First, a direct question:I'm currently running my Pro BE's with 5 or 6 disks using "x-raid2" and "dual redundancy." (RAID6 with the xraid2 expansion scheme.)I downloaded the manual for one of the new Os6 devices, and it has led me to believe that the new OS no longer supports dual redundancy while using the proprietary "xraid2" expansion scheme. (Page 34 of the software manual states: "If you want to protect your data against the failure of two disks, you must switch to Flex-RAID and select RAID 6. ")Is this true and accurate?Second, a more general question:There doesn't seem to be a post or document that simply describes what has changed between the version 4 software and the new OS6 software. I've seen a couple of threads where people have tried to ask this, but they seem to go unanswered (besides people mentioning that ext3/4 limits are removed with btrfs, and that btrfs supports all kinds of wonderful things that isn't actually supported in the netgear product such as self-healing.) So, skipping all the marketing hype or netgear add-on stuff such as clouds, genies, and purple smoke in lamps, what does OS6 offer a person or business over the RAIDiator 4 firmware? Please don't include anything that doesn't already exist. (Promises for things that might happen in the future are great, but if they don't ALREADY exist, I have to assume the promises are as empty as the raidiator 4 promise of putting back snapshot resizing.)ThanksGary

Why don't you see by yourself ? Netgear has a VM for that ;) http://apps.readynas.com/pages/?page_id=143This VM fully works for virtualbox. My ESX server boots it with LSI SAS driver but the interface for drives volume is showing only one disk, so you can't test the raid modes. You can update the VM to the latest software if you want, it should work. I don't have a NAS with a 4.x version to give you more detailed informations, but I think/hope the VM will give you every answer you need.

garyd9 wrote:"If you want to protect your data against the failure of two disks, you must switch to Flex-RAID and select RAID 6."Is this true and accurate?Yes. Though switching to flex-raid doesn't require a factory reset (unlike OS4). garyd9 wrote:Second, a more general question:There doesn't seem to be a post or document that simply describes what has changed between the version 4 software and the new OS6 software. I've seen a couple of threads where people have tried to ask this, but they seem to go unanswered (besides people mentioning that ext3/4 limits are removed with btrfs, and that btrfs supports all kinds of wonderful things that isn't actually supported in the netgear product such as self-healing.) So, skipping all the marketing hype or netgear add-on stuff such as clouds, genies, and purple smoke in lamps, what does OS6 offer a person or business over the RAIDiator 4 firmware? Please don't include anything that doesn't already exist. (Promises for things that might happen in the future are great, but if they don't ALREADY exist, I have to assume the promises are as empty as the raidiator 4 promise of putting back snapshot resizing.)xeltros made an excellent suggestion - it is worthwhile to test drive the GUI.I use OS4 on my pro-6 (and an NV+ v1 and duo v1), and OS6 on an RN102 which I use for backup. The OS6 GUI is more modern than the OS4 GUI - though frankly that doesn't matter that much to me.Operationally, OS6 has AntiVirus protection, and snapshots that actually do something useful for me. The kernel is much newer, which has advantages if you want to load your own packages, and is possibly good for security. BTRFS is designed to be more robust than ext4, so it is less likely to get corrupted due to unexpected power loss, etc - but that is not something I am inclined to test. I can understand why you might be skeptical about that (though the robustness isn't really about the self-healing stuff). BTRFS built-in file checksums are nice, even if there is no magic healing. Today I create SFV files in every media folder directory I have (some thousands) so I can verify files. I wouldn't need that if all my file systems had the checksums.OS6 is missing a couple of features I have on the pro-6 - for instance, I can send a WoL packet to a MAC address in an OS4 backup job, but I can't do that with OS6. Disk Spin down isn't there yet (which I suspect you've already seen). I can't schedule scrubs or file system checks yet. The GUI won't let me reset file owner/group and permissions the way I want to reset them. I use all those features, and would miss them if I switched to OS6.Is it worth switching to OS6 on a functional PRO running OS4? In my opinion its not (and I haven't). Though others here obviously do (and have). What might change my mind about switching on my Pro ? Some more features, and not losing Netgear support. Am I happy overall with OS6? Yes. It's been stable, and I think it will work out well as the going forward platform. Having one platform that runs on both ARM and x86 is good for users, not just for Netgear.

Having one platform that runs on both ARM and x86 is good for users, not just for Netgear.I totally agree. It is also better for app developers. What you said about the built in checksum is interesting, did you enable it ? I'd be curious about the performance implication for a 102/104. I know the antivirus is already a killer for performance with the weak ARM CPU, I would expect checksum to be even worst. Snapshots is definitely a wonderful feature. BTRFS has some neat tricks in his pockets and it's not excluded that Netgear put them to use in some 6.3 or 6.4 update. I think the compression system already uses the BTRFS mechanism for example. Since Netgear has some good relationship with BTRFS team, I'm pretty sure we will get "bleeding edge" (when stable and tested, so not that bleeding edge but still...). I have the feeling that Netgear made choices with OS6 for the long run.

Thanks for the reply with answers. Testing a demo on a VM isn't something I wanted to get into right now. Basically, I'm having a dilemma: I have 3 Pro BE boxes. One is out of warranty, and the others are still within the 5 years (but will expire over the next 18 months or so.) Like a complete idiot, I actually believed the firmware release notes for the past 4 to 5 years stating that snapshot resizing would be re-enabled, so I've kept hoping that Netgear wasn't lying to me. Apparently, they were.So, I'm evaluating what I'm going to do now. As they drop out of warranty, the boxes are much less useful to me. One of the primary reasons for spending the extra money on the BE boxes was the 5 year warranty. I always knew that if a p/s died or something, I'd get it repaired or replaced from netgear. As well, I could put the RAID sets into one of the other devices to extract the data. (Yes, I have backups, but its on extremely slow and inconvenient media.) Being that new ReadyNAS devices are using an incompatible OS, I can't even reliably purchase a new replacement box to drop the existing drives into without erasing everything.Combining all this, I need to start planning for cycling these boxes out of use. That means either staying with netgear or moving to a different NAS product completely. Right now, I'm bitter that Netgear has abandoned the devices I still have (and are still under warranty) without re-enabling a feature that I purchased with the devices. In case I haven't made it obvious yet, I think my bitterness is mostly about Netgear promising to re-enable the feature for years, but it's been a lie. That has me leaning away from anything with a "netgear" brand on it.On the other hand, these boxes have served me well over the past several years. I had one warranty "advanced replacement" without too much hassle (once I got past the script jockey when calling for tech support), and I had another die from a lightning strike on the building. (Happily, the 6 drive RAID inside was in perfect condition once I put the drives in another box.) That's a pretty good track record for me. So, I'm trying to look past my bitterness and to evaluate what's different with "OS6" when compared to what I've been using. What will I lose and what will I gain. From what I can tell, I'll gain more flexibility in expanding the RAID and useful snapshots, but I'll lose dual redundancy and scheduled scrubs. (Or, I can retain dual redundancy, but lose some flexibility in expanding the RAID.) For me, the NAS is about FAST and RELIABLE data access across a gigabit network. Drives spinning down doesn't mean anything to me (I have it disabled on the Pro BE boxes.) As well, anything with the word "cloud" in it is actually a negative and would be disabled. Beyond the fluff, are there any other actual differences?Even though I'm trying to get past my bitterness, I have to assume that any feature that doesn't exist TODAY will never exist no matter what promises are made, and that Netgear might even take a feature or two away from me. Netgear has proven that this is one of the "hidden costs" of doing business with them. So, that's why I was hoping that someone could make it simple and describe "what's different." (Please pardon me if the post is a bit long winded and repetitive.)Gary

I do have checksums enabled but haven't seen performance issues. I am running jbod, not raid - which could matter. Though another recent post suggested that the checksums might actually not turn off, no matter how the GUI is set. I started with the SFV files years ago when I lost a main disk and then discovered that the backup (optical) had read errors. Being able to verify the data if I wanted to seemed like a good idea going forward. It'd be hard to do on the photos and documents, since they aren't as regularly organized. But the audio and video libraries are (one folder per album, etc), so I just make them as I rip things.I have antivirus turned off. The PCs have AV protection, so I don't see the need for it. And on the ARM the performance penalty is significant.File system compression is another OS6 feature that OS4 doesn't have. I don't have it on though (it helps for documents, but not media that is already compressed).

"OS6" - a question or three | NETGEAR Communities

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StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Sep 06, 2014
Note that with OS6, the apps are stored on the data volume (\data\.apps by default). That helps ensure that the OS partition doesn't fill. But it also means that destroying data volumes has implications on the apps.

Some apps seem to assume /data, so it is sensible to have one data volume with that name.
garyd9
Virtuoso
Sep 06, 2014
Still rebuilding. At 65% with an ETA of another 3 1/2 hours. (I guess I only got a couple hours of a nap.)

@mdgm: Yes, it's named "data" (same as original.) My suspicion is that installing the OS on top of itself would do the trick (but I'm not entirely sure how to do that non-destructively with OS6.) Is that something on the boot menu, or something I can do from frontview (or whatever the netgearized web UI is called?) Perhaps I can modify the firmware file so that OS6RC11 thinks that OS6RC11 is a valid "upgrade"? (not sure - I haven't tried to upgrade to itself without modifying.)

@StephenB: I wonder if the UI visible LIST of available apps is also stored on /data. If so, it might be lost on my box (until I factory restore it again.) Oddly, very few people would probably be hit with the issue, as I suspect most people who want the available apps are going to leave the initial volume intact.... no... even that would be too visible. However, if an OS upgrade "fixed" the problem, then perhaps that's why its not a bigger problem. (I no longer think it has anything to do with the unsupported h/w.)

Gary
StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Sep 06, 2014
I don't know the mechanism, but I have seen the available app list be blank for a while after install or an upgrade.

You should be able to install RC11 over itself from the web ui without changing anything. The front panel OS reinstall procedure should also work.
garyd9
Virtuoso
Sep 06, 2014
reboot did NOT work. However, reinstalling 6.1.9RC11 from frontview did the trick.
garyd9
Virtuoso
Sep 06, 2014
Okay... a new question. ;)

I started with 4 drives installed (1x1TB, 3x2TB) configured to RAID6 which I then converted to XRAID. As I expected, the drive combination provided just under 2TG of space.

I then inserted an additional 2TB drive, so the combination is now 1x1TB, 4x2TB. I expected the space to jump up to about 4.6TB of usable space. However, it only went up to 3.63TB. All 5 drives show up in frontview and are listed as being online, but the space calculation makes me feel as if the 1TB drive is being dropped out of the array in favor of the new 2TB.

Using the xraid calculator linked in mdgm's sig, it confirms that xraid/raid6 with the installed drive combination should be 4.577 TB.

Are my assumptions (and the calculator) wrong? What am I missing?

Edit: Is this the answer to my question? viewtopic.php?f=7&t=77385#p431408 (In other words, do I just need to sit on my hands and be patient?)

Okay, another question: Is there a way to set up or change the "default" security profile for creating new shares? I see that in AD environments, new shares are read/write everyone by default. This is A Bad Thing for my purposes. Someone might create a new share and forget to get rid of that default permission...
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Sep 06, 2014
Be patient.

As for the AD situation, I believe that is by design: http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/7066
garyd9
Virtuoso
Sep 06, 2014
Okay.. being somewhat patient. (I'm playing with various things while waiting.)

I seem to have hit a stumbling block: USB. I had one particular share backed up to a USB HDD, so plugged that in on the front port and created a backup job to copy from the front USB to the re-created share. The job failed saying it couldn't find the source. (The drive was mounted to /media/USB_HDD_1 and to /run/nfs4/media/USB_HDD_1. I was able to see the files just fine in ssh, and by using the shares that the OS6 automatically created.)

Seeing that problem, I decided to see what would happen if I plugged in a different USB drive, reformatted, etc. However, I can't find any options for formatting usb devices! They just blindly get mounted. That, by the way, is VERY BAD. If I have data on a secure share (limited visibility and tight access controls) that I back up to an external USB device, it's VERY BAD that the USB drive used as the backup is shared with EVERYONE automatically. (Honestly, I don't want my USB stuff shared unless I specially tell it to!)

So, I dived into the OS6 software manual (and the readynas 516 hardware manual) to see what I could find for USB options. What I found was... pretty much nothing. The USB ports exist. There's no documentation on how to manipulate them, format devices, or anything else.

Can someone please enlighten me on if it's possible with OS6 to attach a USB drive WITHOUT having it shared, reformat the drive, and use that USB drive as either the source or destination of a backup job?

Thank you
Gary
garyd9
Virtuoso
Sep 07, 2014
Okay... everything finished rebuilding and appears to be working. I pulled the 1TB drive out and replaced it with a different one. The array is in a degraded but rebuilding state (which is expected.)

So far, I think the only really big problem (meaning I can't work around it) is the USB drive issue. One of the mechanisms we use for backing up involves portable USB hard drives, and that just doesn't seem to work at all. It's also unacceptable that the USB drive is automatically made into a share with all protocols and extremely liberal permissions. (Ideally, it wouldn't be shared at all unless I specifically configured it to be - its for backing up, not sharing!)

Note: The USB device MIGHT behave differently on an actual 516 device. No one has given any feedback on that.

(Mac Time machine also works with OS6 for at least one notebook. I'll need to grab another one to make sure multiple mac's can use time machine without any conflicts. That was never a problem with the v4 software, so I don't expect it to be a problem here either.)

garyd9

Virtuoso

Sep 07, 2014

garyd9 wrote:
So far, I think the only really big problem (meaning I can't work around it) is the USB drive issue. One of the mechanisms we use for backing up involves portable USB hard drives, and that just doesn't seem to work at all. It's also unacceptable that the USB drive is automatically made into a share with all protocols and extremely liberal permissions. (Ideally, it wouldn't be shared at all unless I specifically configured it to be - its for backing up, not sharing!)

garyd9 wrote:
So far, I think the only really big problem (meaning I can't work around it) is the USB drive issue. One of the mechanisms we use for backing up involves portable USB hard drives, and that just doesn't seem to work at all. It's also unacceptable that the USB drive is automatically made into a share with all protocols and extremely liberal permissions. (Ideally, it wouldn't be shared at all unless I specifically configured it to be - its for backing up, not sharing!)

Following up on this, I decided to see what would happen if I plugged a USB HDD that wasn't partitioned or formatted into the USB port. I grabbed a USB drive that I used some time in the past for a windows backup (Win7's backup tool) and just deleted the partition from it using the windows disk management tool. I "ejected" it from windows and plugged it into the NAS. The result was... nothing. I plug it in, and absolutely nothing whatsoever happens.

Checking dmesg over ssh, I see the following:

usb 1-2: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd
scsi10 : usb-storage 1-2:1.0
input: Western Digital  External HDD     as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.7/usb1/1-2/1-2:1.1/input/input5
generic-usb 0003:1058:0707.0005: input: USB HID v1.10 Device [Western Digital  External HDD    ] on usb-0000:00:1a.7-2/input1
scsi 10:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WD       PP III Studio II 0817 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdf] 976773168 512-byte logical blocks: (500 GB/465 GiB)
sd 10:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdf] Write Protect is off
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdf] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdf] No Caching mode page found
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdf] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdf] No Caching mode page found
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdf] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sdf:
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdf] No Caching mode page found
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdf] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 10:0:0:0: [sdf] Attached SCSI disk
root@NasPro:~#

So, at least the kernel see's the drive, even if the readynas stuff doesn't. (I get similar results, but with a different USB port number, if I plug it into a different USB port.)

Just to keep myself amused, I dropped into SSH on the NAS and created a partition on the drive via fdisk, type 83, full drive size. As soon as I wrote the table (w), I got an alert that an external device was connected. Here's where things start to get interesting. The next thing I knew, it appears that the NAS started doing something with the device. dmesg now has some more stuff in it:

ufsd: driver (8.6, Aug 20 2014 11:54:08, LBD=OFF, delalloc, acl, ioctl, ugm, rwm) loaded at ffffffffa0010000
NTFS (with native replay) support included
Hfs+/HfsX support included
optimized: speed
Build_for__Netgear_RN_R6_x86_k3.0.48_2012-11-26_U86_r193235_b3

ufsd: use builtin utf8 instead of kernel utf8
ufsd: sdf1 without journal

Now.. and this is really wild... notice above that I created a partition with type 83? In fact, here's the partition table:

root@NasPro:~# fdisk -l /dev/sdf

Disk /dev/sdf: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
81 heads, 63 sectors/track, 191411 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xfc2d02b8

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdf1            2048   976773167   488385560   83  Linux

Well, after I wrote that table, it appears that the NAS mounted /dev/sdf1 with some kind of self-sensing driver that mounted, get this, the NTFS partition that was on the device before I deleted the partition table. (Kind of a neat treat, actually.) I guess this is possible in theory, but I have to be honest that I've never seen it done before. I wouldn't trust any of the data in the partition, but it still confused me to see it.

Oh, and the NAS mounted the filesystem that shouldn't exist, and automatically created a share for it with full access on both SMB and AFP :(

Okay, "eject" the drive from the web interface, and run mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdf1. Unplug the device and plug it back in. Device is mounted (again) and a share auto-created for it.. and I still can't backup to it directly. At least it was mounted as ext4 this time. ;) Backup jobs still don't work.

A question for @mdgm: Does backing up to the USB port devices work on a proper 516? The reason I'm asking is this is really a show stopper for me with the current firmware. However, it might only be a problem because of the hardware I'm running OS6 on. It simply might not be mapping the USB ports in the firmware to the proper device names in the kernel due to the hardware difference.

mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Sep 07, 2014
Backups to USB do work.

I don't have a Pro BE to test on. I assume we haven't mapped the USB ports for legacy devices for backup jobs.

However you could enable Rsync for the USB disk and choose the Remote Rsync server option to backup to the USB disk. The path would be e.g. USB_HDD_1

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"OS6" - a question or three

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