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Forum Discussion
Duo Performance and lockout
Hi All,
I've been reading up a lot on performance issues that people are having but none seem to quite match mine. I apologise if I've writing about stuff already covered, but the performance troubleshooting page seems to be offline.
So, my setup:
I have a Duo with 2 1TB green caviar drives, running the latest firmware (4.1.13)
This is plugged directly into a netgear gigabit switch (new, problems were already there before)
Network has a squeezebox touch, a WD Live TV, 3 win 7 machines
1 win 7 machine is always on and has a share from the Duo mounted for online backup service livedrive
Duo is running squeezebox
Symptoms:
At apparently random times, playback on squeezebox just stops and it cannot even find the Duo. At the same time I cannot connect to the front end or SSH in or access any shares on the network. If I already have an SSH connection running and it hasn't been disconnected then it becomes extremely slow, but running top shows nothing particularly heavy going on.
Trying to copy files over windows shares is virtually impossible at all times.
Often when transferring large files via FTP, the connection simply closes.
Trying to run IOMeter when this is happening simply says that the share is not available.
Streaming movies over the WD works fine for a bit then suddenly buffering completely stops completely for a few minutes, then sometimes resumes for the remainder of the film.
Solutions tried:
This felt like a network IO problem, so I replaced the switch and cables, but no difference.
I moved the Duo and squeezbox onto the same switch to reduce latency and remove any other devices that might be the cause.
Do I need a new Duo?
Thanks for your help
Ben
I've been reading up a lot on performance issues that people are having but none seem to quite match mine. I apologise if I've writing about stuff already covered, but the performance troubleshooting page seems to be offline.
So, my setup:
I have a Duo with 2 1TB green caviar drives, running the latest firmware (4.1.13)
This is plugged directly into a netgear gigabit switch (new, problems were already there before)
Network has a squeezebox touch, a WD Live TV, 3 win 7 machines
1 win 7 machine is always on and has a share from the Duo mounted for online backup service livedrive
Duo is running squeezebox
Symptoms:
At apparently random times, playback on squeezebox just stops and it cannot even find the Duo. At the same time I cannot connect to the front end or SSH in or access any shares on the network. If I already have an SSH connection running and it hasn't been disconnected then it becomes extremely slow, but running top shows nothing particularly heavy going on.
Trying to copy files over windows shares is virtually impossible at all times.
Often when transferring large files via FTP, the connection simply closes.
Trying to run IOMeter when this is happening simply says that the share is not available.
Streaming movies over the WD works fine for a bit then suddenly buffering completely stops completely for a few minutes, then sometimes resumes for the remainder of the film.
Solutions tried:
This felt like a network IO problem, so I replaced the switch and cables, but no difference.
I moved the Duo and squeezbox onto the same switch to reduce latency and remove any other devices that might be the cause.
Do I need a new Duo?
Thanks for your help
Ben
29 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- TCP retransmits is very high. Watch for another day, and see how much it grows.
Also keep in mind that wifi links might result in TCP retransmits. Maybe try a wired transfer of a couple large files, and see if that results in an increase. - Right, after a lengthy backup I've managed to wdidle my disks and I thought it was better but no :(
I tried watching a film which was fine for about an hour and then suddenly freezes and retransmits in that hour were about 65 which seemed on.
So it's not CPU, it's not disk IO, it must be network surely? Are there any tools for monitoring network I/O on the Duo? Or any other suggestions?
Thanks guys
Ben - wdidle wouldn't make any difference with performance, it just reduces the head parking when the disk isn't being accessed.
Were there any log entries around the time that the film froze up?
You were using wired ethernet to access the NAS while you were watching it? If so, it does sound like it could be a network problem. AFAIK the network stats is the only diagnostic tool available from frontview. You could try an extended ping test from the PC (pinging the NAS).
If you are using windows, you can use the -t option.
Maybe also check the cables. Are you running gigabit? If so, you need 5E or better. - Hi StephenB,
I thought that the disks spinning down might be causing the inaccessibility, but no :(
Which log file would you look in for info? In messages I see entries for:
<code>Dec 19 12:16:22 ReadyNas kernel: LPCH_ACTIVE still on: 10
Dec 19 12:16:22 ReadyNas kernel: 2req = 1 8b1e02e8,00000000,00000000,00000000 1</code>
Yes, I am using wired connection to a gigabit netgear router but the squeezebox and the WD Live I use for streaming are only 100MB so I've actually set the network settings to 100 full duplex for now but no ready difference.
When it locks out, it does so for several minutes and it's not always all protocols and probably only once ever 90 mins (not regular though), so it really feels like the Duo is 'doing something' that slows it down...
Thanks
B - So right now for instance, I have an ssh connection (albeit slow) and frontend unavailable and squeezebox cannot find readynas on network. Nothing new in the logs either :(
If it is network, then I'd expect SSH to die too, and network stuff is rarely intermittent unless there are clashing IPs etc.
Hmmm. - Do you have any addons running other than squeezebox?
Is it possible that this backup is provoking the bad behavior?1 win 7 machine is always on and has a share from the Duo mounted for online backup service livedrive
TCP retransmits (or more properly the lost packets that provoke them) generally result in a massive rate back-off on the affected TCP connection. So a slow ssh connection is plausible.
Since you have ssh, maybe try using top to see what is running, and what the CPU load on the NAS is? - I've tried running top before and nothing new is running when this happens, load is not high an nothing hogging CPU or memory :(
I've tried killing livedrive to see if that helps and no joy.
I am running Transmission (although I turned this off whilst testing) and noled. That's it!
thanks for persisting with this, really useful to troubleshoot with someone else :) - Part of the difficulty with diagnosing this is that both the WDLive and squeezebox have buffers, so the problem may be occurring several minutes before I see things freeze up.
- Buffering in the WDLive is only seconds, not minutes (at least for video).
Did you try power-resetting the router (and any intermediate switches)? Easy to try, and might possibly solve it. - I bought a new switch already, and the router shouldn't be an issue I wouldn't have thought, as this is all internal network traffic.
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