VLC Player - bad file descriptor errors #2

[cre8toruk]

First let me start with an apology. I'm sorry, It was a very frustrating time when I posted this question originally and I reacted badly.
To those who I annoyed I apologise profusely.

My Freenas box (custom built by me) has 8 (from memory) 2TB hard drives, 8GB of RAM but i'm sorry I can't remember a lot about the rest of the build (if someone can advise me if it's possible to get that information I'd be grateful and I can post it here and in the future)....

Current build details;
Build FreeNAS-11.0-U2 (e417d8aa5)
Platform AMD A6-6400K APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
Memory 7052MB
Load Average 0.22, 0.16, 0.17

I've been on version 9, then corral and now 11 (you could say I like an upgrade)... until I upgraded to version 11 all was pretty rosey in the garden and I've played movies and music hosted on my freenas box via my Windows 10 pc on VLC player no problem at all.

Since I've upgraded to version 11 I notice regular crashes of VLC player giving me bad file descriptor errors constantly.

To be honest I don't really know where to look. The freenas box has a gigabit connection to an 8 port gigabit switch and the PC connects to the same switch (they're literally 6 inches apart).... I've no real knowledge of *nix systems so I don't really know where to start diagnosing this issue (if indeed it is a freenas issue).

I've tried mapping an NFS share to my volume which I can do and I can see all the files and folders but when I try and play a movie via the NFS mount on my Windows 10 machine I instantly get the message "

"Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'file:///Z:/%23%23%23NEW%20MOVIES%23%23%23/Blade%20Runner%20-%20Final%20Cut/Blade.Runner%20-%20Final%20Cut.mkv'. Check the log for details.
File reading failed:"

Clearly this is an NFS setup issue as an SMB share, plays no problem (apart from the intermittent bad file descriptor error).

Can anyone point me in the right direction ? Apologies if I've not provided information required, please let me know what further details you might need to assist....

Could it be a disk issue ? Is there a good way of determining / fixing disk problems?

Thank you in advance, for any tips, pointers, links etc you can help me with.

Paul.

 

[rs225]

I would stick with SMB just because it should work, and it is the common config in this situation.

This is very unlikely a disk problem. If it was, you'd see some errors on your pool. What is your network adapter on the FreeNAS and the Win10? Also, it might be good to upgrade to 11.0-U4 just to rule out any issue with that. Also see what the network driver is on the Win10 machine, whether from MS or someone else. If someone else, maybe there is a newer one out there.

 

[Chris Moore]

My Freenas box (custom built by me) has 8 (from memory) 2TB hard drives, 8GB of RAM but i'm sorry I can't remember a lot about the rest of the build (if someone can advise me if it's possible to get that information I'd be grateful and I can post it here and in the future)....

Current build details;
Build FreeNAS-11.0-U2 (e417d8aa5)
Platform AMD A6-6400K APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
Memory 7052MB
Load Average 0.22, 0.16, 0.17

The thing I don't know, which might make a difference, what network adapter do you have. Most AMD processor boards do not use an Intel NIC and you don't say what system board you have or what drive controller you are using or what network adapter you are using and all of those things could be factors.
The thing I do see, you don't have enough RAM. FreeNAS needs a minimum of 8 GB to function properly and the recommendation is to have 1 GB of memory per each TB of storage. My suggestion would be to upgrade to 16 GB of memory.
Also, see if you can find out more about your hardware.
As to the trouble you are having, it indicates a momentary drop in the network connection. It could indicate a fault in either the network interface or in the network switch. I had a low quality network switch that would intermittently reset internally and the only thing that would be disrupted was streaming media. VLC is particularly susceptible to this because it is expecting to be accessing a local disk.

 

[SweetAndLow]

You have 8GB of memory which should be ok for simple nas type stuff. I don't think adding more memory would help with this problem. Can you use the gui to download the debug file and then upload it here, you might want to look at the contents and make sure you are ok sharing it. There isn't anyhting to special in it but some people are picky.

My guess is that you have a realtek nic and those things are terrible on freebsd. Something changed with freenas 11 and things went from bad to worse for people with realtek nics. They never really worked in the first place but now they definitely don't work. Intel nics are higher quality and work much better.

 

[Chris Moore]

You have 8GB of memory

Oddly, he lists the memory as :

Memory 7052MB

 

[SweetAndLow]

Oddly, he lists the memory as :

That is what 8GB looks like after it's all said and done. Math is hard sometimes.

 

[Chris Moore]

That is what 8GB looks like after it's all said and done. Math is hard sometimes.

My system with 16 GB of RAM lists: Memory 16318MB
My system with 32 GB of RAM lists: Memory 32702MB
So, why would a system with 8 GB of RAM list the memory as less than 8 GB when it should list ~8192?
Part of the system RAM is being sucked up by the in CPU video which leaves the system with less than 8GB usable.
I can do math.

 

[Jailer]

I've never had any luck getting VLC to play content from a network drive. It's an unsupported feature and if you do a little searching you'll find others with the same problem.

Try a different player and see if the problem resolves itself.

 

[SweetAndLow]

I've never had any luck getting VLC to play content from a network drive. It's an unsupported feature and if you do a little searching you'll find others with the same problem.

Try a different player and see if the problem resolves itself.

I play media all the time in vlc over a mapped network drive. Works great.

 

[Chris Moore]

Platform AMD A6-6400K APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
Memory 7052MB

I think the problem you are having is network related. Your platform is low spec and if you were to upgrade to something a bit better, you could use something like Plex to play your videos but, I don't think it is the low spec of the processor and RAM that is the issue. I suspect it is the network interface of your NAS that is having an issue or (less likely but still possible) it could be the network switch.
If you could provide some additional detailed information on your hardware, it might be a better discussion.
You may have to shut the system down temporarily and look inside to see what you have.

 

[Ericloewe]

So, why would a system with 8 GB of RAM list the memory as less than 8 GB when it should list ~8192?

That is quite the can of worms:

• UEFI has a few MB reserved for system firmware usage.
• Besides typical firmware tasks, physical devices of yore are often emulated in system firmware, using RAM that's assigned to System Management Mode.
• PCI devices may be mapped in weird and wonderful ways that eat up physical RAM.
• Integrated graphics, as you mentioned, eat up some RAM with a combination of the above scenarios.
• Many these things are probably going to have to be page-aligned. Need 512 bytes for each of two tiny things? Sucks to be you, you have to eat up two 4k pages.