Can't create folders.Was:TS-410:slow NAS, upgrade firmware ?

[Egg7]

Hello,
I've got some problems with my TS-410 (Raid 5, 4*2To HDD). Been using it for some months just as storage, started just recently to have a deeper peek at it.

1) It's slow on my network. Basically, the speed is ~13-14 Mo/s, whereas a Syno DS1010+ (Raid5 in 5*2To HDD) caps rightfully at 60Mo/s. Tried switching hub entries, cables, ... Same thing. Something's wrong here ? Default settings overall, including "Jumbo Frame Setting (MTU)" = 1500. I use certified CAT 6 category cables.

Because of the slow speed, I can't use PS3 Media Server to stream my HD videos to my PS3. It freezes a lot.

2) So I tried Twonky Media Server. It sees some of the videos, some not, and most are in unsupported format.

So:
3) Can I try to upgrade to a newer firmware ? Am I 99% sure I won't lose my files on the NAS by doing this ?

4) Can I try to upgrade only Twonky Media Server ?

5) Any other ideas ?

Thank you.

[schumaku]

Salut,
...and excuse me for some questions:

1. Performance

Which firmware version is in place on the TS-410? Compared to the very early builds, things changed...

What Syno are you comparing here with QNAP's smallest home four bay TS-410? No doubt, the five seats Maserati is faster than a Citroën 2CV.

13-14 MB/s is already more then what the PS3 Fast Ethernet can handle! Consider this fact - so there are other factors. I can't judge the CPU overhead of the PS3 Media Server in place, but it's not a low-resource application. Please run 3 top from the NAS Linux shell while streaming, and post the results.

What other activities are ongoing on the TS-410 while experience troubles streaming?

I would expect reasonably higher performance numbers from both the DS1010+ and the TS-410 anyway...

Please give us some ideas on the media you try to stream - use for example MediaInfo Videos ripped for the PS3 are typically ways of form such high data rates exceeding Fast Ethernet capabilities.

2. Twonky

Most users are unhappy with the co-operation of Twonky and the PS3. I still hope things will change with the coming-up Twonky 6.0.x. You can also consider to disable the UPnP Media Server (Twonky 5.x) and install Twonky Media Server 4 from the QPKG.

3. Update

Anytime, see performance above.

4. See Twonky above.

5. let's see...

-Kurt.

[Egg7]

Salut

>1. Performance
>Which firmware version is in place on the TS-410?
"Current firmware version: 3.1.2 Build 1207T"

>13-14 MB/s is already more then what the PS3 Fast Ethernet can handle
When I watch on my PC PS3 Media Server I can see that the buffer slowly (green bar) slowly but surely is eaten away. When it reaches 0 or so, the video freezes.

>What Syno are you comparing here with QNAP's smallest home four bay TS-410? No doubt, the five seats Maserati is >faster than a Citroën 2CV.
Very true, but a difference from 1 to 4-5 ? Seems odd to me.

>Please run 3 top from the NAS Linux shell while streaming, and post the results.
What is that ?

>What other activities are ongoing on the TS-410 while experience troubles streaming?
Noone besides me on it, and nothing running.

>2. Twonky

>Most users are unhappy with the co-operation of Twonky and the PS3.
>You can also consider to disable the UPnP Media Server (Twonky 5.x) and install Twonky Media Server 4 >from the QPKG.

I just installed Twonky "Version 4.4.17", going to see if it changes anything.

Edit: It seems the install of Twonky 4 automagically unchecked "Enable UPnP Media Server".

[schumaku]

[quote="Egg7"]>1. Performance
>Which firmware version is in place on the TS-410?
"Current firmware version: 3.1.2 Build 1207T"

-> Consider to Update... this is a very early and slow one.

>What Syno are you comparing here with QNAP's smallest home four bay TS-410? No doubt, the five seats Maserati is >faster than a Citroën 2CV.
Very true, but a difference from 1 to 4-5 ? Seems odd to me.

-> 2CV makes 80 if we are lucky, while the Maserati makes 320 km/h or more. I'd expect about 20..25 MB/s write and 60..80 MB/s on read, depending on the protocol used - on the TS-410 (Mb/s == Mo/s). Fat Atom NAS can easily reach nearby the theoretical GbE wire performance on both directions, so the factor can be higher.

>Please run 3 top from the NAS Linux shell while streaming, and post the results.
What is that ?

-> Enable ssh access (see http://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/How_to_SSH_in ... NAP_device) and login to the NAS Linux shell by ssh (ie. PuTTY [Windows] or Terminal [OS X], and launch the "top" process monitor:

(typo before - # is meant as the shell prompt)

This is from a TS-119, while playing a 4 GB RIP of Oceans 12 (Format: BDAV, Format/Info: Blu-ray Video, File size: 3.99 GiB, Duration: 2h 5mn, Overall bit rate: 4 565 Kbps, Maximum Overall bit rate: 35.5 Mbps) to a media player using SAMBA - smbd is virtually invisible! Instead, the QRAID-1 (1:1 replication to an external drive, more intensive than RAID5 XOR processing) takes >65% of the CPU performance:

# top

Mem: 490948K used, 24684K free, 0K shrd, 1892K buff, 328340K cached
Load average: 2.62, 2.57, 2.59 (State: S=sleeping R=running, W=waiting)

PID USER STATUS RSS PPID %CPU %MEM COMMAND
24495 admin R N 1600 24494 45.8 0.3 rsync
24492 admin S N 2304 24491 21.0 0.4 rsync
1994 admin S 10136 1949 3.9 1.9 simple_client
3 admin SW< 0 2 1.3 0.0 ksoftirqd/0
2021 admin S 9868 1949 0.9 1.9 simple_client
1949 admin S 1044 1 0.9 0.2 btd
1987 admin S 7036 1949 0.7 1.3 simple_client
25152 admin R 884 25145 0.7 0.1 top
147 admin SW< 0 2 0.7 0.0 kswapd0
145 admin SW 0 2 0.7 0.0 pdflush
2004 admin S 5928 1949 0.5 1.1 simple_client
545 admin SW< 0 2 0.3 0.0 usb-storage
700 admin SW< 0 2 0.3 0.0 md13_raid1
2011 admin S 9228 1949 0.1 1.7 simple_client
1950 admin S 9096 1949 0.1 1.7 simple_client
22780 admin S 1768 2487 0.1 0.3 smbd
3526 admin SW< 0 2 0.1 0.0 kjournald
2580 admin S 12M 2528 0.0 2.4 mysqld
32161 admin S 9032 1 0.0 1.7 apache

The message: With the "standard" means like Microsoft File Share, NFS, or DLNA/UPnP AV, HD streaming - even in multiple instances - should not create any issues on these "small" NAS, too. Again, I don't know about the load created by the PS3 Media Server.

[Egg7]

>>>Which firmware version is in place on the TS-410?

>>"Current firmware version: 3.1.2 Build 1207T"

> Consider to Update... this is a very early and slow one.

I don't mind upgrading, it's easy and tech friendly ( ). What are the chances of me not losing anything out of what's stored on the NAS by upgrading ?

[schumaku]

In many QNAP NAS upgrades, we have never lost a single bit. During some very early trials of storage migrations, or special testing, it happened we had to manually remount the RAID volume(s). Risk factor? Below 0.1% if starting from a healthy standard system, depending on your power source and quality, you might consider doing the upgrade on a UPS.

[P3R]

Regardless of firmware upgrades, not having a backup in place is either brave or very stupid if the data has any value at all.

No, RAID is not backup

[schumaku]

Backup - for cowards only, isn't it?

[Egg7]

I do have backup of like 75% of what's on the NAS. Thing is, copying at 12-14 Mo/s some To takes time... Doing this right now, fingers crossed so that I can try the upgrade tomorrow, and that it helps the video stuttering.

[papaknight]

I too am not able to stream to an AC ryan playon device from a bd rip.
Is this a Qnap problem or aN A C Ryan problem.
Any suggestions, complete newbie here
Thanks

[Egg7]

FW updated succesfully - did not lose anything, that's the positive thing (kudos QNap for this).

Negative thing is that I still get stuttering videos, between 10 and 15 Mo/s seems not enough for the combo PS3 MS + PS3.

I'll have to find another way to watch my HD movies. Do you thing that the Popcorn Hour will do ?

[Egg7]

The FW upgrade was in fact a fiasco. Since then I have multiple disconnections somehow for the NAS, when I try to copy big files to it.

I get this windows error message:
There is a problem accessing \\Nas
Make sure you are connected to the network and try again
Try again/Skip/Cancel

"Try again" works perfectly, the copy is resumed.

Not getting any better speed is OK of course, but going backwards and getting this is unacceptable. Sigh...

[P3R]

The FW upgrade was in fact a fiasco. Since then I have multiple disconnections somehow for the NAS, when I try to copy big files to it.

Are you using both network interfaces, port trunking and if so with what settings?

Does it show any network errors on the System information page?
What is the NAS connected to (switch/router, exact model)?

[Egg7]

The FW upgrade was in fact a fiasco. Since then I have multiple disconnections somehow for the NAS, when I try to copy big files to it.

Are you using both network interfaces, port trunking and if so with what settings?

Both network interfaces ? I don't know what you mean, sorry...
Edit: I checked, I used only 1 cable since the NAS is hooked up to my router, for my personal use 99% of the time.

port trunking: same here, no idea what this is. I'll look into it.
Edit: Checked, no port trunking here

Settings: everything default, or close too. I just installed 3 QPKG from the default settings: AjaXplorer, iStat & TwonkyMedia.

Does it show any network errors on the System information page?

Here is my "System Administration" --> "System Logs" --> "System Event Logs" for the past few days:

2010-08-20 158 12:43:49 System 127.0.0.1 localhost [Network Service Discovery] Gateway failed. UPnP Discovery Service stopped.
2010-08-20 157 12:43:04 System 127.0.0.1 localhost Network connection resume.
2010-08-20 156 12:42:58 System 127.0.0.1 localhost Network connection lost.
2010-08-20 155 12:42:57 System 127.0.0.1 localhost Lan 1 link is Up.
2010-08-20 154 12:42:52 System 127.0.0.1 localhost Lan 1 link is Down.
2010-08-18 153 12:46:14 System 127.0.0.1 localhost System started.
2010-08-18 152 12:42:17 System 127.0.0.1 localhost System was shut down on Wed Aug 18 12:42:17 BST 2010.
2010-08-18 151 12:39:25 System 127.0.0.1 localhost System was updated successfully from 3.1.2 to 3.3.1.
2010-08-16 150 10:43:06 System 127.0.0.1 localhost [TwonkyMedia] has been enabled.
2010-08-16 149 10:42:59 System 127.0.0.1 localhost [QPKG] The built-in Twonkymedia will be disabled now before starting Twonkymedia v4.4.17 QPKG.
2010-08-16 148 10:42:48 System 127.0.0.1 localhost TwonkyMedia 4.4.17 has been installed in /share/MD0_DATA/.qpkg/TwonkyMedia.
2010-08-16 147 10:41:23 System 127.0.0.1 localhost [iStat] has been enabled.
2010-08-16 146 10:40:54 System 127.0.0.1 localhost iStat 0.5.7 has been installed in /share/MD0_DATA/.qpkg/iStat.
2010-08-16 145 10:32:58 System 127.0.0.1 localhost [NFS Service] changed share folder [Qmultimedia] allow host from [*] to [*] successfully.
2010-08-16 144 10:32:58 System 127.0.0.1 localhost [NFS Service] changed share folder [Qmultimedia] access control from [Access denied] to [Read only] successfully.
2010-08-16 143 10:31:21 System 127.0.0.1 localhost [NFS Service] started successfully.

What is the NAS connected to (switch/router, exact model)?

NETGEAR GS108 10/100/1000Mbps:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833122111


What I did to try and correct the error, after some google search (rather inconclusive):
[*] set "0" for the Twonky MS rescan delay
[*] reboot my Netgear router
[*] reboot my internet box
[*] reboot my PC

[P3R]

Go to System Status, System Information. Then look under Port Status and please tell us what you see in the rightmost column, under Error Packets.

Are both of the LEDs on the switch lit above the port where the NAS is attached?

Have you tried exchanging the network cable to the NAS?

By the way, what disks are you using? could it be that Note 10, or even worse Note 8, in the disk compatibility list apply?

I know, these suggestions are longshots but I have no better ideas right now.