Issue with CIFS/SMB authentication and performance

mikehonet

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Apr 4, 2020
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First off I'd like to thank everyone that responds to this with helpful pointer. I realize no one has to contribute to my issue and I appreciate those that do. I've spent some time searching these forums, reddit and google searching and I haven't been able to find anything similar to my experience, it's possibly I've missed a post with the solution and appreciate whoever points it out!

With that out of the way, I'll do my best to give some background, describe what I'm seeing, as well as my hypothesis on what might be at issue.

Background -
1) This isn't my first rodeo, I've put FreeNAS systems in place at work and at home running on enterprise systems as well as commodity platforms. I've never really had any issues with FreeNAS, once the configuration is complete.
2) This build it pretty low end, but it's got a purpose it's filling and prior to several changes outlined below it was running flawlessly for over 9 months.
3) Due to unique worldwide circumstances (COVID) I moved this box from an AD environment (work) to my home to update hardware and load some data

The system is a lower end build designed to house transient backups as well as a large media collection served out on emby. It's got 16GB of RAM, a modest quad core processor 4th gen Intel, 2x4TB drives and was connected via an iSCSI target to a 32TB array. It's got a 1 Gig Ethernet adapter and a 4x 1Gig Intel Ethernet card in one of the PCIe slots. I'd brought it home to change the boot drive to dual 200GB Intel S3700s I had lying around, add a 10GB NIC as well as to add 2x10TB drives to it. In doing so I unplugged the system and brought it home.

Initially I had issues with AD based logins, I'm not sure what the cache duration was/is or how FreeNAS deals with things, but it was easy enough to add a local account. Once I did so, everything worked as expected. The system using the two internal drives will write at theoretical Ethernet speeds (~115MB/sec - no jumbo frames on the home NW) and was performing well. I backed up around 600GB of data to it and loaded another 100GB of files over SMB with no issues. I did however make a few changes to my home network and noticed that AT&T is pushing a "search domain" down through their boundary device.

On day two, I backed up the config, placed one S3700 drive in the system, loaded the same version of FreeNAS that was on the previous boot media FreeNAS-11.3-U1, rebooted and restored the config. Everything came up fine on the system to include the web interface and the emby jail. Emby is running fine and at full speed. CPU utilization hovers between 0-6% while doing some modest and light testing. Memory consumption under testing never exceeds 8GB with services at about 1.7GB and ZFS cache using the rest.

Now on to the issue -
A)
From multiple (3) Windows 10PCs, the login to the array can take anywhere from 30secs to 90secs to present the Windows login credentials. Often this will cause a timeout or error on the Windows side, but with a few attempts (usually 2) I can log in and browsing the share is very quick.

B) Copy performance is spotty at best. What usually happens is that large single file copy will start out very fast and then stall out for 5-30 seconds dropping to no transmission at all. It will then resume at full speed. I've attached a screenshot showing a 1.8GB file copy and the dip in transmission speed. While it doesn't look like it's stalling to zero bps, watching it live, it does. This was not the behavior that I saw while it was at work, or at home prior to the boot media update along with a few NW changes. With multiple files it seems like it will stall out on each file transmission.

TestTransfer.jpg



What I've done so far -
1) I've double checked all settings
2) I've run a scrub on the main drive
3) I've tried to boot from the original media (this failed oddly on 2 attempts... and I've not tried to resolve this as I'd rather use the HW that I have in place)
4) I've tried to set the SMB bind interface, but all I see in the settings is a "--".

What I haven't done so far -
1) I haven't tested AFP login or performance
2) I haven't tried CIFS from a Linux box

Hypothesis -
I believe this is a network or FreeNAS configuration problem. I think this for two reasons, first I had everything working really well at home using a local account. Logins were quick and transfers maintained high theoretical speeds. In updating my NW equipment I'm now getting a pushed "domain" from AT&T Gig fiber of attlocal.net. This seems to impact Zeroconf and possibly other dynamic browsing on my network. Prior to this I'd run "domain less" with a .local being the preferred and working method of connection. This would certainly be a candidate for the very slow presentation of the login information under Windows. As for the copy speed, as you can see it's FULL speed once it resumes, but I believe the initial high speed is a misleading windows trick on outbound queue or something and that the stalled connection is really at the beginning of the file creation on the FreeNAS system. If browsing wasn't lightening fast with directories containing hundreds/thousands of files I'd be convinced this was the case.

If you've made it this far - congratulations... and thanks. Unfortunately, I don't know what else I can do to try and resolve this. I'm going to keep working and test AFP as a next step.
 

mikehonet

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Joined
Apr 4, 2020
Messages
8
Copy FROM performance is good, but with a 10sec initial delay on the start of the transfer (see image).

Copy from.jpg
 
Joined
Dec 29, 2014
Messages
1,135
This is really old and potentially simple issue. Do the machines that are talking to FreeNAS have a reverse lookup DNS entry? You could test the fairly conclusively if you have the SSH service enabled. Use Putty or some other telnet capable client to telnet (not SSH) to port 22 on your FreeNAS. Wait and see if there is a long delay before the SSH herald comes up. If so, it is likely reverse DNS not being present. This is a super old Unix thing, but is still relevant.
 

mikehonet

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Apr 4, 2020
Messages
8
so that was my thought as well and I already tested it, and just double cheked it.. While I'm not running a DNS server on my network, the Linksys AC1900 router that have does have entries for at least statically assigned IP addresses. When I run a connection to "freenas" the hostname of my freenas box, it connects instantly with "freenas". On a whim, I also tried the offending domain "freenas.attlocal.net" and it connected instantly. I think you're on the right track, but I believe it's a little deeper. I've also tried connecting directly using IP address and it's no different. It could be that the freenas box has a mismatch between it's hostname and DNS entries on the router (of which I have no control over).

Finally, I'd like to point out that as of I believe 1903, Windows 10 includes ssh in the CMD environment. So no more putty for me.
 

mikehonet

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Apr 4, 2020
Messages
8
I'll also add that the web connection using the hostname (either) is also instantaneous. I'm thinking this could be a DNS issue as you've suggested but it's manifested in the SMB process only.
 

mikehonet

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Joined
Apr 4, 2020
Messages
8
ok, I've pulled the thread at little more. From the FreeNAS machine I cannot seem to resolve any local DNS. My first DNS entry is that from my work, my second is the local DNS server (happens to be the router) and my third is 8.8.8.8 as a backup for external downloads etc. This would seem to be the issue, but I'm not sure why it's not timing out from the first entry and using the second. I'm going to play around with some nslookup and see if I can get this resolved, it sounds like this is it.
 

mikehonet

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Joined
Apr 4, 2020
Messages
8
OK..... It's on me.... my second DNS entry was incorrect. I thought I'd set it, and I checked it and it looked correct but it was not. It's set now but I'm seeing the issue, somehow the FreeNAS box is pulling in a domain that it's not part of at the moment (it is when it's bound to AD properly - not on site).

Code:
mike@freenas:~ % ping freenas
PING freenas.vfent.local (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.019 ms


mike@freenas:~ % ping freenas.attlocal.net
PING freenas.attlocal.net (192.168.15.141): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.15.141: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.012 ms


mike@freenas:~ % ping freenas.local
ping: cannot resolve freenas.local: Unknown host


From this you can see it's a resolution issue with only freenas.attlocal.net resolving to the address. I don't know where the vfent.local is coming from as this is what it's currently set to,

settings2.jpg
settings1.jpg


I'm going to see if I can straighten this out and I'm confident this will resolve the issue. Thanks for the pointer Elliot, you really helped focus me in. I'll post when I get it working.
 

mikehonet

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Joined
Apr 4, 2020
Messages
8
Found where the VEEnt.local is coming from, it's another "domain" entry in Directory Services. I didn't want to disable this as I'd intended on a much quickly update and bring back to work cycle, but as I'm stuck in my house for the next two weeks, I'll just rework this.

setting 3.jpg
 

mikehonet

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Joined
Apr 4, 2020
Messages
8
after aligning the settings and rebooting, speeds (both connection and transfer) seem normal. Thanks again Elliot!
 
Joined
Dec 29, 2014
Messages
1,135
Glad to hear you got it resolved.
 
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