8.0.4 coming soon...

[gcooper]

Thanks man :). Unfortunately I need to go fix the plist because it's busted when I try and make the package for the new version of transmission. Lame duck... well, here's to another quick weekend project I suppose! I'll update folks tonight / tomorrow on my progress.

plist fixed.. build onward ho!

 

[joeschmuck]

Downloaded Beta2 MM, seems to work fine on my VM. I'm checking out other things besides MM items now.

I updated the MM instructions as well, not sure I got Bit Torrent working properly since I've never used it. FireFly and MiniDLNA work like a champ for sure.

 

[survive]

Hi gcooper,

Any chance I can get the original values for the 4 items you tuned in post #54?

I ask because it seems my filers performance has taken a nosedive with 8.0.4. I haven't tested things thoroughly by any means, but I "dd"ed some zeros out to a file and it took about twice as long as it normally\used to, so then I did an "iozone -a" run and compared the results to a run I did back in mid-December and it does indeed look like I've taken a significant performance hit with this latest beta.

-Will

 

[gcooper]

Hi gcooper,

Any chance I can get the original values for the 4 items you tuned in post #54?

I ask because it seems my filers performance has taken a nosedive with 8.0.4. I haven't tested things thoroughly by any means, but I "dd"ed some zeros out to a file and it took about twice as long as it normally\used to, so then I did an "iozone -a" run and compared the results to a run I did back in mid-December and it does indeed look like I've taken a significant performance hit with this latest beta.

Sure. The original values (on FreeBSD 8.2) are:

Code:

kern.ipc.nmbclusters - 25600 # 1024 + MAXUSERS * 64 => 1024 + 384 * 64, by default
vfs.zfs.arc_max -  run sysctl hw.physmem on the command line -- it's almost all your memory
vm.kmem_size - # 12 * 1024 * 1024 + nmbclusters * PAGE_SIZE = 12 * 1024 * 1024 + 25600 * 4096 = 112MB
vm.kmem_size_max - run sysctl hw.physmem on the command line -- it's almost all your memory

kern.ipc.nmbclusters is set to 25000 on i386 and 50000 on amd64 to allow several users with some NICs (cxgb, em, igb) the capability to function with FreeNAS without additional tuning (TrueNAS appliances are different because iX sells and ships appliances with a larger number of interfaces that require more mbufs than FreeNAS appliances do, and also are more built out than FreeNAS boxes are expected to be). mbufs are 2kB in size, so this is a total of 50000 - 25600 = 47MB additional reserved space.

The values are set to avoid potential instability on FreeNAS 8.x (assumption is that drivers and kernel code isn't bugged -- which is never true no matter which OS you use -- and fail gracefully when memory starved). The problem (that some understand and others don't) is that some features like deduplication in ZFS v28 can cause NAS boxes to hang and/or panic and take a long time to replay the ZIL on next boot, depending on how much the user commits (or in this particular instance, overcommits) the NAS box and what operations were being performed if and when boxes are shutdown ungracefully. I set the values low intentionally to avoid causing a slew of functional issues with underspec'ed hardware.

It seems that the time has come to port zfskerntune to FreeNAS 8.x, so I'll take care of that before -RC1 (early next week).

 

[joeschmuck]

My results for 8.0.4-MULTIMEDIA testing (on VM only):

I tested out DLNA and iTunes which both worked great. Configured Bit Torrent and it runs, not sure if it actually works though so that's up to someone else to answer.

Did some general speed transfer tests and they all seem reasonable keeping in mind it's on a VM and not my real NAS hardware. I was able to configure and make work the following: CRON Job, Most Storage functions/settings but this was an upgrade so I didn't create a new pool, did CIFS Shares, DDNS, FTP, SSH. Nothing too serious to be honest.

If there were some specific changes that need to be tested, please let us know so those could be hit pretty hard.

I hope others start reporting their success or failures so you have a feeling how this BETA2 is going.

One word of caution... zfskerntune, I don't know how much that will inject into this version of the project but if it messes with these critical settings, should it be included before RC1 is released or should it be included in the next formal release like 8.1 (or 8.2) ? I just didn't want you to take a stable product and make it unstable is all. I'm overly cautious.

-Mark

 

[gcooper]

My results for 8.0.4-MULTIMEDIA testing (on VM only):

I tested out DLNA and iTunes which both worked great. Configured Bit Torrent and it runs, not sure if it actually works though so that's up to someone else to answer.

I'll doublecheck soon (I have the transmission remote installed on my Windows box).

Did some general speed transfer tests and they all seem reasonable keeping in mind it's on a VM and not my real NAS hardware. I was able to configure and make work the following: CRON Job, Most Storage functions/settings but this was an upgrade so I didn't create a new pool, did CIFS Shares, DDNS, FTP, SSH. Nothing too serious to be honest.

If there were some specific changes that need to be tested, please let us know so those could be hit pretty hard.

I hope others start reporting their success or failures so you have a feeling how this BETA2 is going.

k. transmission was upgraded to 2.4.2, but I ran that version before I converted my FreeBSD desktop over to Windows 7 (after the great FreeBSD 10.x debacle with the autoconf scripts that broke everything under the sun because some clever folks added logic that made everything think that FreeBSD 10.x was 1.x >_>..).

Apart from the 'slowness' with the performance sanity caps, I haven't heard anything negative about 8.0.4 so far. Been consumed with other tasks for the TrueNAS release engineering side of things, but trying to remain focused on FreeNAS 8.0.4 as well.

One word of caution... zfskerntune, I don't know how much that will inject into this version of the project but if it messes with these critical settings, should it be included before RC1 is released or should it be included in the next formal release like 8.1 (or 8.2) ? I just didn't want you to take a stable product and make it unstable is all. I'm overly cautious.

I won't integrate zfskerntune into ix-loader like I have done with the autotune script in TrueNAS (it was a must for reasons that are apparent if you troll around the web looking for ZFS v28 resources and look for my name ;)..). I'll give experienced people the option of running it on their systems to make things go faster without dealing with the potential overhead involved with calculating the values that they need to set if they fiddle around with running the app, and then flip stuff on for ix-loader in 8.2.0. There will of course be a "break the seal, you buy it. this is beta. beware of dog" unionfs-style warning.

I wager that most home users won't really notice a difference in performance for everyday tasks unless transferring a large set of files, etc, but we'll see..

 

[Gnome]

This is a bit O/T (off-topic) but will we eventually be able to use a tool similar to ZFSKernTune that will tune FreeNAS based on selected settings (which have been found to work very well) or will it remain a manual process where each person figures out their own setup?

 

[Milhouse]

This is a bit O/T (off-topic) but will we eventually be able to use a tool similar to ZFSKernTune that will tune FreeNAS based on selected settings (which have been found to work very well) or will it remain a manual process where each person figures out their own setup?

You might want to read the end of the post that is three above yours?

 

[Gnome]

You might want to read the end of the post that is three above yours?

Hmm, not sure how I missed it. Thanks and I apologize to the anyone who's time I wasted.

 

[gcooper]

Hmm, not sure how I missed it. Thanks and I apologize to the anyone who's time I wasted.

No worries... working on that and will add the bits that I currently set in loader.conf at boot time to the migration script so it will build the loader stuff appropriately. Might take a day or two..

 

[joeschmuck]

No worries... working on that and will add the bits that I currently set in loader.conf at boot time to the migration script so it will build the loader stuff appropriately. Might take a day or two..

Yoda says... The force is strong in this one.
Toss a posting out there when you're ready for some more testing. I'd love to test this kernel tuning to see what is might do for me, although my system does run very well as-is. Right now I'm trying to figure out why my hard drives are not sleeping like they use to. Hopefully it's just something one of my computers is causing.

 

[gcooper]

Yoda says... The force is strong in this one.
Toss a posting out there when you're ready for some more testing. I'd love to test this kernel tuning to see what is might do for me, although my system does run very well as-is. Right now I'm trying to figure out why my hard drives are not sleeping like they use to. Hopefully it's just something one of my computers is causing.

A little birdy told me that it might be because we're running zpool status all the time (-> every 5 minutes). That's all for now...

 

[gcooper]

A little birdy told me that it might be because we're running zpool status all the time (-> every 5 minutes). That's all for now...

Another thought: SMART might now be working for you, which means that it's probing the disks more often...

 

[joeschmuck]

I did set up SMART testing but it's once a month. I'll disable that to see where it takes me. Thanks little birdy.

EDIT: I removed all my SMART jobs, disabled all my CRON jobs, verified the the HDD Standby settings were set to 120 minutes, and waited a few minutes before rebooting the machine. The hard drives remained running all night long. I actually never tested this with 8.0.3 (what I'm running) when I installed it only because I was not paying attention. I will remove my CRON jobs in case they really are not 100% disabled. I do not have iTunes (FireFly) nor Bit Torrent (transmission) running, only MiniDLNA. I has run in the previous versions without impacting HDD Standby so I doubt that is it. I could see the other two in the MM build causing it but since they are not running there should be no impact from them.

I'll figure it out I hope. I don't want my drives running all the time, especially when I only use them a few hours a day typically.

 

[SoftDux-Rudi]

What is the status on 8.0.4 release?

 

[William Grzybowski]

I did set up SMART testing but it's once a month. I'll disable that to see where it takes me. Thanks little birdy.

EDIT: I removed all my SMART jobs, disabled all my CRON jobs, verified the the HDD Standby settings were set to 120 minutes, and waited a few minutes before rebooting the machine. The hard drives remained running all night long. I actually never tested this with 8.0.3 (what I'm running) when I installed it only because I was not paying attention. I will remove my CRON jobs in case they really are not 100% disabled. I do not have iTunes (FireFly) nor Bit Torrent (transmission) running, only MiniDLNA. I has run in the previous versions without impacting HDD Standby so I doubt that is it. I could see the other two in the MM build causing it but since they are not running there should be no impact from them.

I'll figure it out I hope. I don't want my drives running all the time, especially when I only use them a few hours a day typically.

Try removing this line from /etc/crontab and then restart crond:
*/5 * * * * root /usr/local/bin/python /usr/local/www/freenasUI/tools/alert.py > /dev/null 2>&1

 

[William Grzybowski]

What is the status on 8.0.4 release?

gcooper might give you a better idea but I've been told RC1 is expected this weekend...

 

[gcooper]

gcooper might give you a better idea but I've been told RC1 is expected this weekend...

Yeah... unless someone finds something pressing with RC1 in the next couple days, it'll be late Sunday night / early Monday morning.

 

[dbuurman]

Code:

FreeNAS-8.0.4-RC1_MULTIMEDIA-x64 (10231) 

Upgraded from BETA2-x86 to RC1-x64 by GUI without a hassle!

 

[gcooper]

Code:

FreeNAS-8.0.4-RC1_MULTIMEDIA-x64 (10231) 

Upgraded from BETA2-x86 to RC1-x64 by GUI without a hassle!

As expected :).