Using Dolphin's integrated FTP\SFTP is very slow

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1

Hi,
I’m on Leap x64 and just about few days ago I found that I could use Dolphin as a FTP\SFTP client wich is greate because of the split screen options, etc.
I’ve set up my servers but what I found out later is that it is extremely slow at copying\moving operations! Painfully slow.

I know, I should use Filezilla or a dedicated FTP client, is what I used for years, but it would be awsome if Dolphin’s FTP client would be a bit faster.

2

I don’t use Dolphin for FTP,

But,
On a thought…
You might see if there is a difference accessing an Anonymous FTP vs an FTP site that requires authentication.

Could narrow down the issue considerably.
If you see a diff, then you can take a closer look at what kind of credentials are being passed, the number and size of files being transferred, more.

TSU

3

I’m using SFTP for security.

I will try and set up a test FTP account using plain login and see if there is any difference. Will use a 10 MB file and copy to\from on plain FTP and SFTP and see if there is any difference. I don’t have\use anonymous.

Later edit:

Ok so what I found out while copying a 10 MB single file is this:

  • Using plain FTP the speed is steady and maxing out my upload speed
  • Using SFTP it reaches about 80% of max upload speed and seems to fluctuate.

Maybe the native FTP client doens’t do parallel downloads\uploads?

4

Hi
Also try via scp to confirm it’s not network related, eg;


scp testfile username@host:testfile

scp tor-browser-linux64-6.0.1_en-US.tar username@host:tor-browser-linux64-6.0.1_en-US.tar
tor-browser-linux64-6.0.1_en-US.tar                                                                                                 100%  189MB  62.8MB/s   00:03
5

scp maxes my upload speed!

6

Hi
OK, so I’m guessing dolphin is using gvfs (just like Nautilus), so there is overhead as I would assume it uses gvfs-copy.

If you connect to the remote system via dolphin and sftp, then run;


gvfs-mount -l

Do you see something like;


Mount(0): username on remotehost -> sftp://username@remotehost/
  Type: GDaemonMount
7

You can use SFTP for its encryption while still connecting anonynously (without password).

This further narrows down whether the problem is specifically now authentication is implemented and not more broadly the encryption+authentication.

Also, FTP in general should transfer all files in that task in a single session requiring authentication only once, like what you’re observing with scp.
By comparing transfers of a single large file vs many files of approx the same overall size, it might become obvious whether new sessions are created with every file (or you can do a packet capture). Naturally, each time a session is created, there is repeated overhead utilizing resources and will cause additional delay.

TSU

8

It lists only my local drives

Drive(0): WDC WD1600AAJS-0
  Type: GProxyDrive (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
  Volume(0): HDD160
    Type: GProxyVolume (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
    Mount(0): HDD160 -> file:///home/roberto/Data
      Type: GProxyMount (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
Drive(1): INTEL SSDSC2CW12
  Type: GProxyDrive (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
Drive(2): ASUS    DRW-1608P2S
  Type: GProxyDrive (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
9

I’ll try and set up an FTP account with anonymous login.

10

Hi
OK, so looks like it’s internal to dolphin then… I don’t run KDE so probably can’t offer anymore help, but depending on your results sounds like it might be worth a bug report.

11

Using KDE Plasma 5 Dolphin and sftp on a Leap 42.1 Lenovo G505s Notebook (AMD A10-5750M Quad-Core APU) to “suck” pictures (1.2 GByte) from a 13.2 Destop (AMD FX™-4100 Quad-Core Processor) I get the following data rates:

  • Notebook on WLAN (72 Mbit/s max): 3.9 MByte/s
  • Plugging a 1 Gbit/s Ethernet cable (same as the Desktop) into the Notebook during the WLAN “suck”: 4.6 MByte/s.
  • sftp “suck” to the Notebook with 1 Gbit/s Ethernet “from the very beginning”: 7.1 MByte/s