NASLite Network Attached Storage

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Task-specific simplicity with low hardware requirements.
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 9:01 pm 
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I'm getting about 2.5 MBs/second transfer rates to and from the NAS-Lite server machine running SMB OR SMBG. I'm using a Pentium II 400 MHz machine. Putting in a Gigabit Ethernet card as a second card didn't help. The drives are new Maxtor 250 GB ATA-133 drives running 7200 rpm; the network runs throughout at 100BaseT speeds. I use a switch that governs the traffic between any two computers at the fastest speed both computers can handle--transferring between Windows XP systems by normal peer-to-peer Windows networking is MUCH faster.

I like the simplicity of NASLite and the ideas behind it. But this transfer speed is much less than expected. Even if the drives run at old-motherboard-IDE ATA-33 speeds, I'd expect faster performance than this!

Any suggestions for a hardware setup that would be faster? Thanks.


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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 3:08 pm 
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Joined: Fri Jul 16, 2004 6:25 pm
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Location: St. Louis
Jeffery,

Only one network card at a time is supported, so putting in a second won't help. If you're using a Gigabyte Ethernet card, you need to be using the G version for card support.

There's also an issue, which I don't think has ever been brought up in the forum, about the 2.xx version of SMB and speed. Most posts out there on the web state that the 3.xx version of SMB is much faster, so that may be an issue.

I know that Tony has stated that the 2.xx version was used because it would fit on the floppy.

I hope this helps.

Tim


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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 4:34 pm 
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i'm pretty shure it has not been mentioned before that there is a speed issue in smb 2.xx

this would infact clear up alot about some speed issues discussed in the "bizare transfer speeds" topic.
some users had trouble with the realtek card (that probably being the drivers problem)
others like biohazard and me still had trouble with other cards.

from what i read from ts it seems to be the same problem

any word on when, how and if the smb version is to be upgraded?


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PostPosted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 8:58 pm 
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I know only one networking card can be used at a time. My NASlite machine has both a standard onboard 10/100 controller and a Gigabit card installed. My point is that I get the same transfer rates using SMB and SMBG. Each version recognizes and uses the appropriate controller.

I also understand the SMB version point--but I still haven't seen any way to alter the version used. Does anyone have a way?

Am I correct, then, in assuming that the 2.x MBs/sec rate is all we can hope for regardless of hardware until something is changed in the software? And the FTP/NFS versions have the same transfer speeds, approximately?


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PostPosted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 9:55 am 
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Hi Jeffrey,

Your assumptions are mostly correct. Updated versions of NASLite, addressing the performance issue, are in development and should be available soon.


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PostPosted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 10:00 am 
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I'm not sure that people have tested transfer rates w/ the FTP or NFS versions. I know I haven't.

As to the reason for the 2.xx version of SMB, and not the 3.xx, it goes back to what fits on a floppy. The 3.xx version is very 'fat', so it's out, according to Tony, until a CD version is made.

Tim


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PostPosted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 10:04 am 
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The Samba 3.0.x smbd and nmbd binaries alone are over 5 megs 8)


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:10 am 
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Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2004 3:22 am
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maybe a dual floppy approach could help getting a few more items into the distro? or what about RAD disks that the Amiga had (has) .. a RAD disk is basically a RAM disk that stays resident while the machine is powered on, so you could reboot the machine and everything would remain and could even boot from it. dont know if thats even possible on PC hardware though.

probably a good practical solution would be multiple floppy installation that creates a 10MB partition on each hard drive in the box and installs everything into the first 10MB partition on the drive list, then mirrors itself to each drive with a mechanism so that if the master drive on the primary channel develops a fault in this tiny boot partition then it can switch to reading from the boot partition on the primary slave drive etc. this would also save the long term concern of dust/heat/oxides destroying the boot floppy disk and/or the floppy drive itself. plus there would be no need to sacrifice a HDD just to have a boot CDROM present. it would also then allow for adding features for RAID/SCSI/drive repair/whatever into the small boot partition.

for now though i think its great, only just found out about it a few nights ago, dug out an old P200/16 and its up and running happily with some ancient drives...now to save up for some REAL storage :)


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PostPosted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 7:16 am 
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Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 6:07 am
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Would the use of CF and an IDE apator or USB flash disk make a more flexible system? I have some stripped down Linux systems running on such systems and is based upon loading RAM disks for the live system just as NASLite does. There is even the possibility of using LinuxBIOS and booting straing to Linux on boards that support it.


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