Transmission Performance/Accessibility

[MTDJassen]

Hey there,

I am running FreeNAS 9.2.1.7 from USB on a dedicated NAS system with the following hardware:

• Intel Celeron J1900 @ 1.99GHz
• 3x 2TB WD Green's
• 8GB Mem

My system consists of one RAIDZ1 volume with several datasets (Downloads, Music, Series, Movies, Torrentfiles etc.)

I have 5 plugins in 5 seperate jails, namely: Sick Beard, Couchpotato, Plex, SabNZBd and... Transmission. All plugins seem to talk correctly with eachother, and apart from some permission issues now and then, all seems well. Sick beard activates newsgroup, couchpotato downloads torrents and the postprocessing seems to work.

However I have one problem that I have not been able to figure out as of yet. Although tranmission is running and seems to do what it is supposed to do, the web gui even on my local network (and also on my external IP, i've forwarded the port) is very slow. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes for the gui even to pop up, sometimes my browser just gives up. I am using Transmission Remote GUI and that usually just gives up and throws some kind of 'I've been waiting for too long now'. The weird thing is: there's moments where everything seems fine and transmission is responsive as can be (even my remote GUI is working!), I've not found any connection between these moments, it seems random.

What I've tried:

• Googling the problem (to no avail)
• Stopping and restarting the jail, stopping and restarting the plugin (seems to temporarily fix it sometimes, but readily returns to its old behaviour)

Could it possibly be the (fairly limited) memory I have?

So, all in all: I have a FreeNAS box with which I'm generally satisfied, several plugins do the job, one of which is Transmission but it is very very very slow to reach most of the times and many times the GUI is not accesible at all.

Please help me diagnose / fix this because I'm now fairly out of my depth.

Thanks!

 

[MTDJassen]

Nobody that recognises this particular issue or has any input on how to approach solving it? I've added 8GB of mem and it's still slow / inaccesible, so I reckon its some networking issues. Any1?

 

[mjws00]

Adding 8GB more was a start. How bout try listing all your hardware and giving us some real information as per the forum rules. Exact Motherboard, Exact NIC, dmesg, are all pretty critical in helping you. In addition there is really no way to tell what you've done besides add a bunch of plugins. Some networking issues, is pretty accurate. But it could also be some driver issues, some poor configuration issues, some poor hardware issues... etc.

It doesn't look like you are on a common platform, so people are reluctant to jump in and comment on gear we aren't running.

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

also can you try installing a second instance of transmission and see if you can reproduce the problem?

 

[MTDJassen]

So I think we got off on the wrong foot, I apologize for that. I have to say I'm not that invested in Unix and am still (and ever) learning. Please bear with me.

As for the hardware configuration, I'm running:

• Motherboard: ASRock Q1900DC-ITX
  
• CPU: Intel Celeron J1900 Quad-Core CPU @ 1.99GHz (onboard)
  
• MEM: Crucial memory, SODIMM DDR3L-1600 8GB * 2 (16GiB total)
  
• NIC: Realtek RTL8111GR (onboard)
  
• HDD: 3x 2TB WD Greens (WD20EZRX).

When I connect to my FreeNAS box using SSH and type dmesg I get the following output:

Code:

sonewconn: pcb 0xfffffe0024e25c40: Listen queue overflow: 193 already in queue awaiting acceptance

Repeated over and over and over and over.This suggests something is wrong.

Googling this, I got that this points to an NIC issue, so here's the output from ifconfig:

Code:

re0: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
  options=82099<RXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,WOL_MAGIC,LINKSTATE>
  ether d0:50:99:26:d5:1f
  inet 192.168.178.17 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.178.255
  nd6 options=9<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED>
  media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
  status: active
ipfw0: flags=8801<UP,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 65536
  nd6 options=9<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED>
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
  options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
  inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
  inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4
  inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
  nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
bridge0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
  ether 02:fe:4a:c8:9c:00
  nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
  id 00:00:00:00:00:00 priority 32768 hellotime 2 fwddelay 15
  maxage 20 holdcnt 6 proto rstp maxaddr 2000 timeout 1200
  root id 00:00:00:00:00:00 priority 32768 ifcost 0 port 0
  member: epair4a flags=143<LEARNING,DISCOVER,AUTOEDGE,AUTOPTP>
  ifmaxaddr 0 port 10 priority 128 path cost 2000
  member: epair3a flags=143<LEARNING,DISCOVER,AUTOEDGE,AUTOPTP>
  ifmaxaddr 0 port 9 priority 128 path cost 2000
  member: epair2a flags=143<LEARNING,DISCOVER,AUTOEDGE,AUTOPTP>
  ifmaxaddr 0 port 8 priority 128 path cost 2000
  member: epair1a flags=143<LEARNING,DISCOVER,AUTOEDGE,AUTOPTP>
  ifmaxaddr 0 port 7 priority 128 path cost 2000
  member: epair0a flags=143<LEARNING,DISCOVER,AUTOEDGE,AUTOPTP>
  ifmaxaddr 0 port 6 priority 128 path cost 2000
  member: re0 flags=143<LEARNING,DISCOVER,AUTOEDGE,AUTOPTP>
  ifmaxaddr 0 port 1 priority 128 path cost 20000
epair0a: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
  options=8<VLAN_MTU>
  ether 02:dc:e2:00:06:0a
  nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
  media: Ethernet 10Gbase-T (10Gbase-T <full-duplex>)
  status: active
epair1a: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
  options=8<VLAN_MTU>
  ether 02:e8:ca:00:07:0a
  nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
  media: Ethernet 10Gbase-T (10Gbase-T <full-duplex>)
  status: active
epair2a: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
  options=8<VLAN_MTU>
  ether 02:55:bd:00:08:0a
  nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
  media: Ethernet 10Gbase-T (10Gbase-T <full-duplex>)
  status: active
epair3a: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
  options=8<VLAN_MTU>
  ether 02:39:0f:00:09:0a
  nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
  media: Ethernet 10Gbase-T (10Gbase-T <full-duplex>)
  status: active
epair4a: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
  options=8<VLAN_MTU>
  ether 02:91:a3:00:0a:0a
  nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
  media: Ethernet 10Gbase-T (10Gbase-T <full-duplex>)
  status: active

This is where I'm fully out of my depth, and I could use some help interpreting this.

also can you try installing a second instance of transmission and see if you can reproduce the problem?

I'll try this now and report back.

Edit: i'll buy a new NIC and report back

 

[cyberjock]

Umm... you are using re0 (realtek). We know it's a major problem across the board. So first things first, get a NIC that is worth something.... buy an Intel and get rid of the realtek.

If you'd googled at all you'd know one thing.. Realteks suck for every conceivable reason and why you'd use it and then expect it to work is beyond me. :p

Other than that, yes, I'm going to avoid commenting in this thread. Buy non-standard parts, expect a non-standard experience.

 

[MTDJassen]

Allright, that's a good thing to know. Of course I googled (and sought advice at several forums), and when I look at the supported hardware for FreeBSD I find:

The re(4) driver supports RealTek RTL8139C+, RTL8169, RTL816xS, RTL811xS, RTL8168, RTL810xE and RTL8111 based Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet adapters

But I guess that doesn't go for FreeNAS then.

I'll buy an Intel controller (82574L chipset) and see what happens.

 

[cyberjock]

No, the problem is Realtek's, while supported, aren't reliable in FreeBSD in the slightest. They are fraught with nothing but problems. This is why if you read any stickies that include network information the first thing said is usually something like "realtek sucks".

 

[MTDJassen]

Alright, I catch your drift. An Intel Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter is on its way and, If you're correct (which I assume you are), will turn my FreeNAS box into a lightning fast magic unicorn. ;-).

 

[cyberjock]

Alright, I catch your drift. An Intel Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter is on its way and, If you're correct (which I assume you are), will turn my FreeNAS box into a lightning fast magic unicorn. ;-).

I wouldn't go that far. Your CPU is below what we recommend at the minimum. Your CPU is about 30% slower than what we recommend and has 1/3 less on-chip cache. Also you aren't using real server-grade hardware so you may be experiencing problems with the desktop hardware you own. We keep telling people not to buy desktop hardware and people keep doing it anyway. Unfortunately for many that single choice ruins all chances of using FreeNAS because of hardware incompatibilities with on-board components. We've seen plenty of people that had to abandon FreeNAS just because their hardware wasn't compatible with FreeBSD/FreeNAS.

But since we never *ever* recommend Realtek and actively shun it, that's your first step. If that doesn't solve you're problem you'll find the next answer less than palatable... "buy proper hardware".

 

[mjws00]

@MTDJassen Don't sweat being on the wrong foot. My intent was to point you in a direction where you could give us enough info to help. Performance issues are almost impossible to troubleshoot without nitty gritty detail.

The reality is you managed to get both Joshua and Cyber to look at your challenge. For plugins and shear volume of FreeNas issues addressed those are some pretty great hands to be in.

Unfortunately on the hardware side you landed where I suspected you might. In addition I doubt you are going to find anyone with real experience on that mobo for FreeNAS. BSD is really good at some things, but with drivers you really want to match the hardware to known good. NanoBSD and a read-only appliance os make that even more critical. It's just the nature of this beast.

If I wanted to run that gear (it isn't a great choice). I would first put a real nic in. Then I would try and get a baseline on performance and stability. Then add one thing at a time, and see what happens. You may still be disappointed in the end. Sorry.

LOL. You and cyber are quick. Must be six posts since I started typing. Good Luck.

 

[MTDJassen]

So no magic unicorn? I get it. There's financial motives, of course, not to buy server-grade hardware. And as far as it goes, my FreeNAS box now works relatively adequate. My NFS shares work. My Sickbeard works. My transmission works, just not as I expect. If the next answer is to buy proper hardware I'm just gonna stick with what I have because I'm happy as is, I just like troubleshooting stuff in my free weekends. :)

 

[MTDJassen]

@mjws00 Thanks :) I'm just gonna take this thing one step at a time and learn from it. Thanks for your input (and off course Joshua and Cyber). My next FreeNAS box will prolly be a lot better, and I know a lot more. We'll see!

 

[Ericloewe]

So no magic unicorn? I get it. There's financial motives, of course, not to buy server-grade hardware. And as far as it goes, my FreeNAS box now works relatively adequate. My NFS shares work. My Sickbeard works. My transmission works, just not as I expect. If the next answer is to buy proper hardware I'm just gonna stick with what I have because I'm happy as is, I just like troubleshooting stuff in my free weekends. :)

"Server-grade" sounds intimidatingly expensive, but entry-level stuff (like LGA1150 setups) is competitively priced with similar desktop hardware.
Of course, no server build is going to be cheaper than a low-end AMD processor with 45 buck motherboard, but it's an unfair comparison. Fortunately, there's not much of a market for hardware that's held together by a prayer and user apathy in the server world.

 

[cyberjock]

Fortunately, there's not much of a market for hardware that's held together by a prayer and user apathy in the server world.

LOL! That quote is hilarious!