4.1.7 Slow To Respond To SMB Network Discovery...

Jedi Knight wrote:
The only thing I can think of is was somehow samba daemon become unresponsive after reboot (or) doesn't get started correctly (however, if you restart the services by manually, it works fine).

Any news / updates on the topic?
It seems that many ReadyNAS customers are facing those performance issues after applying the new firmware.
O.k - now it's christmas time. But the issue has been reported quite a while before the winter break.
I'd like to know if someone is already / still working on the issue. Is the root cause analysis completed?
Are you already working on a patch?

+1 for the disable/re-enable "trick." I bought my ReadyNAS Duo recently and never used any firmware other than 4.1.7, so I have no idea how the speed "should" have been, but I did notice that it was slow. After disabling and re-enabling CIFS, network discovery is much faster, even over an OpenVPN connection through a tethered cell phone (I'm currently on a train).

Hi Jedi Knight,

Following on from your request above, and your PMs to me, I made some time to perform an OS Reinstall. I regret to inform you that this has made *no* difference to this problem.

The stop/start of the CIFS service has once again saved the day and restored the NAS to a working state.

Regards,
Ian.

See also the posting of "Nyarlathotep":
He has bought a new ReadyNAS Duo with firmware 4.1.7 - facing the same issues. So, it's not a matter of upgrades. The firmware version 4.1.7 is buggy - and hopefully there'll be soon a bugfix.

@Ian: Thank you for that information - so, it's not worth to perform an OS reinstall.

Hi WSJ,

WSJ wrote:
@Ian: Thank you for that information - so, it's not worth to perform an OS reinstall.

If it isn't too disruptive you may care to try the reinstall yourself to confirm my observation. All this broke was the admin password and the NAS digital certificate. Both were easily fixed.

Regards,
Ian.

Good news, Everyone!

I finally had the opportunity to back up the data on one of my ReadyNAS Duos. Feeling a bit more secure having taken that precaution, I searched for information about downgrading to 4.1.6. Here's what I found out :)

The page announcing the release of 4.1.6 on July 15, 2009 is still alive! And it can be found at http://www.readynas.com/?p=2620

On that page, you'll find the image for the 4.1.6 firmware still being served in its original form at http://www.readynas.com/download/RAIDiator/RAIDiator-4.1.6 (this is a direct link to the 59.4 MB image which you can use to do a "Local Update" in your ReadyNAS web config screens).

When you click "Upload and verify image..." it will think for a few moments and then results in this screen



Happily, I clicked Perform System Update. The ReadyNAS Duo immediately told me to reboot. It took a few minutes to update itself while booting, but after that I am pleased to report that all of my settings, shares and files were intact. Browsing to the CIFS share was instant without using the toggling hack. I rebooted and browsed to my share just to confirm, and yes, the discovery is instant again.

Purely in the interest of science, I rebooted my ReadyNAS Duo that still has 4.1.7 on it. It took the ~30 seconds to find the CIFS share, as usual. I will be downgrading this one as well after posting this reply.

tl;dr - I have confirmed that downgrading to 4.1.6 fixes this bug.

I hope this helps,

Sean

PS - I must admit that I had hoped for the Netgear crew to help me out on these forums instead of having to figure this stuff out myself. In the future it'd be nice to have more acknowledgment, concern and updates about the progress towards fixing bugs like this one.

Out of interest, could you do a

smbd --version

on both your Duo's ?

I have confirmed that downgrading to 4.1.6 fixes this bug.

Unfortunately, that is not an option for me, as I need 4.1.7 for my WD EARS drives (the same ones as "Quentin") with 4K sectors... I'll have to wait until the next release.

Quinten wrote:
Out of interest, could you do a smbd --version on both your Duo's ?

I have like, zero experience doing command-line stuff with network devices. Let me know how to do this and I'll post the result when I get home from work today.

Happy New Year!

You have to install the Enable Root SSH Access (http://www.readynas.com/?p=4203) plugin (if you haven't done this yet) and then log in using Putty or another terminal emulator. Once in, just type the command above.