Forever Ping IP address from FreeNAS

[slosh001]

Hello. This is my very first post so I hope I am covering my bases.

I am accessing ISO files (games) on freenas from my Playstation 2. I have found that they run much better when I run a continuous ping from the NAS to the playstation. Without the continuous ping, games freeze and don't act right. I'm not sure why that is but I wanted to know if there is a way to set up a script to continuously scan for the Playstation 2 IP address and when up, continuously ping it.

At this time I am just pinging the Playstation from the command line in freenas but I don't want to have to do that every time I turn the playstation on.

 

[HoneyBadger]

You could certainly run an endless ping command to the IP address of your PS2 and trigger it to run on boot ... if the system is off, the ICMP packets will just disappear.

But I'd be more concerned with identifying the root cause of why the magic packets seem to improve things; look at network issues, routing, are you using any consumer NAT devices or gateways between the two?

 

[slosh001]

Thank you for the reply.

My setup has been experimental to this point and is all consumer grade. I really didn't invest much money into it. I am just running an old compaq 8200 elite i5 2500, 12GB Ram, 2x 500 GB WD Blue. My router is consumer grade as well, Netgear CG3000Dv2 N450. The network could be my problem but I'm not sure how to resolve/test. I looked on playstation forums and others have reported the same problem/bandaid.

Since I am finding more an more uses for the server I am planning a server replacement within a month. Supermicro, 32GB Ram, 6TB. Do you think better hardware would solve?

 

[HoneyBadger]

I don't think upgrading the server itself will change anything if it's in the way the PS2 accesses resources over the network - but some basic searching found an SMB/ARP bug that is supposedly addressed in "OPL 1065_DB-TA" whatever that means. Likely a custom firmware or loader for the PS2?

 

[slosh001]

Yes that is the loader for ISO files. I believe I have the latest version but that is something I'll check. Thank you for your quick responses!

 

[slosh001]

Yes, I have the latest OPL 0.9.3. I was going through patch notes and it looks like NBSS keep-alive was added in version 8. Something else must be affecting it. https://www.psx-place.com/resources/opl-open-ps2-loader-0-9-3.372/

 

[slosh001]

Untill I figure out the root cause of the problem, how would I set up the automatic endless ping?

 

[HoneyBadger]

I know some scripts can be set to run on/after boot, but I don't know how the FreeNAS middleware would handle starting a script that never ends. I wouldn't want it to interrupt the normal boot process waiting for the script to "finish" - because it never would.

How often does the ping need to occur to keep the session responsive? You could set up a cron job to ping a given number of times once a minute.

 

[slosh001]

I just no that it runs smoothly when I endlessly ping. I have no idea how to do it, but would I be able to write a continuous ping script and then set a cron job to run the script. Again, I'm out of my league here.

 

[slosh001]

Not sure if this matters either but I just noticed that my ping is very high. I'm getting .600 ms ping from Freenas to PS2.

 

[Fredda]

You could set up a cronjob that runs every minute.
ping -c 40 <dest-ip>
This will run for 40 seconds. It will run longer if the destination is down.

 

[slosh001]

Nice! Thanks Fredda. Would I need to set up 60 cronjobs to do that? One every min?

 

[Fredda]

No, you can simply run the cronjob every minute. For details see here.

 

[slosh001]

thank you sir.

 

[slosh001]

So I've been continuing to try to figure this out. I found this thread about the SMB configuration. Is there a way to edit the SMB to this configuration.

https://www.ps2-home.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1257