Stefan, I am using "EnableSendfile Off" on a per dir basis, namely the CIFS mounted dirs (I alluded to that in my original post as the "adequate workaround"), however I commented out those lines for the strace as I thought that is what you were interested in: where and how sendfile() is choking. If you need any more info from me, let me know as I am happy to help in any way possible. -Chad