I'm flying blind...

[ProtoSD]

I think you should be fine leaving off the -r -z, the -r is implied when using -a, and the -z just does compression during the transfer, so it's not really necessary.

to cd to a folder with a space like "My Folder" you can type 'cd My\ Folder' or you can just let the shell completion do it for you by typing "My" and pressing the TAB key and it will complete the name for you as long as there is only one Folder or File that begins with "My".

 

[TapRackPull]

I can't begin to understand how you COULD keep all the threads you point people to straight. I think it is safe to say that you are a very valuable resource for freeNAS. I know that I appreciate your help immensely.

I guess my copying skills are good, since the system, rebooted itself without issue. I will do a rsync of a "smaller" file set first to get an idea of transfer rate.

 

[ProtoSD]

Thanks, I guess it's a little easier the more involved you get here because you see the stuff more often, but it's tough because so many people are asking the same stuff and starting new threads. I think my next project will be to start a FAQ....

So you were able to use 'vi' ok and edit loader.conf without any trouble?

 

[TapRackPull]

Yeah the edit to loader.conf went well. The system is transferring data, and the edits fixed the inability to access the GUI/SSH login while transferring. But my transfer rate still sucks. I'm at ~15MB/s. The switch isn't even in the picture since this is all on the same system. I can't explain it, but I'm sure there is a simple solution.

 

[ProtoSD]

Well 15MB a lot better than the 7-9 you were getting before. I somehow overlooked the fact that you weren't copying over the network, even though we talked about the rsync options... Glad to hear you were able to navigate editing the loader.conf, I wasn't looking forward to explaining 'vi' to you ;-)

I don't understand why so many people here are afraid to try some different settings in loader.conf but just expect things to work at peak performance out of the box. You're at least the second person I've suggested editing those settings to that has said they helped. I have a bunch more, but I can't really explain them all and haven't done any serious testing to say that they really made a significant difference.

 

[TapRackPull]

Well, send 'em at me. Allow me to help you spitball various ideas. Once this set of file transfers is done - sometime tomorrow - I have more to do, less than this evening, but still a substantial amount. I can tweak a setting, transfer some stuff, reset, tweak something else, transfer stuff, reset... repeat til we have some idea. Of course things will vary based on set up, but it would be handy to have a wiki entry for people that have 4GB with regards on how to streamline the thing. I have to admit that I feel the wiki is about useless for someone just starting out. Have a great night, and send me anythingyou would like me to try out.

Matt

 

[TapRackPull]

I can not recall having an option to for 4k sectors, let alone checking the option. I am using WDEARS drives. Could that, if I had missed the option, account for my slower than appropriate transfer rate? Is there a way for me to investigate my sector size. Obviouls yif it is incorrect I would have to destroy the volume and start over... again. I'm getting good at mounting the ntfs and using rsync though!

 

[ProtoSD]

There was another long thread about 4k sectors. Here's the trick from that thread to check what you are currently set to:

#zdb -U /data/zfs/zpool.cache | grep ashift
From output, if the zfs metadata says ashift=9 was 512 blocks ashift=12 was 4096 blocks

If you get an error that says "zpool.cache file doesn't exist", then do:

zpool set cachefile=/data/zfs/zpool.cache YOUR-POOL-NAME

 

[TapRackPull]

It would turn out that the drives were initally mounted as 512 not 4k. So I destroyed the volumes and recreated them as 4k. I did a dd if= command before I destroyed them and then first thing after I created them. My write speeds more than doubled ~150MB/s, and my read speeds edged up a small amount~120MB/s. So, I restarted rsync transferring nearly 800GiB of data. The write speed on this local ntfs mounted drive to local RaidZ transfer is relatively unchanged. Perhaps a couple MB/s quicker but still averaging under 20MB/s. Are there any additional tweaks, and tunes that I can try? I'm open to anything.
I currently have 4GiB of RAM non-ECC, and according to the GUI a fair amount of it is unused at the moment. Would increaing to 8GiB help?

 

[pauldonovan]

Glad to hear you were able to navigate editing the loader.conf, I wasn't looking forward to explaining 'vi' to you ;-)

FreeBSD has the editor 'ee' installed by default. It's a lot easier to use than vi - just press Escape when you're finished editing and you get a menu with options to save etc.

 

[ProtoSD]

Thanks Paul, I'll keep that in mind if I'm in another situation like that. It's good to know there's an 'easy' alternative. I've used 'vi' for as long as I can remember, so I know it with my eyes closed.

 

[TapRackPull]

I guess 'ee' is why I hd no problems with 'vi'!!!