#243 Transfer of large file kills FreeNAS

[Kevin R. Porter]

Version: FreeNAS 0.685RC1

Environment: FreeNAS running in a VMware Workstation 6.0 virtual-machine with 2GB RAM, one 1GB IDE virtual-disk as FreeNAS boot disk "ad0", and two 2GB SCSI virtual-disks for storage space ("da0" and "da1")

Configuration: FreeNAS installed from cdrom to the 1GB IDE virtual-disk "ad0" as the FreeNAS boot drive. The two 2GB virtual-disks ("da0" and "da1") are added and formatted as Software-Raid, a single RAID-1 volume named "testraid" created on them, and the RAID-1 volume formatted as UFS, then mounted as a share named "nas_test".

Using a Windows-Vista box to map and access the "nas_test" share seems to work as long as only small files and/or folders are transferred.

HOWEVER: Attempting to transfer a large file from Vista to the FreeNAS (for example: a 650MB Outlook personal-folders xxxxxx.PST file or large cdrom image xxxx.ISO file), kills the FreeNAS every time, 100% reproducible.

Symptoms: Browser can no longer connect to FreeNAS webgui, Windows loses connection to the mapped share and can not reconnect, FreeNAS console sometimes (but not always?) freezes, but effectively dead until FreeNAS is rebooted. On those occurances when console doesn't freeze, I have been able to get into a shell, and verify that the /mnt/nas_test directory appears to have the "large file" allocated to the correct size, but I suspect its contents are incomplete - can't say for sure. Rebooting FreeNAS makes the webgui and share available again, and Windows Vista can "see" the "large file" but any attempt to pull it back to Windows kills the FreeNAS again. Windows CAN delete the file successfully however.

Not much of a BSD user, so not sure what else to look at via the shell. Was thinking of building a dedicated NAS box, but decided to test FreeNAS under VMware first before committing the $$'s for hardware - need to resolve this before I can proceeed further.

[Volker]

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Hi,
can reproduce this in my VM (low powered 128Mb RAM, 5GB IDE) nor on a real system. Maybe it is a Samba <-> Windows Vista problem. Can you reproduce this when using FTP or SFTP?

Greetings
Volker

[Kevin R. Porter]

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Large file transfers seem to fail in much the same fashion using either CIFS or FTP.

What appears to be happening is the FreeNAS network interface ("lnc0" under a VMware virtual-machine) appears to be getting into some sort of hung state which makes the FreeNAS inaccessible.

If I get into a shell from the FreeNAS' VM console and do a "netstat -i" it shows that the network interface is logging hundreds of Ierrs. Before the transfer, I can ping the FreeNAS and the FreeNAS can ping the Vista system just fine.... after the transfer failure, the FreeNAS is no longer ping'able, and the FreeNAS can only ping itself as "localhost", but not any other system(s) - each outbound ping attempt increments the "Ierr" count.

As far as the RAID-1 disk share goes, the FreeNAS appears to allocate the correct size of disk storage for the incoming file, and starts transferring, gets about 270MB into the 643MB file and then drops off the network as described above.

[Artyom Viklenko]

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This is not FreeNAS nor FreeBSD problem. This is FreeBSD-in-VMWare problem. :)
After some Googling several months ago, I've found some suggestions.
Two most important things are:
1) set HZ=100 - default value of 1000 is too much for emulation;
2) change VMWare config file by hand - you can activate emulation
of intel PRO/1000 em cards instead of poor lnc cards. This is described in manual.
You even can configure 4 NIC-s!

[Olivier Cochard-Labbe]

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Just a new test:
I didn't have a MS windows PC, but I've test this from an Ubuntu PC.
- Vmware workstation 6.0.0 (on the ubuntuPC) with FreeNAS 0.686b-nb20071017 installed , 256Mb RAM configured, with a graid5 volume, encrypted with geli and shared by CIFS ("Enable large read/write" and "Enable extended attribute support" disabled)

I've Transfert a 782MB iso file from the ubuntu PC using CIFS without problem.

[Andy]

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I also observed the freezing of the FreeNAS server

My configuration:

FreeNAS 0.68 on a old thin client with Cyrix GXm 267MHz CPU with 128MB RAM and on board RealTek 8139 10/100BaseTX NIC.
2 Disks, Disk 1 ,the boot disk on which FreeNAS is installed, is a 10 GB IBM-DARA-212000/AR4OA51A disk.
Disk 2 is a external WesternDigital Elements 500GB USB disk holding my data.
Network speed is 100MBit
My main system is a 900MHz PIII system running Mepis 3.5 (Debian based)

The freezing occurs:
- while transfering big files (~700MB)
- while transfering a lot of small (~ 1MB) files
- regardless of the use of CIFS or FTP
- regardless of the target of the data transfer (10GB internal or 500GB USB disk)

The amount of data transfered until the freezing occurs varies.
When FreeNAS is frozen, the server is not responding to ping, the console is dead and the webgui is not reachable. The only way to get FreeNAS back working is to cut an reapply power on the thin client.
I have only tested the transfer to the FreeNAS server, not from the server.

[illpig]

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I've a very similar problem.
A VMWare ESX Server 3.0.2 Upd1, which tries to manage its virtual discs at a physical FreeNAS Server 0.686b2.

I have following configuration:
FreeNAS Server, P4 2.4GHz, 2GB Ram, 4x200GB at a HighPoint 1640 RAID Controller
2x 1GBit Intel Server Pro directly connected to two vmware-kernel adapter.
One via NFS and the other via iSCSI.

Now, everytime I try to deploy or copy a 4GB virtual disc, I loose connection and have to restart my NAS Server.

Does anybody knows ANY solution...except to implement iSCSI on a Microsoft Storage Server or ask EMC² for help?

[Volker]

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Bug tracker cleanup. Please reopen if problem still exists.

Regards
Volker