows domU to that computer.
Eventually I installed LM14 Mate but that didn't help. However, trying a long list of remedies, here is what I have now and it DID improve file transfer speed by some 150-700%:
1. Disable network-manager (see how-to);
2. Disable virbr NAT setup by deleting the "default.xml" link in etc/libvirt/qemu/networks/autostart;
3. Copy /etc/samba/smb.cfg to smb.conf.master, edit the latter and comment out:
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#; name resolve order = lmhosts host wins bcast
then add:
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name resolve order = bcast host lmhosts wins
4. Run:
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sudo testparm -s smb.conf.master > smb.conf
5. After you installed the latest GPLPV drivers (0.11.0.357) inside Windows, including the network driver, edit the /etc/xen/win7.cfg file and change as follows:
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vif = [ 'vifname=win7,type=ioemu,mac=00:16:3e:68:e1:01,bridge=xenbr0' ]
to
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vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3e:68:e1:01,bridge=xenbr0' ]
Note: Remove the type=ioemu! vifname=... gave me an error, so I removed it too.
6. To disable Xen's network scripts (which is recommended), edit the /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp file and search for "network-script" lines and comment them out, then add "(network-script /bin/true)" so it looks like this:
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# (network-script network-bridge)
(network-script /bin/true)
7. To disable IPv6 (can cause slow network under Ubuntu/Linux Mint) edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add these lines to the bottom:
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net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1
as well as these:
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net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables = 0
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables = 0
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-arptables = 0
to prevent the firewall (netfilter) from filtering bridged packets.
(8. This is a work around for Ubuntu bug #50093 to ensure that the bridge sysctl settings get loaded on boot. Edit the /etc/rc.local file and place the following line just above the line "exit 0":
I don't think this is necessary anymore, at least under LM14 it didn't make a difference.)
9. Restart your computer.
To test the file transfer speed, I created a 1 Gigabyte test file using:
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dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile.img count=1024 bs=1024M
I'm getting now ~26-30MByte file transfer speed on my Gigabit link to an old laptop, where before it topped at 4.5Mbyte. On a 100Mb link to my networked media tank (NMT) I get around 4.3MByte where before it would max at 2.5MByte.
EDIT: I added 2 more steps I had missed.
EDIT 2: Removed e1000 entry (under vif = ...) since GPLPV drivers don't use the e1000 (or any other) emulation.