NASLite Network Attached Storage

After using NL2 for many months without problems, I can't get anything to work stable anymore. I've even tried a whole different PC with NL2 and it still won't work.

Copying and reading the exact same folder from a Windows PC works fine. For some reason, my NAS is going dog slow and is currupting files. It seems to be limited to NASLite itself, since like I said, I tried a completely different machine with the same problem.

I am baffled because it was working great for about a year, and then just got unstable out of nowhere. I thought it was my network switch, but it can't be because all other systems don't have problems.

I have a gigabit network and get only 11-16MB/sec transfer speed. The system is an Athlon XP 2200+, 512MB RAM. Everything has it's own IRQ as well.

I don't really want to mess with OpenFiler becuase it's a nightmare to set up for simple home use. But I'm at a loss for ideas at this point. I've never seen anything like this before.

Another thought was that my NL2 CD was bad, but the machine was acting up even though it hadn't been rebooted in ages.

Did you switch ALL equipment when trying on the other machine? Check your cables etc.

Yep, 100% different components including the LAN cables, and still the same problem. I don't get why it would just stop working after so long.

What did or does the syslog say? Naslite will kick out errors left and right if there is a problem. If the data got all messed up on the previous hardware it will not magically fix itself on the new. Did you look at the syslog before starting to tear things apart?

From my experience, software doesn't change what it does. Especially with Naslite, being all read-only and all. Hardware on the other hand does tend to act out occasionally, so it needs to be maintained as needed. I suggest you do a filesystem check and see what you get. And keep an eye on the syslog. It's really does help.

It looks like I may have had 2 systems with flaky RAM. It is doing better now, but still pretty slow. Time will tell if the weird glitches are gone. I didn't see anything in the logs, either.

The odd thing is, MemTest86 didn't find any RAM problems when I tested it. Then when I tried installing Openfiler, it kept locking up during the keyboard layout selection part of the install. FreeNAS also acted funny. After I changed the RAM, everything got more stable. Whether it will stay that way, I guess I'll find out.

After being used to NASLite, I found out how much of a pain FreeNAS and Openfiler are to set up for simple home use. Though I'm thinking about giving Ubuntu Server and Webmin a shot sometime to see what I can do with it.

If you had hardware problems, especially RAM related, it is advisable that you run complete check and repair on all drives. However, before you do a check and repair, you should make sure the hardware is in good working order.