Very slow transfer speeds

[tommytomato]

I'm so sorry to ask but my frustration continues and I am struggling to find some very basic controls in FreeNAS 8.0.1 BETA4. I'm having issues with transfer speeds. Having spent some time Googling, I have been trying to find the settings for the SMB/CIFAS for send and receive buffer sizes on the server. Unfortunately, all the information that I can find relates to older versions of FreeNas and it is not clear to me where the settings are in version 8 or exactly which settings to alter. I have looked in the CIFAS settings tab under Services, but it is not obvious to me if the setting is there.

Thus far, I have managed to achieve manual transfer speed of up to 300kbps max, and when I run my backup software from the client (Second Copy and OopsBackup), they just sit at 0% completed.

My network is 10/100 wired and 54g wireless.


Update:

I tried to activate 'Large RW Support' but upon saving the page settings, both the minimal AIO read and write size fields produce a red 'This field is required' message despite neither being changed from the default '1', nor the 'Enable AIO' field being checked. consequently the Large RW Support does not activate.

I'm so lost.

Many thanks for any help.

 

[matthewowen01]

what hardware.
how are you testing.
are you using the 100/mb or the wireless?

 

[tommytomato]

HP Proliant Microserver, FreeNAS on 4GB USB Stick, 2x Samsung Spinpoint HD013SJ in software RAID1. Using wireless. Speed taken from Windows 7 transfer pop up progress report as it happened. Took over 72 hours to transfer 64GB.

 

[matthewowen01]

Using wireless

if my calculations are right you're averaging 2 mb/s. depending on your airspace that may be good. remember, there's 54 mb/s of total bandwidth that's all shared by every device on it. and quite possibly fubared by something like a cell phone, microwave or an ill placed mirror.

try using a wired connection and see how that does.

 

[tommytomato]

Update:

I am now unable - all of a sudden - to map to or access Windows Shares on the FreeNAS box from the laptop concerned. Other computers can do so, and the laptop can access shares elsewhere, so I now have another FreeNAS issue. I am being prompted for a username and password that does not exist. Unfortunately there is so little documentation, I am unable to resolve this issue too. Anyone please?

In respect of the transfer speeds, I am certain that there is an SMB/CIFAS buffer setting issue - if only I could find the setting! Wired transfer of backups is reacting the same as wireless. Something is throttling throughput artificially, and it is a FreeNAS setting.

I love the idea of FreeNAS but it has taken up so much time just because simple documentation beyond the basic walkthrough is non-existent. Does anyone please know where the buffer settings have disappeared to in version 8?

I can't spend much more time on this, it either has to work or go.


Another update:

I have created a new user in FreeNAS and successfuly mapped from the laptop using those credentials. However, I cannot work out why initially it was unnecessary to do more than map a FreeNAS share in order to access it (and still is that way on all other computers in the network - presumably they are accessing as some sort of Admin?), whilst shares on the FreeNAS suddenly became inaccessible from the laptop and the FreeNAS began demanding login credentials. I would like to return to the original configuration if I could work out what has happened.

Back to the wired machine back-up. Two per cent of the back-up procedure has occurred in a couple of hours. To put this in perspective, it usually takes less than a minute for the same to happen to a USB connected external drive.

I'm seriously tearing my hair out for technical info.

 

[tommytomato]

I have activated SATA-150 in the disk settings area, which in turn made it possible to activate both the 'Large RW Support' and 'Activate AIO' in the CIFAS settings area. I can still only get 300kbps transfer speeds. If there are CIFAS send/receive buffer settings, I can't find them.

 

[matthewowen01]

what files are you transferring to test? large ones or small ones?

try moving one large file.

the buffer settings didn't disappear, they are still in the smb.conf file as usually. you can modify them by adding them to the 'Auxiliary parameters' section in the cifs config page. but generally they are not tuned. you can squeeze out some more performance depending on your application but they should be done last, they will not fix this problem properly.

don't forget usb 2.0 is almost 5 times faster than your wired network speed.

also try using a zfs mirror instead of your software raid 1.

 

[tommytomato]

Thanks Matthew for your help. I'm not overly confident in Linux/Unix, so unfortunately I have no idea where or how best to make the modifications you mention.

I don't want to use ZFS because the machine only has 3GB of RAM, and my level of experience, and dare I say confidence, in FreeNAS leaves me reluctant to use a file system that I cannot recover data easily from if something goes wrong.

I am currently trying to get ftp working between Second Copy 8 and FreeNAS. The Second Copy documentation suggests an ftp server adderess along the lines of ftp.freenas.domain though I do not seem to be able to connect with or without a FreeNAS user name.

The speed issue is so acute that my backup is effectively unusable with this server. I have between 85 and 300 kbps transfer speeds. A test on mixed size files totalling about 4GB estimated "about a day" for transfer. I appreciate how fast USB is, but I'm a country mile away even from avoiding connection timeouts because the client software thinks the server has nipped off for a pint! A single large file, several small ones or a combination yield the same speeds.

People must be getting usable speeds for backups with FreeNAS? I can stream HD video over the network here from an 11MB broadband connection or from the Windows 7 machines with no issues, and file transfer between Windows boxes with no loss of speed like that I am witnessing when the FreeNAS is involved. Surely this is a setting issue?

 

[matthewowen01]

I don't want to use ZFS because the machine only has 3GB of RAM, and my level of experience, and dare I say confidence, in FreeNAS leaves me reluctant to use a file system that I cannot recover data easily from if something goes wrong.

could you do it as a test temporarily? see if that helps.

I am currently trying to get ftp working between Second Copy 8 and FreeNAS. The Second Copy documentation suggests an ftp server adderess along the lines of ftp.freenas.domain though I do not seem to be able to connect with or without a FreeNAS user name.

open the settings for the FTP, check every permission box and 'Allow Anonymous Login' that should give you enough to test if you get better speeds or not. as for the address, all you want is system's name or IP.

The speed issue is so acute that my backup is effectively unusable with this server. I have between 85 and 300 kbps transfer speeds. A test on mixed size files totalling about 4GB estimated "about a day" for transfer. I appreciate how fast USB is, but I'm a country mile away even from avoiding connection timeouts because the client software thinks the server has nipped off for a pint! A single large file, several small ones or a combination yield the same speeds.

People must be getting usable speeds for backups with FreeNAS? I can stream HD video over the network here from an 11MB broadband connection or from the Windows 7 machines with no issues, and file transfer between Windows boxes with no loss of speed like that I am witnessing when the FreeNAS is involved. Surely this is a setting issue?

i got nearly gigabit speeds with stock settings and slightly better with my tweaks. I'm setting up a drive formated as UFS and I'll see if i get good speeds or not.

update: i setup a 500 GB drive with UFS, shared it out with cifs and i get 40-50 MB/s

 

[tommytomato]

Thanks again Matthew.

I would gladly set it up as a test but it has taken nearly a week of solid transferring to get the 60GB or so of files on the drives so I'm a little reluctant. I don't have any spare drives available either.

Re the FTP, this is the machine that is now connected via a FreeNAS username/password after the stock settings suddenly stopped allowing connection. I'll run an ftp test on using another machine on stock. Is the ip address alone enough or does it need ftp:// or ftp. in the path as it would in the 'name' format? Presumably I don't check the 'require' boxes in the FreeNAS ftp service settings as that would surely add a layer of complexity? I added the /mnt/volume/folder path, is that correct? I have been putting the same in the path section of Second Copy.

Thank you re the test, much appreciated. You certainly are getting great speeds. I'm so frustrated as it is clear that FreeNAS is really useful, if only I could get it set-up properly. I haven't had this much difficulty for years.

Update:
Just tried the Second Copy ftp from another computer here. Exactly the same connection issues. Also tried FileZilla ftp to the FreeNAS with no success.

 

[matthewowen01]

Thanks again Matthew.

I would gladly set it up as a test but it has taken nearly a week of solid transferring to get the 60GB or so of files on the drives so I'm a little reluctant. I don't have any spare drives available either.

Re the FTP, this is the machine that is now connected via a FreeNAS username/password after the stock settings suddenly stopped allowing connection. I'll run an ftp test on using another machine on stock. Is the ip address alone enough or does it need ftp:// or ftp. in the path as it would in the 'name' format? Presumably I don't check the 'require' boxes in the FreeNAS ftp service settings as that would surely add a layer of complexity? I added the /mnt/volume/folder path, is that correct? I have been putting the same in the path section of Second Copy.

Thank you re the test, much appreciated. You certainly are getting great speeds. I'm so frustrated as it is clear that FreeNAS is really useful, if only I could get it set-up properly. I haven't had this much difficulty for years.

Update:
Just tried the ftp from another computer here. Exactly the same connection issues.

well i just downloaded and installed Second Copy. I'm running a backup from my gaming box to my file server. i get speeds between about similar to yours for small files and on large ones, it made it to 10 MB/s. can you try not using the software and simply copying a large file?


FTP with filezilla worked great.

 

[tommytomato]

I was using Windows Explorer for all the file transfers with the speeds given. Second Copy is running too horribly slow. I cannot ftp in to FreeNAS using anything. Have you been able to create an ftp back-up via Second Copy, and if so what speeds were you getting there please?

I'm beginning to wonder if my installation is corrupted in some way. It is a week old and began with 8.0 Release and a series of issues creating a volume. I was then pointed toward 8.0.1 BETA3 or later, so I went for BETA4 via update. Since then it has been nothing but trouble with what appear to be inconsistent errors of an intermittent nature.

If I reinstall FreeNAS, will my volume data remain intact or will it mean a full rebuild of the volume?

I'm really grateful for all the help and the trouble you have taken to replicate my system. Thank you.

 

[matthewowen01]

your data should be safe. just have the disks unplugged when you do the initial install. give the reinstall a try. for reference I'm still on 8.0

as for second copy, i gave up, it was slow for both ftp and samba.

 

[tommytomato]

Okay, removed the two hard disks, formatted the USB stick, double checked the MD5 was okay on my download of 8.0 Release and reinstalled it on the USB stick.

Unable to change the admin password, access the storage (I put the disks back in of course), system or user tabs. I just get a 'system' icon and 'loading ....'.

I wonder if there is an issue with the USB stick? I may try another. Failing that I'm stumped.

 

[tommytomato]

Update:

Ran a surface test of USB stick in Diskeeper, which passed fine.

Ran a wipe of all data on USB stick in Diskeeper because of concerns that the original 8.0 RELEASE install was corrupted, that the 8.0.1 BETA4 update may have inherited some of the issues and similarly the clean install of 8.0 RELEASE may have similarly suffered.

Decided to use only Firefox for the web interface in case the viewing issues were with Chrome (which had been interchanged ramdomly with Firefox this morning).

Clean install of 8.0 RELEASE.

It seems okay so far, and I could even create a volume, which wasn't possible in the initial install of 8.0 RELEASE, hence the update to 8.0.1 BETA4.

Conclusion: Too early to be sure things are stable. Issues may have been with corrupted install originally (and use of Chrome this morning?).

Matthew, thank you so much. I will update of further occurrences.

Update (for other FreeNAS newbies):
Don't make the mistake I just made and recreate your old data filled volume with the same names. Import it. I just lost 64GB (many days solid) worth of transfers with that little error.

Also, after altering the FreeNas system always log out and back into W7 before mapping a volume otherwise the changes to the FreeNAS system may not show up in your network pop-up box.

Just a couple of basic things that would have saved me loads of time and angst had I been aware pre-learning curve.

 

[tommytomato]

Still can't ftp in :( Getting error message in FileZilla:
Error: Could not connect to server "ECONNREFUSED - Connection refused by server"

It must be my settings? Anyone please?

 

[matthewowen01]

Still can't ftp in :( Getting error message in FileZilla:
Error: Could not connect to server "ECONNREFUSED - Connection refused by server"

It must be my settings? Anyone please?

did you start the ftp service?

 

[tommytomato]

Yes I started the ftp service.

Some good news though, without having any specific stats yet, the data transfer through CIFAS does appear a little quicker this time. I hope so because it will cost a fair bit for replacement gigabit equipment if that becomes necessary.