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Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 12:10 PM Wol <antlists@youngman.org.uk
> <mailto:antlists@youngman.org.uk>> wrote:
> <SNIP>
> > Do you want the system layered, with each layer doing one job? Use
> > dm-integrity to protect against corruption, raid to join the disks, lvm
> > to partition them, and ext to manage the directories and files.
> >
> > I do the latter ...
>
> No argument there, at least on a group of drives where you 
> want to have flexibility in the future. Desktop computers or
> system drives certainly. You didn't tell me what replaces
> the compression aspect of the problem but I'm sure there's
> something. It's a great strategy if you have the expertise and
> time to set it up and then manage it when a problem arises,
> if it ever arises. 
>
> I'm just asking what's the purpose of doing LVM, or your
> suggested layering, specifically on a storage pool for a 
> home user like Dale? That's the part I don't understand, 
> especially for a new NAS user like Dale?
>
> Mark
>
>
>

My reasoning is simple, I'm already familiar with LVM and how to manage
it.  While I swap drives on my Gentoo rig pretty regular lately, I don't
want to be limited from doing that on a NAS either.  If for example I
want to replace a 10TB drive with a 16TB drive, LVM makes that easy and
I know how to do it already.  With ZFS tho, is that even doable and if
it is, do I want to learn to do it with a new tool?  From what I've
seen, I'm not even sure you can do that.  It seems you can expand by
adding a drive but not replace or shrink. 

As a example.  I went back to a basic pool of two drives.  I then
recreated a dataset, or whatever it is called, and added for it to be
encrypted.  Since I did that, I get write errors.  I can mount it just
fine but that's it.  I have no idea what the cause is, google isn't
helping and to be honest, I'm thinking about target practice for the
thing.  It took me a good long while to set up the most basic thing. 
Adding encryption shouldn't be hard but apparently, it is more difficult
than I thought.  That or its so secure even I can't use it even with the
password.  lol 

This is what I like about LVM and cryptsetup.  I create a partition, or
use a whole drive, as needed.  I use cryptsetup to start the process
with one drive.  I then put ext4 on top of that.  Then I add a second
drive to that pv, add that to the volume group, extend the file system,
all done.  And it is encrypted as well.  If I need to move from one
drive to say a larger drive, no problem.  Add drive, move data, remove
old drive, extend file system if needed, all done.  I have notes but
I've done it a lot recently and have the general idea still glued to the
back of my head.  ;-)  Thing is, ZFS isn't making sense to me so I'm
clueless where to start when something goes wrong or even getting it to
work period.  I may try watching a video on ZFS and see if that helps. 
Maybe it will, maybe I'll still prefer LVM.  After all, I'm a old dog. 
New tricks ain't easy.  ROFL 

If I bought a pre-made NAS, I'd just have to deal with it.  I'd keep
hammering until I got it to where I could backup my data.  If I build a
Raspberry thing, NAS software may not be my first choice.  Maybe, just
maybe, my light bulb will pop on and I can make sense of TrueNAS and
ZFS.  If so, fine.  Right now, it's a lot of work with really no gain. 
I'm not able to backup my data yet.  It's a brick, time consuming and
confusing brick at that. 

After supper, I'm rebooting and see if I can beat some sense into
again.  Seriously considering using dd and starting over from scratch. 
I can't figure out how to do that with the GUI thing.  No delete button,
that I can find anyway. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
On 17/12/2022 20:03, Mark Knecht wrote:
> I'm just asking what's the purpose of doing LVM, or your
> suggested layering, specifically on a storage pool for a
> home user like Dale? That's the part I don't understand,
> especially for a new NAS user like Dale?

From my POV, snapshots, in-place short-term backups, it's just flexible.

Actually, my main use of lvm is on my system partition - take a
snapshot, emerge @world, make sure everything is okay ...

What I *thought* I wanted it for was my /home partition - my wife is
forever losing stuff, getting muddled and what have you. But I don't
think snapshotting would actually protect against what she does :-(

But the ability to snapshot anything where you think you might be doing
something dangerous is just great - it means you can revert a disaster...

And below that, integrity/raid? Well raid protects against a drive
failure, integrity protects against disk corruption. They're all
unlikely events, but I've got loads of disk space, a powerful system,
and I don't stress it, so I've got power to spare for it.

Cheers,
Wol
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
On Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 4:42 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
>
> My reasoning is simple, I'm already familiar with LVM and how to manage
it.
<SNIP>

Take the machine, wipe it and build a NAS from scratch with Gentoo. If all
you want is an NFS mount that won't be difficult. Add an NFS server, export
your mount and you're done, right? Managing it over the long term will be
far more work than TrueNAS but you will be comfortable with changing disks
and adding network cards which is important to you. Life is too short to
deal with things you really don't enjoy.

I would not suggest you look at Ubuntu Server because it's NGL. 10 minutes
to install, 3 minutes to figure out how to add the NFS server. However it's
a different package manager and truly not as nice as emerge/portage so you
probably won't like that part of NGL either. I truly don't like apt, but it
works if I stay in my lane so I've learned to do that, the advantage being
I've never had to build a package from scratch and I've never in 5 or 6
years had an update fail.

Wipe the machine. You'll be happier.

Best wishes,
Mark
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 4:42 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com
> <mailto:rdalek1967@gmail.com>> wrote:
> <SNIP>
> >
> > My reasoning is simple, I'm already familiar with LVM and how to
> manage it.  
> <SNIP>
>
> Take the machine, wipe it and build a NAS from scratch with Gentoo. If
> all you want is an NFS mount that won't be difficult. Add an NFS
> server, export your mount and you're done, right? Managing it over the
> long term will be far more work than TrueNAS but you will be
> comfortable with changing disks and adding network cards which
> is important to you. Life is too short to deal with things you really
> don't enjoy.
>
> I would not suggest you look at Ubuntu Server because it's NGL. 10
> minutes to install, 3 minutes to figure out how to add the NFS server.
> However it's a different package manager and truly not as nice as
> emerge/portage so you probably won't like that part of NGL either. I
> truly don't like apt, but it works if I stay in my lane so I've
> learned to do that, the advantage being I've never had to build a
> package from scratch and I've never in 5 or 6 years had an update fail.
>
> Wipe the machine. You'll be happier.
>
> Best wishes,
> Mark


Well, I finally got it so I could do a backup.  I didn't need a hammer
but the thought crossed my mind.  lol  Even tho I now have a 1GB network
card, it's still really slow.  It shows up as a 1GB connection on both
my Gentoo machine and the NAS machine.  This is a example of the speeds
I'm seeing.  Just snippets. 


277,193,507 100%   16.18MB/s    0:00:16
519,216,571 100%   18.86MB/s    0:00:26
738,078,565 100%   23.54MB/s    0:00:29


As you can see, the files sizes are large enough it should do better. 
When I use iftop, it shows it isn't doing anywhere near the speed it
should, maybe 1/4th or so.  I'd expect at least double or triple that
speed.  In all honesty, I'd think the hard drive would be the limiting
factor.  Even on my Gentoo rig I only get about 50 to 60MBs/sec for
encrypted drives.  I think the encryption slows that down.  When copying
from a plain drive to a plain drive, I get 100MBs/sec or so. 

I can't figure out why it is so slow tho.  The NAS rig is a 4 core CPU
and 8GBs of memory.  It should have enough horsepower under the hood. 
Maybe it is something I'm not aware of.  It is a older rig so maybe it
isn't SATA's fastest version, maybe even the original or something.  I
can't find anything in lspci or dmesg so not real sure where to look on
BSD. 

Anyway, it's progress for now at least.  ;-)  At this rate, it'll be
done in about a week, maybe.  o_O

Dale

:-)  :-) 
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
On Sunday, 18 December 2022 15:12:37 GMT Dale wrote:
> Mark Knecht wrote:
> > On Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 4:42 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com
> > <mailto:rdalek1967@gmail.com>> wrote:
> > <SNIP>
> >
> > > My reasoning is simple, I'm already familiar with LVM and how to
> >
> > manage it.
> > <SNIP>
> >
> > Take the machine, wipe it and build a NAS from scratch with Gentoo. If
> > all you want is an NFS mount that won't be difficult. Add an NFS
> > server, export your mount and you're done, right? Managing it over the
> > long term will be far more work than TrueNAS but you will be
> > comfortable with changing disks and adding network cards which
> > is important to you. Life is too short to deal with things you really
> > don't enjoy.
> >
> > I would not suggest you look at Ubuntu Server because it's NGL. 10
> > minutes to install, 3 minutes to figure out how to add the NFS server.
> > However it's a different package manager and truly not as nice as
> > emerge/portage so you probably won't like that part of NGL either. I
> > truly don't like apt, but it works if I stay in my lane so I've
> > learned to do that, the advantage being I've never had to build a
> > package from scratch and I've never in 5 or 6 years had an update fail.
> >
> > Wipe the machine. You'll be happier.
> >
> > Best wishes,
> > Mark
>
> Well, I finally got it so I could do a backup. I didn't need a hammer
> but the thought crossed my mind. lol Even tho I now have a 1GB network
> card, it's still really slow. It shows up as a 1GB connection on both
> my Gentoo machine and the NAS machine. This is a example of the speeds
> I'm seeing. Just snippets.
>
>
> 277,193,507 100% 16.18MB/s 0:00:16
> 519,216,571 100% 18.86MB/s 0:00:26
> 738,078,565 100% 23.54MB/s 0:00:29
>
>
> As you can see, the files sizes are large enough it should do better.
> When I use iftop, it shows it isn't doing anywhere near the speed it
> should, maybe 1/4th or so. I'd expect at least double or triple that
> speed. In all honesty, I'd think the hard drive would be the limiting
> factor. Even on my Gentoo rig I only get about 50 to 60MBs/sec for
> encrypted drives. I think the encryption slows that down. When copying
> from a plain drive to a plain drive, I get 100MBs/sec or so.
>
> I can't figure out why it is so slow tho. The NAS rig is a 4 core CPU
> and 8GBs of memory. It should have enough horsepower under the hood.
> Maybe it is something I'm not aware of. It is a older rig so maybe it
> isn't SATA's fastest version, maybe even the original or something. I
> can't find anything in lspci or dmesg so not real sure where to look on
> BSD.
>
> Anyway, it's progress for now at least. ;-) At this rate, it'll be
> done in about a week, maybe. o_O
>
> Dale
>
> :-) :-)

Has it auto-negotiated a full-duplex connection at 1Gbps? Run ifconfig and
check the output, it should say something like:

media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)

If not, then you may need to set this up manually.
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
Am Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 09:12:37AM -0600 schrieb Dale:

> > On Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 4:42 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com
> > <mailto:rdalek1967@gmail.com>> wrote:
> > <SNIP>
> > >
> > > My reasoning is simple, I'm already familiar with LVM and how to
> > manage it.  
> > <SNIP>
> > […]
> > Wipe the machine. You'll be happier.
> >
> > Best wishes,
> > Mark
>
> Well, I finally got it so I could do a backup.  I didn't need a hammer
> but the thought crossed my mind.  lol  Even tho I now have a 1GB network
> card, it's still really slow.  It shows up as a 1GB connection on both
> my Gentoo machine and the NAS machine.  This is a example of the speeds
> I'm seeing.  Just snippets. 
>
>
> 277,193,507 100%   16.18MB/s    0:00:16
> 519,216,571 100%   18.86MB/s    0:00:26
> 738,078,565 100%   23.54MB/s    0:00:29
>
>
> As you can see, the files sizes are large enough it should do better. 

Gbit nets at around 116..117 MB/s.

> When I use iftop, it shows it isn't doing anywhere near the speed it
> should, maybe 1/4th or so.  I'd expect at least double or triple that
> speed.  In all honesty, I'd think the hard drive would be the limiting
> factor.  Even on my Gentoo rig I only get about 50 to 60MBs/sec for
> encrypted drives.  I think the encryption slows that down.  When copying
> from a plain drive to a plain drive, I get 100MBs/sec or so. 
>
> I can't figure out why it is so slow tho.  The NAS rig is a 4 core CPU
> and 8GBs of memory.

OK, so you already noticed that encryption slows you down. This won’t happen
with a CPU that has AES instructions (well, and if the encryption you chose
actually uses AES, and not something else like Blowfish). So I guess your
CPU is too old, given your earlier descriptions.

When I built my NAS in November 2016, I installed a Celeron G1840 at first.
A very affordable (33 €) and frugal CPU (2 cores, 53 W, which were never
actually drawn). I knew it didn’t have AES back then (Intel removed that
limit from Celerons in architectures after Haswell), but from experiments I
knew it would achieve around 150..160 MB/s with LUKS, which was enough for
Gbit ethernet. But not for scrubs, when all HDDs were worked in parallel. So
after a year I did an upgrade after all and bought the smallest and cheapest
CPU that had AES, an i3-41xx.

> It should have enough horsepower under the hood. 
> Maybe it is something I'm not aware of.  It is a older rig so maybe it
> isn't SATA's fastest version, maybe even the original or something.  I

SATA 2 is 3 Gbit/s, so still not saturated by a single HDD.

Network transfers are single-core work. If it is really such an old machine,
I guess the CPU is the bottleneck again. Do you transfer via ssh? If so, use
something else that doesn’t encrypt the transport stream. When I am bound by
CPU in such cases (like with my ancient netbook with an Atom N450), and I
don’t want to set up a file server (that is nowhere near as flexible as ssh
anyways), I use netcat:

On the receiving end, start a netcat listener and extract from it:
nc -l -p $Portnumber | tar xf -
The portnumber must be any number above 1024, if you’re not root.

And on the sender, pack all your stuff into a tar (uncompressed!, since
videos aren’t compressible further and it will bog down the CPU again) and
pipe it to the receiver:
tar cf - * | nc $Destination_IP $Portnumber

Once the client is done, press Ctrl+C on the receiver.

Or maybe use rsync with the rsync-protocol instead of ssh. That’ll be more
flexible, because the tar-and-nc method doesn’t know about existing files on
the receiving end. (But I’ve never tested that approach.)

--
Grüße | Greetings | Salut | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

You sould borrow money only from pessimists, because they don’t expect it back.
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
On Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 8:13 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well, I finally got it so I could do a backup. I didn't need a hammer
but the thought crossed my mind. lol Even tho I now have a 1GB network
card, it's still really slow. It shows up as a 1GB connection on both my
Gentoo machine and the NAS machine. This is a example of the speeds I'm
seeing. Just snippets.
>
>
> 277,193,507 100% 16.18MB/s 0:00:16
> 519,216,571 100% 18.86MB/s 0:00:26
> 738,078,565 100% 23.54MB/s 0:00:29
>
>
> As you can see, the files sizes are large enough it should do better.
When I use iftop, it shows it isn't doing anywhere near the speed it
should, maybe 1/4th or so. I'd expect at least double or triple that
speed. In all honesty, I'd think the hard drive would be the limiting
factor. Even on my Gentoo rig I only get about 50 to 60MBs/sec for
encrypted drives. I think the encryption slows that down. When copying
from a plain drive to a plain drive, I get 100MBs/sec or so.
>
> I can't figure out why it is so slow tho. The NAS rig is a 4 core CPU
and 8GBs of memory. It should have enough horsepower under the hood.
Maybe it is something I'm not aware of. It is a older rig so maybe it
isn't SATA's fastest version, maybe even the original or something. I
can't find anything in lspci or dmesg so not real sure where to look on
BSD.
>
> Anyway, it's progress for now at least. ;-) At this rate, it'll be done
in about a week, maybe. o_O
>
> Dale
>

To what end Dale? Aren't you painting yourself into a corner with a system
you don't really want to run? Wipe the machine and start over from scratch
with Gentoo.

From my vantage point you don't provide enough information for me to make
an educated guess.

1) Is your data coming off the host machine able to transfer to other
machines at 1Gb/S type speeds?

2) Can data coming off of your NAS transfer to other machines at 1G/S type
speeds?

3) How are the two machines connected? If they are going through a router
or hub, do you know that hub doesn't limit throughput?

4) Is anything else happening on the network? Video flowing around while
people are watching TV or something?

5) CPU horsepower isn't the only potential bottleneck. Are your disks in
the NAS operating slowly? Are you running out of memory?

Have you considered running something like iperf?

Mark
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
On Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 8:29 AM Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 8:13 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Well, I finally got it so I could do a backup. I didn't need a hammer
but the thought crossed my mind. lol Even tho I now have a 1GB network
card, it's still really slow. It shows up as a 1GB connection on both my
Gentoo machine and the NAS machine. This is a example of the speeds I'm
seeing. Just snippets.
> >
> >
> > 277,193,507 100% 16.18MB/s 0:00:16
> > 519,216,571 100% 18.86MB/s 0:00:26
> > 738,078,565 100% 23.54MB/s 0:00:29
> >
> >
> > As you can see, the files sizes are large enough it should do better.
When I use iftop, it shows it isn't doing anywhere near the speed it
should, maybe 1/4th or so. I'd expect at least double or triple that
speed. In all honesty, I'd think the hard drive would be the limiting
factor. Even on my Gentoo rig I only get about 50 to 60MBs/sec for
encrypted drives. I think the encryption slows that down. When copying
from a plain drive to a plain drive, I get 100MBs/sec or so.
> >
> > I can't figure out why it is so slow tho. The NAS rig is a 4 core CPU
and 8GBs of memory. It should have enough horsepower under the hood.
Maybe it is something I'm not aware of. It is a older rig so maybe it
isn't SATA's fastest version, maybe even the original or something. I
can't find anything in lspci or dmesg so not real sure where to look on BSD.
> >
> > Anyway, it's progress for now at least. ;-) At this rate, it'll be
done in about a week, maybe. o_O
> >
> > Dale
> >
>
> To what end Dale? Aren't you painting yourself into a corner with a
system you don't really want to run? Wipe the machine and start over from
scratch with Gentoo.
>
> From my vantage point you don't provide enough information for me to make
an educated guess.
>
> 1) Is your data coming off the host machine able to transfer to other
machines at 1Gb/S type speeds?
>
> 2) Can data coming off of your NAS transfer to other machines at 1G/S
type speeds?
>
> 3) How are the two machines connected? If they are going through a router
or hub, do you know that hub doesn't limit throughput?
>
> 4) Is anything else happening on the network? Video flowing around while
people are watching TV or something?
>
> 5) CPU horsepower isn't the only potential bottleneck. Are your disks in
the NAS operating slowly? Are you running out of memory?
>
> Have you considered running something like iperf?
>
> Mark

Run iperf -s in the TrueNAS shell service in the GUI

From you Gentoo Land box run

mark@science2:~$ iperf -c truenas1
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to truenas1, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 85.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 1] local 192.168.86.43 port 50710 connected with 192.168.86.92 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 1] 0.0000-10.0418 sec 1.07 GBytes 918 Mbits/sec
mark@science2:~$

Then immediately wipe the machine and start over with Gentoo, or at least
start over with the Linux version of TrueNAS.

I would have used the Linux version if it had existed when I built the
machine. I don't love BSD, but not because it doesn't work but because
certain CLI tools have slightly different options.

Wipe the machine and start over with Gentoo from scratch...
Wipe the machine and start over with Gentoo from scratch...
Humm, I think you should...
Wipe the machine and start over with Gentoo from scratch...
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
On 18/12/2022 15:12, Dale wrote:
> I can't figure out why it is so slow tho.  The NAS rig is a 4 core CPU
> and 8GBs of memory.  It should have enough horsepower under the hood.
> Maybe it is something I'm not aware of.  It is a older rig so maybe it
> isn't SATA's fastest version, maybe even the original or something.  I
> can't find anything in lspci or dmesg so not real sure where to look on
> BSD.

What's the path between systems? Are they both plugged into the same
gigabit router? Have you got a switch or something in there? I've heard
pretty bad things about switches and lowest common denominator and
messing up your speeds ...

Cheers,
Wol
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
<SNIP>
> I can't figure out why it is so slow tho. The NAS rig is a 4 core CPU
and 8GBs of memory. It should have enough horsepower under the hood.
Maybe it is something I'm not aware of. It is a older rig so maybe it
isn't SATA's fastest version, maybe even the original or something. I
can't find anything in lspci or dmesg so not real sure where to look on
BSD.
<SNIP>

Mine is similar. It's an i3-2120 which is 2 core, 4 threads with 8GB of
DRAM. The NIC is on the motherboard and I don't remember what motherboard I
bought. It was used and cost my about $50.
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
Michael wrote:
> On Sunday, 18 December 2022 15:12:37 GMT Dale wrote:
>> Mark Knecht wrote:
>>> On Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 4:42 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com
>>> <mailto:rdalek1967@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> <SNIP>
>>>
>>>> My reasoning is simple, I'm already familiar with LVM and how to
>>> manage it.
>>> <SNIP>
>>>
>>> Take the machine, wipe it and build a NAS from scratch with Gentoo. If
>>> all you want is an NFS mount that won't be difficult. Add an NFS
>>> server, export your mount and you're done, right? Managing it over the
>>> long term will be far more work than TrueNAS but you will be
>>> comfortable with changing disks and adding network cards which
>>> is important to you. Life is too short to deal with things you really
>>> don't enjoy.
>>>
>>> I would not suggest you look at Ubuntu Server because it's NGL. 10
>>> minutes to install, 3 minutes to figure out how to add the NFS server.
>>> However it's a different package manager and truly not as nice as
>>> emerge/portage so you probably won't like that part of NGL either. I
>>> truly don't like apt, but it works if I stay in my lane so I've
>>> learned to do that, the advantage being I've never had to build a
>>> package from scratch and I've never in 5 or 6 years had an update fail.
>>>
>>> Wipe the machine. You'll be happier.
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>> Mark
>> Well, I finally got it so I could do a backup. I didn't need a hammer
>> but the thought crossed my mind. lol Even tho I now have a 1GB network
>> card, it's still really slow. It shows up as a 1GB connection on both
>> my Gentoo machine and the NAS machine. This is a example of the speeds
>> I'm seeing. Just snippets.
>>
>>
>> 277,193,507 100% 16.18MB/s 0:00:16
>> 519,216,571 100% 18.86MB/s 0:00:26
>> 738,078,565 100% 23.54MB/s 0:00:29
>>
>>
>> As you can see, the files sizes are large enough it should do better.
>> When I use iftop, it shows it isn't doing anywhere near the speed it
>> should, maybe 1/4th or so. I'd expect at least double or triple that
>> speed. In all honesty, I'd think the hard drive would be the limiting
>> factor. Even on my Gentoo rig I only get about 50 to 60MBs/sec for
>> encrypted drives. I think the encryption slows that down. When copying
>> from a plain drive to a plain drive, I get 100MBs/sec or so.
>>
>> I can't figure out why it is so slow tho. The NAS rig is a 4 core CPU
>> and 8GBs of memory. It should have enough horsepower under the hood.
>> Maybe it is something I'm not aware of. It is a older rig so maybe it
>> isn't SATA's fastest version, maybe even the original or something. I
>> can't find anything in lspci or dmesg so not real sure where to look on
>> BSD.
>>
>> Anyway, it's progress for now at least. ;-) At this rate, it'll be
>> done in about a week, maybe. o_O
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-) :-)
> Has it auto-negotiated a full-duplex connection at 1Gbps? Run ifconfig and
> check the output, it should say something like:
>
> media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
>
> If not, then you may need to set this up manually.

Mine says that here too. 


media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)


You know, it's not that easy to copy that from a console on BSD.  It was
kind enough to give me a hint on how tho.  ;-) 

I was pretty sure it was at full speed.  In iftop it showed it was a 1GB
connection, just not using much of it. 

I suspect it has something to do with this being a older system.  I
wouldn't be surprised if the SATA was a older and slower version.  I
guess I could google it. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
On Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 11:39 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
<SNIP>
>
> I suspect it has something to do with this being a older system. I
> wouldn't be surprised if the SATA was a older and slower version. I
> guess I could google it.
>
You need to study your specs. Even the first version of SATA, SATA 1,
was capable of 150MB/S. SATA2 does 300MB/S. This is unlikely IMO
to be due to SATA specs.

Have you run iperf yet as I suggested? It will easily tell you what the
network performance is and takes 5 seconds in NGL.
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
Am Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 12:38:45PM -0600 schrieb Dale:

> I suspect it has something to do with this being a older system.

Very likely. :)

> I wouldn't be surprised if the SATA was a older and slower version.

I hate to repeat myself, but no. Here are the speeds of SATA:

Generation Year Gross bandwidth Net bandwidth
---------------------------------------------------------
SATA 1 2003 1.5 Gbps 1.2 Gbps (150 MB/s)
SATA 2 2004 3.0 Gbps 2.4 Gbps (300 MB/s)
SATA 3 2008 6.0 Gbps 4.8 Gbps (600 MB/s)

Even SATA 1 is faster than your new ethernet card.

> I guess I could google it. 

My source (as most often): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA
If you know the name of a technical thing, the quickest way to concise
facts is wikipedia.

--
Grüße | Greetings | Salut | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

The stupid keep tidy. The genius controls chaos.
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 09:12:37AM -0600 schrieb Dale:
>
>>> On Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 4:42 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com
>>> <mailto:rdalek1967@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> <SNIP>
>>>> My reasoning is simple, I'm already familiar with LVM and how to
>>> manage it.  
>>> <SNIP>
>>> […]
>>> Wipe the machine. You'll be happier.
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>> Mark
>> Well, I finally got it so I could do a backup.  I didn't need a hammer
>> but the thought crossed my mind.  lol  Even tho I now have a 1GB network
>> card, it's still really slow.  It shows up as a 1GB connection on both
>> my Gentoo machine and the NAS machine.  This is a example of the speeds
>> I'm seeing.  Just snippets. 
>>
>>
>> 277,193,507 100%   16.18MB/s    0:00:16
>> 519,216,571 100%   18.86MB/s    0:00:26
>> 738,078,565 100%   23.54MB/s    0:00:29
>>
>>
>> As you can see, the files sizes are large enough it should do better. 
> Gbit nets at around 116..117 MB/s.
>
>> When I use iftop, it shows it isn't doing anywhere near the speed it
>> should, maybe 1/4th or so.  I'd expect at least double or triple that
>> speed.  In all honesty, I'd think the hard drive would be the limiting
>> factor.  Even on my Gentoo rig I only get about 50 to 60MBs/sec for
>> encrypted drives.  I think the encryption slows that down.  When copying
>> from a plain drive to a plain drive, I get 100MBs/sec or so. 
>>
>> I can't figure out why it is so slow tho.  The NAS rig is a 4 core CPU
>> and 8GBs of memory.
> OK, so you already noticed that encryption slows you down. This won’t happen
> with a CPU that has AES instructions (well, and if the encryption you chose
> actually uses AES, and not something else like Blowfish). So I guess your
> CPU is too old, given your earlier descriptions.
>
> When I built my NAS in November 2016, I installed a Celeron G1840 at first.
> A very affordable (33 €) and frugal CPU (2 cores, 53 W, which were never
> actually drawn). I knew it didn’t have AES back then (Intel removed that
> limit from Celerons in architectures after Haswell), but from experiments I
> knew it would achieve around 150..160 MB/s with LUKS, which was enough for
> Gbit ethernet. But not for scrubs, when all HDDs were worked in parallel. So
> after a year I did an upgrade after all and bought the smallest and cheapest
> CPU that had AES, an i3-41xx.
>
>> It should have enough horsepower under the hood. 
>> Maybe it is something I'm not aware of.  It is a older rig so maybe it
>> isn't SATA's fastest version, maybe even the original or something.  I
> SATA 2 is 3 Gbit/s, so still not saturated by a single HDD.

This could be a SATA 1.  I don't recall the speed of that.  Thing is,
when I go to a console and use htop, it shows the CPU is maxed out most
of the time.  It kinda gets busy for a good bit, idle for a short time
then back to close to 100%.  It has plenty of memory even tho it is
caching a lot in memory.  It shows less than 1GB actually used by the
system itself, not including cache tho.  With that info, I suspect the
CPU is the bottleneck.  It's the only thing that is showing heavy
usage.  This may have nothing to do with SATA.  I suspect it is the
encryption that really hits the CPU hard.  Also, the CPU temp is good
too.  I replaced the stock cooler with a larger model.  I think it is
running around 100F or so. I don't think temps are a issue. 


>
> Network transfers are single-core work. If it is really such an old machine,
> I guess the CPU is the bottleneck again. Do you transfer via ssh? If so, use
> something else that doesn’t encrypt the transport stream. When I am bound by
> CPU in such cases (like with my ancient netbook with an Atom N450), and I
> don’t want to set up a file server (that is nowhere near as flexible as ssh
> anyways), I use netcat:
>
> On the receiving end, start a netcat listener and extract from it:
> nc -l -p $Portnumber | tar xf -
> The portnumber must be any number above 1024, if you’re not root.
>
> And on the sender, pack all your stuff into a tar (uncompressed!, since
> videos aren’t compressible further and it will bog down the CPU again) and
> pipe it to the receiver:
> tar cf - * | nc $Destination_IP $Portnumber
>
> Once the client is done, press Ctrl+C on the receiver.
>
> Or maybe use rsync with the rsync-protocol instead of ssh. That’ll be more
> flexible, because the tar-and-nc method doesn’t know about existing files on
> the receiving end. (But I’ve never tested that approach.)
>

Since this is local, I just use rsync to do my backups.  I did have to
change the options a bit.  It seems TrueNAS doesn't like some of the
permissions or something.  Anyway, I found a way that works.  As I
mentioned above, I think this is a CPU issue.  It does show that I need
to see how encryption will work with the CPU on a Raspberry Pi tho. 
Maybe the newer ones will have the needed support and not cause problems. 

While at it, the dashboard CPU info doesn't really show the CPU maxing
out as well as htop does.  If someone thinks their TrueNAS box is slow,
may want to use htop or similar tools to check things. The memory is
pretty accurate tho.  Thing about htop, it shows how busy each core is
and that is usually most helpful.  Some processes only use one core,
even tho some have left the single core CPUs behind long ago.  lol 

This is gonna take a while.  :/

Dale

:-)  :-) 
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 11:39 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com
> <mailto:rdalek1967@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> <SNIP>
> >
> > I suspect it has something to do with this being a older system.  I
> > wouldn't be surprised if the SATA was a older and slower version.  I
> > guess I could google it.
> >
> You need to study your specs. Even the first version of SATA, SATA 1,
> was capable of 150MB/S. SATA2 does 300MB/S. This is unlikely IMO
> to be due to SATA specs. 
>
> Have you run iperf yet as I suggested? It will easily tell you what the 
> network performance is and takes 5 seconds in NGL.

I ran it but it never returned anything.  I let it sit for at least a
minute but it just sat there.  I don't have that command on my Gentoo
rig.  This is what it did on the NAS box.


root@truenas[~]# iperf -s
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 64.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------


And nothing.  Several minutes later, still nothing.  And it continues to
sit there.  I don't think it is working.  :/

Still, odds are, whatever it is, I'm not likely going to be able to
change it.  That poor old CPU just may not have the needed instruction
set to be really fast for this.  Maybe a different encryption would be
better.  I dunno.  It's temporary anyway. 

And still nothing.  It's been sitting there since I read the last
message.  Still, nothing. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
On Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 12:20 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
> root@truenas[~]# iperf -s
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Server listening on TCP port 5001
> TCP window size: 64.0 KByte (default)
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> And nothing. Several minutes later, still nothing. And it continues to
sit there. I don't think it is working. :/
>
> Still, odds are, whatever it is, I'm not likely going to be able to
change it. That poor old CPU just may not have the needed instruction set
to be really fast for this. Maybe a different encryption would be better.
I dunno. It's temporary anyway.
>
> And still nothing. It's been sitting there since I read the last
message. Still, nothing.
>
Sadly, you didn't read all of my instructions or apparently read the man
page or help file

All you've done is start the server which listens for a connection.

Now go to your Gentoo Land machine that you want to backup and execute

iperf -c IP.ADDR.OF.SERVER

Wait 10 seconds and hit ctrl-C
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
On 18/12/2022 18:59, Dale wrote:
> Since this is local, I just use rsync to do my backups.  I did have to
> change the options a bit.  It seems TrueNAS doesn't like some of the
> permissions or something.

Are you running the rsync daemon on the NAS? I'm probably teaching
grandma to suck eggs, but that massively reduces the need for network
traffic.

Cheers,
Wol
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 12:20 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com
> <mailto:rdalek1967@gmail.com>> wrote:
> <SNIP>
> > root@truenas[~]# iperf -s
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > Server listening on TCP port 5001
> > TCP window size: 64.0 KByte (default)
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
> > And nothing.  Several minutes later, still nothing.  And it
> continues to sit there.  I don't think it is working.  :/
> >
> > Still, odds are, whatever it is, I'm not likely going to be able to
> change it.  That poor old CPU just may not have the needed instruction
> set to be really fast for this.  Maybe a different encryption would be
> better.  I dunno.  It's temporary anyway.
> >
> > And still nothing.  It's been sitting there since I read the last
> message.  Still, nothing.
> >
> Sadly, you didn't read all of my instructions or apparently read the
> man page or help file
>
> All you've done is start the server which listens for a connection.
>
> Now go to your Gentoo Land machine that you want to backup and execute
>
> iperf -c IP.ADDR.OF.SERVER
>
> Wait 10 seconds and hit ctrl-C


Oh, I read that but didn't get that one worked with the other.  Ooops. 
Thing is, I don't have the second command on my Gentoo install.  :/  It
sort of grumbles about that.  May look into that later.  Got other
things in the air right now. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
Wol wrote:
> On 18/12/2022 18:59, Dale wrote:
>> Since this is local, I just use rsync to do my backups.  I did have to
>> change the options a bit.  It seems TrueNAS doesn't like some of the
>> permissions or something.
>
> Are you running the rsync daemon on the NAS? I'm probably teaching
> grandma to suck eggs, but that massively reduces the need for network
> traffic.
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
>


I mount the NAS on my Gentoo rig.  I mount it under /mnt.  Then I run
rsync and copy from the source to the mount point for the NAS.  I may
could go the other way but never thought about doing it that way.  Kinda
sounds backwards to me but I dunno. ;-)

Dale

:-)  :-) 
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
On 18/12/2022 22:11, Dale wrote:
> Wol wrote:
>> On 18/12/2022 18:59, Dale wrote:
>>> Since this is local, I just use rsync to do my backups.  I did have to
>>> change the options a bit.  It seems TrueNAS doesn't like some of the
>>> permissions or something.
>>
>> Are you running the rsync daemon on the NAS? I'm probably teaching
>> grandma to suck eggs, but that massively reduces the need for network
>> traffic.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Wol
>>
>>
>
>
> I mount the NAS on my Gentoo rig.  I mount it under /mnt.  Then I run
> rsync and copy from the source to the mount point for the NAS.  I may
> could go the other way but never thought about doing it that way.  Kinda
> sounds backwards to me but I dunno. ;-)
>
Sounds to me like you're doing it all wrong either way ...

What is *supposed* to happen is that you have the daemon running on one
machine and the client on the other - doesn't matter which.

Then the client tells the daemon what files are to be copied, THE TWO
COMPARE CHECKSUMS, and only the stuff that fails the checksum is copied.
So if you're doing an incremental backup, network usage and writes are
kept to a minimum.

I tell people to an in-place backup if they're running on a snapshot
setup, because again it only writes stuff that has actually changed.

Cheers,
Wol
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
On 12/18/22 23:08, Dale wrote:
> Mark Knecht wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 12:20 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> <SNIP>
>> > root@truenas[~]# iperf -s
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>> > Server listening on TCP port 5001
>> > TCP window size: 64.0 KByte (default)
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>> >
>> >
>> > And nothing.  Several minutes later, still nothing.  And it
>> continues to sit there.  I don't think it is working.  :/
>> >
>> > Still, odds are, whatever it is, I'm not likely going to be able to
>> change it.  That poor old CPU just may not have the needed
>> instruction set to be really fast for this.  Maybe a different
>> encryption would be better.  I dunno.  It's temporary anyway.
>> >
>> > And still nothing.  It's been sitting there since I read the last
>> message.  Still, nothing.
>> >
>> Sadly, you didn't read all of my instructions or apparently read the
>> man page or help file
>>
>> All you've done is start the server which listens for a connection.
>>
>> Now go to your Gentoo Land machine that you want to backup and execute
>>
>> iperf -c IP.ADDR.OF.SERVER
>>
>> Wait 10 seconds and hit ctrl-C
>
>
> Oh, I read that but didn't get that one worked with the other. Ooops. 
> Thing is, I don't have the second command on my Gentoo install.  :/ 
> It sort of grumbles about that.  May look into that later.  Got other
> things in the air right now.
>
> Dale
$ eix iperf
[I] net-misc/iperf
     Available versions:
     (2)    2.0.14a **2.9999*l
     (3)    3.12
       {debug ipv6 sctp threads}
     Installed versions:  3.12(3)(10:20:30 AM 10/08/2022)(-sctp)
     Homepage:            https://github.com/esnet/iperf
     Description:         A TCP, UDP, and SCTP network bandwidth
measurement tool
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
Wols Lists wrote:
> On 18/12/2022 22:11, Dale wrote:
>> Wol wrote:
>>> On 18/12/2022 18:59, Dale wrote:
>>>> Since this is local, I just use rsync to do my backups.  I did have to
>>>> change the options a bit.  It seems TrueNAS doesn't like some of the
>>>> permissions or something.
>>>
>>> Are you running the rsync daemon on the NAS? I'm probably teaching
>>> grandma to suck eggs, but that massively reduces the need for network
>>> traffic.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Wol
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> I mount the NAS on my Gentoo rig.  I mount it under /mnt.  Then I run
>> rsync and copy from the source to the mount point for the NAS.  I may
>> could go the other way but never thought about doing it that way.  Kinda
>> sounds backwards to me but I dunno. ;-)
>>
> Sounds to me like you're doing it all wrong either way ...
>
> What is *supposed* to happen is that you have the daemon running on
> one machine and the client on the other - doesn't matter which.
>
> Then the client tells the daemon what files are to be copied, THE TWO
> COMPARE CHECKSUMS, and only the stuff that fails the checksum is
> copied. So if you're doing an incremental backup, network usage and
> writes are kept to a minimum.
>
> I tell people to an in-place backup if they're running on a snapshot
> setup, because again it only writes stuff that has actually changed.
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
>


Do you have a link to the proper way to do it?  I don't copy to a
different machine often so my current method may be the problem.  Maybe
the way you mention will work much better, even a little better would be
nice. ;-)

Dale

:-)  :-) 
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
Am Thu, Dec 15, 2022 at 10:08:02PM -0600 schrieb Dale:

I just read a news story about a new NAS model from Terramaster.
(Interestingly, they have their OS on an internal USB stick, so it’s easy to
swap it out for a standard Linux. And it uses a nice Celeron N5100 x86
processor.)

> Eventually, I plan to build a Raspberry Pi NAS.  When I do, I'll post
> everything major I needed, boards, case etc for everyone to look at. 
> I'll even try to upload some pics, or share as attachments if there is
> interest.  Unless I find one heck of a deal on a used NAS that is. 
> Still may build one even then.  ;-)

In the comments section of the article, there was a link to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2S2RMNv7OU
A Raspberry Pi NAS with 1 Petabyte of storage. Enjoy. :)

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Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

Windows is great, you can download Linux with it.
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Thu, Dec 15, 2022 at 10:08:02PM -0600 schrieb Dale:
>
> I just read a news story about a new NAS model from Terramaster.
> (Interestingly, they have their OS on an internal USB stick, so it’s easy to
> swap it out for a standard Linux. And it uses a nice Celeron N5100 x86
> processor.)
>
>> Eventually, I plan to build a Raspberry Pi NAS.  When I do, I'll post
>> everything major I needed, boards, case etc for everyone to look at. 
>> I'll even try to upload some pics, or share as attachments if there is
>> interest.  Unless I find one heck of a deal on a used NAS that is. 
>> Still may build one even then.  ;-)
> In the comments section of the article, there was a link to this:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2S2RMNv7OU
> A Raspberry Pi NAS with 1 Petabyte of storage. Enjoy. :)
>

I think if I can hold out a little while, something really nice is going
to come along.  It seems there is a good bit of interest in having a
Raspberry Pi NAS that gives really good performance.  I'm talking a NAS
that is about the same speed as a internal drive.  Plus the ability to
use RAID and such.  I'd like to have a 6 bay with 6 drives setup in
pairs for redundancy.  I can't recall what number RAID that is. 
Basically, if one drive fails, another copy still exists.  Of course,
two independent NASs would be better in my opinion.  Still, any of this
is progress. 

I've watched some videos by that guy but I don't recall seeing that
one.  That one, while pricey, shows that a lot can be done with a little
Raspberry Pi.  I read that a version 5 is coming, if they ever become
available again.  Right now, it seems the supply chain has grinded to a
halt.  It's hard to find quite a few things at the moment. 

Thanks for the link.  I have a feeling even better is coming soon. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

P. S.  My backup I started days ago, maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the way
through.  It's made it to the names starting with F.  It has a ways to
go.  A lot of stuff starts with 'The'.  That alone is quite large.  It's
making progress tho.  Slowly.  ;-) 
Re: NAS and replacing with larger drives [ In reply to ]
On 21/12/2022 02:47, Dale wrote:
> I think if I can hold out a little while, something really nice is going
> to come along.  It seems there is a good bit of interest in having a
> Raspberry Pi NAS that gives really good performance.  I'm talking a NAS
> that is about the same speed as a internal drive.  Plus the ability to
> use RAID and such.  I'd like to have a 6 bay with 6 drives setup in
> pairs for redundancy.  I can't recall what number RAID that is.
> Basically, if one drive fails, another copy still exists.  Of course,
> two independent NASs would be better in my opinion.  Still, any of this
> is progress.

That's called either Raid-10 (linux), or Raid-1+0 (elsewhere). Note that
1+0 is often called 10, but linux-10 is slightly different.

I'd personally be inclined to go for raid-6. That's 4 data drives, 2
parity (so you could have an "any two" drive failure and still recover).

A two-copy 10 or 1+0 is vulnerable to a two-drive failure. A three-copy
is vulnerable to a three-drive failure.

In other words, a two-copy raid-10 might be taken out by a failure that
a raid-6 will survive. A three-copy raid-10 might be taken out by a
failure that will take out a raid-6. Choose your poison :-)

Cheers,
Wol

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