NFS Issues - Best Idea to Switch to SMB?

[Chamrajnagar]

I had a FreeNAS box running 9.3 and an SMB share for a few years, but recently the install became corrupted. I decided it would be a good time to update, so now I'm running 11.2.

I have a pretty simple network - just a FreeNAS box accessed by a Windows machine and a Mac machine as well as a few devices accessing Plex. I decided to set up an NFS share this time around to see if I could take advantage of the higher transfer speed since I regularly move large files around.

I was able to get things working, but ran into a few issues along the way, namely that I had to mount the shares on my Windows machine with the "nolock" tag. I set the share up as recommended in the documentation, with the user and group set to nobody. It seemed to be working last night, but when I came back this morning I started having I/O errors - can't open any files.

I know NFS doesn't always play well with Windows, but based on my reading support has improved significantly in recent years. Should I just switch back to SMB? Unless there's an easy fix that seems like the most headache-free solution.

 

[m0nkey_]

SMB will happily give wire speed performance. On my system, I can reach 110MB/sec over SMB.

 

[Chamrajnagar]

SMB will happily give wire speed performance. On my system, I can reach 110MB/sec over SMB.

That's pretty good. Better than I was hoping to get with NFS. I think I'll switch back.

 

[Chamrajnagar]

On the other hand, you have a more powerful CPU than I do, so that's probably helping your SMB speeds. I'm using an Atom C2750, Passmark score 3800 compared to 7100 for your Xeon. I'm wondering if the multi-threading benefits would help my speeds.

On the NFS share, it looks like I'm losing access on both the Mac and Windows clients. I can restore it by un-mounting and re-mounting the share. I'm wondering if the clients are being assigned new IPs by the router on reset, and that's causing issues with accessing the share. I'm not very knowledgeable on the topic, so I don't know if that's plausible.

 

[m0nkey_]

I'm wondering if the multi-threading benefits would help my speeds.

No, because Samba isn't threaded.

The C2750 is quite capable of wire speeds using SMB.

 

[Chamrajnagar]

No, because Samba isn't threaded.

The C2750 is quite capable of wire speeds using SMB.

Yeah I know, I was referring to the potential benefits of NFS.

You're right that the C2750 is no slouch, but I was never able to come close to wire speeds.

I've been tinkering more with NFS today to see if I could at least get things working so I could take it for a spin for a week or so, but no luck. I'm moving back to SMB tonight.

 

[Chamrajnagar]

Got a SMB share back up and transfer speeds are about 5MB/sec, and weirdly erratic.

 

[Eniqmatic]

Got a SMB share back up and transfer speeds are about 5MB/sec, and weirdly erratic.

Anything in the Samba log?

 

[Chamrajnagar]

Anything in the Samba log?

I'm not quite sure what to look for, but in log.wb-FREENAS I found the following:

sam_rids_to_names: possible deadlock - trying to lookup SID

Sounds like that may be related to a permissions issue, although I'm not sure if that would cause any speed issues.

 

[Eniqmatic]

I'm not quite sure what to look for, but in log.wb-FREENAS I found the following:



Sounds like that may be related to a permissions issue, although I'm not sure if that would cause any speed issues.

It could potentially be if it is having to do lookups all the time, are you using active directory?

 

[Chamrajnagar]

are you using active directory?

Not using AD. I just set up accounts on FreeNAS.

 

[Eniqmatic]

Not using AD. I just set up accounts on FreeNAS.

Do these errors appear if you tail the log then initiate a transfer?

 

[Chamrajnagar]

Do these errors appear if you tail the log then initiate a transfer?

Would that look like this?

# tail -f log.wb-FREENAS

 

[Eniqmatic]

Would that look like this?

Yes thats right, assuming you are in the correct directory. That is the winbindd log, you could also tail the log.smbd (from memory, not at mine to check right now) which is the samba log.

 

[Chamrajnagar]

Yes thats right, assuming you are in the correct directory. That is the winbindd log, you could also tail the log.smbd (from memory, not at mine to check right now) which is the samba log.

Thanks. I'm in /var/log/samba4

I'm not seeing any mention of sam_rids_to_names after initiating a transfer.

I think I need to look into running some network tests. I did move one of my client computers, and I'm wondering if the issue is with my network. I'd like to run some tests plugged directly into the same switch as the FreeNAS box to compare with my client PC. Might shed some light on the issue. Can you recommend any tools for this? I've briefly played with iperf, I just don't know what parameters I should be using or if I'd be better off using Netperf or something else.

 

[Eniqmatic]

Thanks. I'm in /var/log/samba4

I'm not seeing any mention of sam_rids_to_names after initiating a transfer.

I think I need to look into running some network tests. I did move one of my client computers, and I'm wondering if the issue is with my network. I'd like to run some tests plugged directly into the same switch as the FreeNAS box to compare with my client PC. Might shed some light on the issue. Can you recommend any tools for this? I've briefly played with iperf, I just don't know what parameters I should be using or if I'd be better off using Netperf or something else.

I assume you see nothing else obvious when following the logs?

iperf works well and is simple to use and is installed by default. To run you just set one side to be the server and one side to be the client. So if you set freenas to be the server you use

Code:

iperf -s

and simply leave the terminal open. Then on the client, you run

Code:

iperf -c ip-address-of-freenas

which will do a basic test. You can play around with the switches to make the test run for longer or change the TCP windows size.

Code:

iperf -R -c ip-address-of-freenas

will reverse the direction of the test. Give it a go see if it shows anything glaringly obvious!

 

[Chamrajnagar]

Give it a go see if it shows anything glaringly obvious!

Thanks! Definite network issue.

94mbps from my Windows client.
941mbps from my MacBook plugged into the same router as the FreeNAS box.

The cable connecting my Windows client is an old Cat5 cable, so it's not surprising that it's the weak link. Unfortunately it's buried underground and will take some work to replace.

My last question is whether it's typical for torrent downloads to be significantly slower than network speeds in this situation?

I'm on a 100mbps internet connection. From my Windows client, I can write files to the FreeNAS share at 11.4MB/sec, which is nearly identical to the 94mbps reported by iperf. Torrent downloads, however, run at about 1MB/sec, and the speed is erratic. Previously torrent downloads before I moved this client were about 10MB/sec.

I understand that torrents involve a lot of read and write operations. Is it normal for torrent speeds to be limited to about 1MB/sec when downloading over a network that's limited to 11-12MB/sec? If so there's nothing else to do but replace the cable. Given that it may take me some time to do that, however, I'd like to improve torrent speeds if possible.

Thanks again for all the help.

 

[Eniqmatic]

Thanks! Definite network issue.

94mbps from my Windows client.
941mbps from my MacBook plugged into the same router as the FreeNAS box.

The cable connecting my Windows client is an old Cat5 cable, so it's not surprising that it's the weak link. Unfortunately it's buried underground and will take some work to replace.

My last question is whether it's typical for torrent downloads to be significantly slower than network speeds in this situation?

I'm on a 100mbps internet connection. From my Windows client, I can write files to the FreeNAS share at 11.4MB/sec, which is nearly identical to the 94mbps reported by iperf. Torrent downloads, however, run at about 1MB/sec, and the speed is erratic. Previously torrent downloads before I moved this client were about 10MB/sec.

I understand that torrents involve a lot of read and write operations. Is it normal for torrent speeds to be limited to about 1MB/sec when downloading over a network that's limited to 11-12MB/sec? If so there's nothing else to do but replace the cable. Given that it may take me some time to do that, however, I'd like to improve torrent speeds if possible.

Thanks again for all the help.

Torrent speed is based entirely on how many seeders and leechers there are, and how much bandwidth those seeders are willing to supply.

Are you trying a very popular torrent? Maybe like a Linux ISO might be a good test or something...else :P

 

[Chamrajnagar]

Torrent speed is based entirely on how many seeders and leechers there are, and how much bandwidth those seeders are willing to supply.

Are you trying a very popular torrent? Maybe like a Linux ISO might be a good test or something...else :p

Yeah, I was using the Ubuntu distribution as a test.

Here are some results:

Windows Client:

• iperf 94mbps
• ubuntu torrent DL to HDD: 11MB/sec (qBitTorrent)
• ubuntu torrent DL to FreeNAS: 500KB/sec
• file copy to FreeNAS: 11.4MB/sec

Mac Client:

• iperf 941mbps
• ubuntu torrent DL to HDD: 11MB/sec (Transmission)
• ubuntu torrent DL to FreeNAS: 7MB/sec

I'm just trying to figure out if it's normal for torrent write speeds to be that much slower to my SMB share. If it is the only thing left to do is replace the cable. On the other hand I have downloaded torrents to my prior SMB share (exact same hardware) over that same cable and performance was much faster, which tells me there might be an issue with my share.

Thanks

 

[Chamrajnagar]

I think it's got to be a configuration issue with my Windows client.

My primary router is connected to my FreeNAS through a gigabit switch. The primary router also connects to a second router through a cat5 cable. The second router is acting as an access point.

My Windows client is connected to the access point via ethernet cable, and I if I download the Ubunto torrent on this client, saving it to my FreeNAS SMB share speeds are 0.5-1mbps.

If I connect my Mac client to the access point via WiFi, I can download the Ubuntu torrent to the FreeNAS SMB share at 3-4mbps. This is still going through the same cable to the primary router, and should be slower than the Windows client if anything, owing to being a WiFi connection.

I should be able to see at least 3-4mbps on the Windows client. I'm not sure why it's much slower. I'm using qBitTorrent on the Windows client and Transmission on the Mac. It could be that Transmission is doing a better job of managing traffic to the share.