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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garyd9
Virtuoso
Sep 08, 2014
Okay... (I left work a bit early on the grounds that I'm testing this thing FOR work... heh..)

I plug in a USB drive to the front port. It attaches, gets mounted, and shared as "USB_HDD_5." Protocols are "SMB", "AFP" and "HTTP." SMB+AFP perms are "Everyone, read/write", HTTP perms has Everyone unchecked.

I turn OFF HTTP and AFP and apply. The little green indicator turns off for AFP and HTTP. For SMB, I change the perms to "Everyone" is not checked, added "Domain Users" and read/write. (Using active directory for security.) I apply, then click "OK."

Wait 10 seconds and then click to EJECT the USB device. Physically unplug the USB device. Wait over 30 seconds. Plug the USB device back in...

It attaches, gets mounted, and shared as "USB_HDD_5" (again.) The permissions all reverted to SMB, AFP and HTTP all being on. SMB is configured for "Everyone" having read/write, AFP being read/write (and allow anon), and HTTP being turned on, but "everyone" is not checked.

Therefore, to confirm, the settings changes are definitely lost and are not applied when I reconnect the same disk without reformatting. This wouldn't be so much of an issue if the permissions it defaulted to were extremely restrictive (instead of being as permissive as possible.)

Take care
Gary
garyd9
Virtuoso
Sep 12, 2014
Due to an extremely strange set of circumstances, I'm able to purchase a 516 unit. This will help to evaluate for myself what's going on with the USB ports.

Q: I put the 6.1.9 RC11 of OS6 on my ProBE. Will I be able to update the 516 to the same RC (using a spare HDD) and then just pop the drives from the ProBE into the 516? (with a reasonable expectation that they'd normally work [if the drives are still functional]?)

mdgm-ntgr

NETGEAR Employee Retired

Sep 12, 2014

garyd9 wrote:

Q: I put the 6.1.9 RC11 of OS6 on my ProBE. Will I be able to update the 516 to the same RC (using a spare HDD) and then just pop the drives from the ProBE into the 516? (with a reasonable expectation that they'd normally work [if the drives are still functional]?)

garyd9 wrote:
Q: I put the 6.1.9 RC11 of OS6 on my ProBE. Will I be able to update the 516 to the same RC (using a spare HDD) and then just pop the drives from the ProBE into the 516? (with a reasonable expectation that they'd normally work [if the drives are still functional]?)

Yes. Of course you would shutdown the 516 and remove the spare HDD before putting your array in the 516.

Also remember to wait till the NAS comes back up after you reboot it as part of the update process and check that the update went fine.

garyd9

Virtuoso

Sep 12, 2014

mdgm wrote:
Yes. Of course you would shutdown the 516 and remove the spare HDD before putting your array in the 516.

Also remember to wait till the NAS comes back up after you reboot it as part of the update process and check that the update went fine.

mdgm wrote:
Yes. Of course you would shutdown the 516 and remove the spare HDD before putting your array in the 516. Also remember to wait till the NAS comes back up after you reboot it as part of the update process and check that the update went fine.

Yes.

I'll also be careful to keep the drives in the same order. I'm assuming the bays are numbered 1 thru 6 working from the top to bottom on the 516? (On the ProBE, they are 1-3 top left to top right, 4-6 bottom left to bottom right.) (Although, I'm not sure its still required to keep the drives in order anymore with the newer firmware... is it?)

mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Sep 12, 2014
Yes, that's the order.

Not required to keep the order the same, but best practice to.
garyd9
Virtuoso
Sep 13, 2014
Got the 516... switching the drives was no problem. Everything seems to be working okay.

I still have SERIOUS problems with USB devices:

1. The drives auto-mount as a share with extremely liberal permissions and all protocols. Even if I manually remove all the protocols, when I eject the drive and re-insert it, it's auto-mounted and shared with those overly liberal permissions and all protocols again. THIS IS VERY BAD.

2. There's no way to format, partition, or otherwise prepare a "new" USB device. As a test, I pulled a USB drive and nuked the partition table with a MacBook. When I insert the drive in the 516, it's unusable. (It also seemed unusable when I partitioned it and formatted as plain FAT.)

3. I am able to back up to the USB devices now from the UI, but only if I pre-format the drive manually. My way of dealing with that was to insert a blank USB drive, drop to ssh, run fdisk to partition (fdisk /dev/sdf1, n, accept all defaults, w) and then format by hand (mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdf1) Once I did that, I'd remove and re-insert the drive and I could back up to it. I doubt this is a supported way of doing things, but I can't find any alternative. (I don't have any other linux box running at the moment to format ext3 with.)

@mdgm, is this post enough to report the problem, or do I have to go through the nightmare of dealing with netgear's phone support? (Actually, phone support won't talk to me while I'm running 6.1.9 RC11.)

...

In other 516 news, I like the new box a bit better than the old one. It appears to run cooler, and doesn't require 5 layers of electrical tape to turn down the brightness of the power button LED. I'm not sure what I think about the new drive trays.. the plastic rails seems fragile, but at least I can also use real screws. The reset button on the back was difficult for me to use (big hole but tiny little button inside.) The touchpad is kind of interesting. It's nice to be able to view so many different stats on the front panel using the touchpad. However, purple isn't my favorite color..

Take care
Gary
xeltros
Apprentice
Sep 13, 2014
OS6 also supports HFS+, fat32 and NTFS (BTRFS is not listed officially but of course works). Exfat is not supported but is quite easy to add via SSH (2 packages to get via apt get, not additional config), still I would stick with supported file formats for safety.
So any computer can format a drive and have it read by the NAS. You could also use a linux live CD if needed.

I agree for the the permissions on the USB drive. I have two ideas but haven't tested them, they can impact the access to the USB device.
1- set restrictive files rights (700 for admin user), even if the drive is shared, files shouldn't be readable.
2- use /etc/fstab and the USB device UID to mount the device to somewhere else. I think OS6 mounts drives to data and shares what's in it. Mounting it elsewhere would prevent this auto share. This could also impact the ability to backup to the drive. Creating a user and mounting the USB drive in /home/user and using the backup utility to backup this home directory could be a solution to that.

Those two options have not been tested and are not supported by Netgear, but they are ideas that didn't sound stupid to me ;)

garyd9

Virtuoso

Sep 13, 2014

xeltros wrote:
OS6 also supports HFS+, fat32 and NTFS (BTRFS is not listed officially but of course works). Exfat is not supported but is quite easy to add via SSH (2 packages to get via apt get, not additional config), still I would stick with supported file formats for safety.
So any computer can format a drive and have it read by the NAS. You could also use a linux live CD if needed.

xeltros wrote:
OS6 also supports HFS+, fat32 and NTFS (BTRFS is not listed officially but of course works). Exfat is not supported but is quite easy to add via SSH (2 packages to get via apt get, not additional config), still I would stick with supported file formats for safety. So any computer can format a drive and have it read by the NAS. You could also use a linux live CD if needed.

The reason I chose ext3/4 was simple: That's what the previous NAS (readynas pro BE) formatted the backup devices as. If the USB device was formatted as one of the other filesystems, would the NAS and ADS (via samba) permissions be preserved on the backup? (Probably not for fat32, and maybe not for NTFS?)

At this point, due to the issues with the USB devices (most especially the auto-share with liberal permissions), the newer readynas firmware ("OS6") is not suitable for use at the company I work for. :(

xeltros wrote:
1- set restrictive files rights (700 for admin user), even if the drive is shared, files shouldn't be readable.

xeltros wrote:
1- set restrictive files rights (700 for admin user), even if the drive is shared, files shouldn't be readable.

I suspect this might work. It depends on how samba is configured. (smb is running as root.) Of course, the smb configuration appears to be controlled by frontview, so there might not be any way to deal with it from there.

xeltros wrote:
2- use /etc/fstab and the USB device UID to mount the device to somewhere else. I think OS6 mounts drives to data and shares what's in it. Mounting it elsewhere would prevent this auto share. This could also impact the ability to backup to the drive. Creating a user and mounting the USB drive in /home/user and using the backup utility to backup this home directory could be a solution to that.

xeltros wrote:
2- use /etc/fstab and the USB device UID to mount the device to somewhere else. I think OS6 mounts drives to data and shares what's in it. Mounting it elsewhere would prevent this auto share. This could also impact the ability to backup to the drive. Creating a user and mounting the USB drive in /home/user and using the backup utility to backup this home directory could be a solution to that.

They mount to "/media", I think. I haven't spent the time to figure out what is mounting them, but if its something similar to udev, fstab probably is ignored.

Take care
Gary

xeltros
Apprentice
Sep 14, 2014
You should be able to modify file rights within GUI, file access tab. I believe samba uses the system users directly.

You are right they are in /media. I just checked. I don't know what is mounting them.
StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Sep 14, 2014
xeltros wrote:
You should be able to modify file rights within GUI, file access tab. I believe samba uses the system users directly.
Unfortunately the file access tab only resets the share root, it is not recursive. "reset" is hard-wired to factory default rights (guest/guest, wide open) which isn't what garyd9 wants.

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