These are important performance configuration options; they enable Samba to use large reads and writes to the network, of up to 64KB in a single SMB request. They also require the largest SMB packet structures,
SMBreadraw and
SMBwriteraw, from which the options take their names. Note that this is not the same as a Unix
raw read. This Unix term usually refers to reading disks without using the files system, quite a different sense from the one described here for Samba.
In the past, some client programs failed if you tried to use
read
raw. As far as we know, no client suffers from this problem any more. Read and write raw default to
yes, and should be left on unless you find you have one of the buggy clients.
