NASLite Network Attached Storage

Ofcourse I use a gigabit NIC, also tested different types.
Only realtek 8169 chips on them.
Everything works fine, but never get a normal transfer rate.

2 megabyte/sec is normal, even less than that sometimes.
I big difference read/write too..

Have to be an common problem, what is the sollution??

Which version are you using? NASLite-2 CDD?

Hi!
Yes tony, i am using the CDD version.
As I can see a lot of other have similar problems.
Someone maybe can solve the problem by change the NIC to a Intel. But shouldnt it work with a realtek or other ?

This is not a common problem at all. It is normal behavior for that to happen when running one of the Mbit floppy disk versions of NASLite, but not with any of the CD-ROM based products starting with NASLite+.

The only reason one would get such low transfer speed is if your IDE interface is not natively supported by the NASLite-2 kernel and the generic IDE driver is used (no DMA support), a 10T NIC is used, or the hub/switch negotiates incorrectly.

Granted there are other reasons you may experience such problem, but the above are the most likely ones. Take a look at the status screens and see if there are rx/tx errors after transfer. Also, can you post a syslog of your system, preferably after the machine has been used for a little while. That will help narrow down the probable cause.

If someone else is experiencing this problem, please post a description and some system specs.

I took a look in my "Server message log" in the morning, My NAS have been copying all weekend, and a message coming up all the time is this :

Aug 25 21:00:02 user.warn kernel: ata3: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Aug 25 21:00:02 user.warn kernel: ata3: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
Aug 25 21:00:02 user.err kernel: ata4: translated ATA stat/err 0x51/04 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0xb/00/00

The NIC status is this :
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:E0:4C:D0:23:33
inet addr:192.168.100.60 Bcast:192.168.100.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:14565105 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:9255249 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:3208323846 (2.9 GiB) TX bytes:3693252963 (3.4 GiB)
Interrupt:5 Base address:0xb000

Strange that nothing shows in "Device details" and the RX(%) in total activity is high as 85%

My system is .
AMD 3400
512Mb (or 1Gb) DDR
4 x SATA2 drives (3 x 500 and 1 x 300Gb)
The NIC is a realtek 8169 Gigabit

Well, there you have it,

Check cable, ATA-II vs ATA setting on the drive, turn SMART off in Naslite, move the drive to a different channel, check IRQs, etc. Browse the forum for the error and see what others are doing to fix the problem. It's obviously hardware related. I think you are writing to the drive with DMA disabled. That will account for the transfer speed you see.

I tried all of that above, no results.
But then I changed from a Realtek 8169 chip to onboard Nvidia GB Lan, and suddenly I have 40Mb/s down and 12Mb up....

Its better, but still need it to be faster.

That's all fine and dandy, but the drive errors you get should still be adressed if you don't want any surprises later on. Who knows, you may find that things improve even more after you take care of that. I am pretty comfortable in saying that 99% of the problems people have when running Naslite are hardware related.