Problem with Seek/lack when streaming to XBMCbuntu via SMB

[webberen]

Hey there.

I am going OUT OF MY MIND...

My specs:

• Build: FreeNAS-8.3.1-RELEASE-p2-x64 (r12686+b770da6_dirty)
• Platform: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz
• Memory: 6119MB
• 4 X 2TB Hdd in STRIBE-mode
• 1 X 2TB Hdd standalone
• 2 X 500GB Hdd MIRROR-mode

I have the server setup with ZFS and use datasets for my shares.

I have problem with streaming to my HTPC which is running XBMCbunto(tried every version for troubleshoot). I can find all my shares and start playback with ease.
But no matter what or how I playback my files, they only run for a couple of minutes, then start to freeze for just a second while the screens says "seeking", and then continue. This keeps on, at random times throughout playback.
Off course my first thought was that my Zotac ID minipc was dying on me, so I tried two other machines... Same issue, but only when I stream from My NAS with freenas, There is no issue when I stream from my local PC which runs Win7 64bit.

I used to have two smaller netgear readynas duo as my NAS, no problem streaming to the above XBMC, but they where not expandable enough, so I thought... FREENAS the ....

Does anyone have a solution... I really would hate to start moving all my files to another storage to start over..

 

[cyberjock]

That's a pretty typical sign of a failing hard drive in your zpool. I don't know what 'STRIBE' mode is, but if you meant STRIPE as in RAID0 then you should start backing up your data very soon.

 

[gpsguy]

SSH into your system and run: zpool status -v

Post the results here, using

Code:

 tags.

 

[webberen]

Thanks for the reply.

And yes I meant STRIPE - raid0

As requested:

Code:

state: ONLINE                                                                  
  scan: none requested                                                          
config:                                                                         
                                                                                
        NAME                                          STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        FatJoe                                        ONLINE       0     0     0
          gptid/9e39a2ae-b9c2-11e2-bbed-e0cb4e34e5be  ONLINE       0     0     0
                                                                                
errors: No known data errors                                                    
                                                                                
  pool: ServerONE                                                               
 state: ONLINE                                                                  
  scan: none requested                                                          
config:                                                                         
                                                                                
        NAME                                          STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        ServerONE                                     ONLINE       0     0     0
          gptid/d854b199-baea-11e2-9068-e0cb4e34e5be  ONLINE       0     0     0
          gptid/d8d787c6-baea-11e2-9068-e0cb4e34e5be  ONLINE       0     0     0
          gptid/56a88f0f-bf9a-11e2-add0-e0cb4e34e5be  ONLINE       0     0     0
          gptid/574a3181-bf9a-11e2-add0-e0cb4e34e5be  ONLINE       0     0     0
                                                                                
errors: No known data errors                                                    
[root@NasBIG ~]#             

I forgot to mention that no matter which zpool I stream from, its the same ...

 

[cyberjock]

I forgot to mention that no matter which zpool I stream from, its the same ...

That's actually a big deal. I had the same problem with my media server. Fixed it by adding more RAM. Considering the amount of data and RAM, I'm no surprised.

 

[webberen]

I feared that might be the answer, but DAMN... Then that ZFS filesystem uses a lot of JUICE....

Thanks for your kind replies, I will try stacking up some more RAM... I am locked by my MB to max 16GB, so I hope its enough..

 

[Starpulkka]

Im amazed that you got freebsd workin on i7 machine, i just gived up my i7 machine it randomly tryed shit zfs system, (lost entire vdevs) but freenas zfs won and data and harddrives are fine with other brand machine.. My experience was that its cheaper buy amd fx cpu, ecc ddr3mem and cheap motherboard than buy expensive ddr2 memory and try possibly non compatible chipset hardware. Have you checked temperatures? Might also be hdd related broblem or non compatible hardware.

 

[webberen]

Im amazed that you got freebsd workin on i7 machine, i just gived up my i7 machine it randomly tryed shit zfs system, (lost entire vdevs) but freenas zfs won and data and harddrives are fine with other brand machine.. My experience was that its cheaper buy amd fx cpu, ecc ddr3mem and cheap motherboard than buy expensive ddr2 memory and try possibly non compatible chipset hardware. Have you checked temperatures? Might also be hdd related broblem or non compatible hardware.

Very enteristing approach, the reason for i7 is my choice, is that it was leftover from my old work-machine... but I see your point...

I will try more RAM tommorow and test the setup again...And THEN I will test if anything gets hot..

:)

 

[webberen]

And thats it... I upgraded to 12gb of RAM and now it runs like a kitten on wheels.

 

[cyberjock]

Im amazed that you got freebsd workin on i7 machine, i just gived up my i7 machine it randomly tryed shit zfs system, (lost entire vdevs) but freenas zfs won and data and harddrives are fine with other brand machine.. My experience was that its cheaper buy amd fx cpu, ecc ddr3mem and cheap motherboard than buy expensive ddr2 memory and try possibly non compatible chipset hardware. Have you checked temperatures? Might also be hdd related broblem or non compatible hardware.

I really have no clue what your problem is, but you seem to be very confused. First you say that your experience tells you its cheaper to buy AMD FX CPU with DDR3 than an i7 with expensive DDR2. There are no i7s that use DDR2. I have built 3 systems with i7s and I'd recommend them before AMD any day.

 

[Starpulkka]

Indeed, you are right it uses ddr3 memory not ddr2. My mistake. I did confuse my comment on my intel core 2 setup, witch have ddr2 memory and hardware is failing that system also (hdds answer slowly,tested cables,memorys,hdds, motherboard seems broken..).

But i also have i7 system that have also some weird hdd lost broblems, then i bought cheap amd fx system and hdds are fine. I automatically thinked that freenas can be picky with hardware.

I do have simpler setups just 6x1Tb raidz2 at 8GB memory and cifs speed is fine at 111Mt/s so i guessed wrong that 6GB memory is enough..

I apoligize my poor writing, i have used lots of filesystems at 20years time, and i have balls to admit if im wrong at something, still i just learned something new in this topic at zfs filesystem, how cool is that :D

 

[cyberjock]

Indeed, you are right it uses ddr3 memory not ddr2. My mistake. I did confuse my comment on my intel core 2 setup, witch have ddr2 memory and hardware is failing that system also (hdds answer slowly,tested cables,memorys,hdds, motherboard seems broken..).

But i also have i7 system that have also some weird hdd lost broblems, then i bought cheap amd fx system and hdds are fine. I automatically thinked that freenas can be picky with hardware.

I do have simpler setups just 6x1Tb raidz2 at 8GB memory and cifs speed is fine at 111Mt/s so i guessed wrong that 6GB memory is enough..

I apoligize my poor writing, i have used lots of filesystems at 20years time, and i have balls to admit if im wrong at something, still i just learned something new in this topic at zfs filesystem, how cool is that :D

Ah. That makes much more sense.

Just for the record, my choice of using Intel is a personal one. There's no reason AMD's shouldn't work fine as long as your have hardware that is compatible with FreeNAS/FreeBSD. I gave up on AMD a decade ago and that was a personal choice. Lately i7s have smoked AMD performance-wise with no counter-offer from AMD :(.

Just don't buy a low powered CPU(Intel Atom and AMD C-90 for example) and then get upset when you can't get 100MB/sec over your network.

As for RAM, it seems that the "thumbrule" based on experience from multiple home users should be 8GB minimum + 1GB of RAM per 3TB of disk space. So if you had a zpool of 10x3TB drives in any given vdev type you'd want to have 8GB+10GB, or 18GB of system RAM. Kind of sucks, but it seems to work out pretty well for home users. And its far better than the 1GB per TB of disk space called for in the manual.

 

[webberen]

And that's it... I upgraded to 12gb of RAM and now it runs like a kitten on wheels.

Hmm.. okay maybe not.. It is seriously improved, but not 100% fixed. It still stutters from time to time..
I will remove some of the harddrives to see if that helps.

I followed "two smart guys" and I am amazed that they can run ZFS and use datasets with an i7 proccessor and only 2GBs of RAM... "weird??"

 

[cyberjock]

LOL. If I remember correctly they used FreeNAS .7 in their design. FreeNAS .7 had smaller memory needs than FreeNAS 8.x. FreeNAS 8.x is a totally different project that bought the name. FreeNAS .7 was "rebranded" to NAS4Free. Unless you want to try more RAM you could look at NAS4Free. Supposedly you can simply import your ZFS pools into NAS4Free and test it out. Make sure you look at the features you are giving up too(such as jails, etc).

 

[webberen]

LOL. If I remember correctly they used FreeNAS .7 in their design. FreeNAS .7 had smaller memory needs than FreeNAS 8.x. FreeNAS 8.x is a totally different project that bought the name. FreeNAS .7 was "rebranded" to NAS4Free. Unless you want to try more RAM you could look at NAS4Free. Supposedly you can simply import your ZFS pools into NAS4Free and test it out. Make sure you look at the features you are giving up too(such as jails, etc).

I am starting enjoy this forum... :) SO cool to being able to share with others...

In the Youtube video I viewed with them it said freenas 8.2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OL4UKLTad9U#t=108s


But, back to my issue:
I have now removed 2X 500Gb Hdd from my system, and will test the bastard again on xbmc...

 

[cyberjock]

Yeah, I remember that video now. One of the moderators and I told that guy off because his video clearly showed 2GB of RAM, but then he created a ZFS dataset. It's an extremely poor example, but he has the freedom to do as he wants. If he had used UFS then I'd consider 2GB of RAM to be sufficient. But definitely not in the example he gives in the video.

Just goes to show that not everyone has brains and you can't always blind follow the example of someone on Youtube, even if they think they can come up with a "smart" name like "too smart guys".

 

[webberen]

Yeah, I remember that video now. One of the moderators and I told that guy off because his video clearly showed 2GB of RAM, but then he created a ZFS dataset. It's an extremely poor example, but he has the freedom to do as he wants. If he had used UFS then I'd consider 2GB of RAM to be sufficient. But definitely not in the example he gives in the video.

Just goes to show that not everyone has brains and you can't always blind follow the example of someone on Youtube, even if they think they can come up with a "smart" name like "too smart guys".

True words spoken... And I of course knows this..

Well removing the 2 HDDs didn't help my problem, I wonder if there is a way to test the read/write times from ny NAS to the xbmc... From the NAS to my win7 PC I can read/write from the NAS with about 100mb/s
And I have allready tried hooking them all to the same switch, to rule out any network-related problems.

I am actually considering trying the nas4free as cyberjock mentioned, and if I understood it correctly, I should be able to install it (on another USB thumb drive?)boot up, and import my volumes(with data intact?).

My specs are now

12GB of RAM to 10TB of HDD.... According to my calculation, that should be enough...??

 

[cyberjock]

Well, the FreeNAS manual recommends 6GB + 1GB per TB of disk space, so you "should" have 16GB of RAM per the manual. Obviously I have quiet a bit less considering my storage space, but there are alot of factors that can cause you to need much more RAM that I do even with 1/2 the disk space. When it comes to RAM the best recommendation is to build a system that can handle as much RAM as you think you'll need and buy the highest density sticks that you can reasonably afford in case you need more later.

 

[webberen]

I am just wondering, is it enough with just a USB thumb drive for the system, or does it require some sort of hdd/ssd for operating?? (my thought were, that it uses RAM for that, correct?).

Just saw a video with some sort of ZFS setup and he installed a ssd for ZFS operating along with the USB-thumb.

- - - Updated - - -

Well, the FreeNAS manual recommends 6GB + 1GB per TB of disk space, so you "should" have 16GB of RAM per the manual. Obviously I have quiet a bit less considering my storage space, but there are alot of factors that can cause you to need much more RAM that I do even with 1/2 the disk space. When it comes to RAM the best recommendation is to build a system that can handle as much RAM as you think you'll need and buy the highest density sticks that you can reasonably afford in case you need more later.

That makes perfectly sense, but I was hoping to use the board and components I had laying around. and my board actually can handle up to 16gb. So maybe it would be worth a shot?!

Reading about the Nas4free. I really cant see why I didn't just try that out first, it supposedly have all I need: FTP, CIFS for media and as I see it, just as good a account and user setup and options... And if it can run my ZFS pools with less RAM...

what to do, what to do...

 

[budmannxx]

I am just wondering, is it enough with just a USB thumb drive for the system, or does it require some sort of hdd/ssd for operating?? (my thought were, that it uses RAM for that, correct?).

Just saw a video with some sort of ZFS setup and he installed a ssd for ZFS operating along with the USB-thumb.

Sounds like you need to stop watching videos. Your thought was correct--FreeNAS loads from the USB stick into RAM and runs from there. You could install to an SSD/HDD, but that would be a waste of SSD/HDD space and a waste of a SATA port. Keep FreeNAS on your USB stick.

That makes perfectly sense, but I was hoping to use the board and components I had laying around. and my board actually can handle up to 16gb. So maybe it would be worth a shot?!

If you're having performance problems, the easiest and (just about the) cheapest thing you can do is to max out on RAM. Get 10 more gigs and put them in.