My RN104 is driving me crazy and I hope someone can help!!!
I have two issues that might be related. Firstly a little background I used to use a NV+2 system that was great however drive bays 1 and 4 failed and I needed a replacement ASAP. I bought a RN104 (second hand) and after a few issues transfered all the data over from the failing NV+2.
the RN104 does not allow the installation of Apps (Plex and iStat) are the ones I would like, The process seems to fail at the "Preparing Packages" stage though I'm not 100% sure.
The other main issue is the bandwidth is so slow!!! I mainly use the unit for media streaming and watching 1080p films is impossible as the film either buffers every few minutes or I get a "Network error" message. - Just another note when I was copying all the files over from the old NV+2 I got a number of copy retry messages on the large mkv files.
I only have SMB / ReadyDNLA / HTTP / HTTPS enabled - no virus checking etc.
Running NAS Performance Tester 1.7 give Avg performance of ~ 3.5 MB/s writes and sometime ~10MB/s Reads though the Read tests do crash sometimes with "An unexpected Network Error Occured" message!
Running the same NAS Performance test from the same PC to another PC's drive gives 80-90MB/s results.
Re: Very Slow ReadyNAS RN104 and Apps will not install
Well, it sounds like not all your participating components are connected via GBit ethernet. I have all GBit network connections and streaming from my RN104 to a PC through GBit ethernet is around 40 MBit. That concerns the whole path (NAS, switch and/or router and workstation).
However, my RN204 is doing about 90 MBit in comparable cases. The RN104 is just very weak regarding processor and memory.
Should you have already implemented all GBit ethernet, here are some more hints on how to improve performance and stability of an RN104.
The ethernet switch is a NETGEAR GS105UK 5-Port Gigabit Unmanaged Ethernet Switch. I only have one ethernet cable connected from the NAS tot he switch. Looks a bit scary to add a second!!!
One thing I did try last night - again after the frustration of another stuttering film viewing try - I copied a 4.5Gb film off the NAs back onto the HTPC. This was achieved in less than five minutes! However when you look at the copying bandwidth it sometimes drops to either a very low values or completely stops!!! I believe it is these drop offs/hlats that are killing the film streaming. This would also explain the file copying retry issues etc I have seen and the NAS Performance Tester utility also failing with "unexpected Network Error"
Re: Very Slow ReadyNAS RN104 and Apps will not install
Hi
Thanks for the reply.
I actually tried something obvious last night - I copied a file from the NAs to the HTPC. The 4.5Gb file was copied in less than 5 minutes. However when i looked at the bandwidth figures the copy rate dropped intermittantly to a very low figure and stops sometimes. This is why I think film streaming has issues...it can;t cope with the slow down / halts in data flow.
I have tried both ethernet ports and get the same issue - could this be a hardware issue? I am a bit scared to try to run both ethernet ports paired!
The NAS is currently sync'd so no performance sapping operations are running
The disks are configured a X RAID.
One thing I have not tried is a memory test - not sure if this is really the issue. Also still not sure no Apps can be installed. Again not sure if this is linked.
I suggest downloading the log zip file and looking at the network statistics (which are in network_settings.log). It would also be useful to look at the disk health (for instance disk_info.log).
What services and apps are you running on the NAS? Quotas and antivirus can hurt performance.
Note I wasn't meaning to suggest that you use both NICs on the RN104. That can be done if you set up link aggregation/bonding - but your NAS can't saturate a gigabit link anyway, so there is no benefit. It would be good to try moving the cable to the other NIC (also trying a different cable, and a different switch port).
With regards to the APPs not installing the log file repeatedly shows:
Jul 24 15:46:40 Home fv-app-install[7283]: [plexmediaserver-ros6-binaries](0%) abort Jul 24 15:46:37 Home fv-app-install[7283]: Error during apt-get install. Perhaps you need to run 'apt-get update'. Jul 24 15:46:37 Home fv-app-install[7283]: Cannot extract package info from plexmediaserver-ros6-binaries Jul 24 15:46:35 Home fv-app-install[7283]: [plexmediaserver-ros6-binaries](0%) prepare
Look at the free space and available inodes for these folders in your log, and make sure you have reasonable free space. If you have questions on that, you can simply post what your log says here.
It looks like the OS partition is fine. However, most packages to need to pull in libraries over the internet - which (if you are using a static IP address) needs the DNS server to be configured. This is easy to overlook.
I can not install any Apps even those which I have downloaded and try to instal from the local drive. I have switched back to a Dynamic IP address and still nothing. The Apps List does seem to update without error so I presume the NAS is finding the internet but I can't really tell
Secondly I tried to run a Memory Test yesterday - from the Boot Menu I selectect the Memory Test and left it over night. This morning the display should "Memory Test" then the second line was "00:00:01" the Blue LED of the On/Off button was flashing. Is this a fail? It looks like the 00:00:01 should iterate (in seconds???) but had not moved.
I presume the NAS is finding the internet but I can't really tell
You can test this fairly easily by turning off NTP and then turning it back on. You should see a successful time sync event in the log if internet connectivity is working.
You do this using the settings wheel next to device time on the system overview page (toggling "synchronize clock with an internet server").
Okay I have spent a long time looking at why the unit is running so slowly. I have finally run through swapping out all the disks and Recovering the file system between each swap (takes ~3 days to resync) . For some reason when I took out a particular disk the whole unit has sped up and is now performing as expected. The suspect disk is a Seagate Barrcude 3TB disk - as is another disk in the unit. the third disk is a WD 3TB disk, The rogue disk was not showing any signs of failure but is obviously the cause of the issues. When I have time i will run some diagnostics on the disk to see if there is anything I can see but the NAS is normally good at detecting disk errors etc.so I am surprised no log messages highlighted is an issue - FYI I am getting log messages on the other Seagate disks warning of increasing reallocated sector counts.
Thanks for all the inputs - I just need to crack why no apps will install now!!!
