Lately I've noticed that my Unraid machine has been really slow when performing certain actions, but not others.

File transfers to/from the NAS and browsing directories over the network are fine from what I can tell, but the problem is when the NAS itself needs to access the internet.

 

I first noticed it a few OS updates ago, Docker container updates would go exceptionally slow. I thought it might just be Unraid's docker implementation doing things and not being very verbose, or perhaps Docker's CDN itself.

It specifically seems to be hanging on attempting to find things on the internet; Docker updates will hang at "Please wait...." for a long time, and then "pulling fs layer" hangs on multiple lines, but once the actual download for each layer starts, the download usually goes at an acceptable speed.

If updating docker containers, the whole webGUI seems to freeze while it is trying to start fetching a file (please wait, fetching fs layer). Once the download of that file starts, the webGUI unfreezes until it attempts to fetch another remote file.

Checking for, and updating plugins also seems to take a very long time.

 

I occasionally remote into the NAS and use wget to place files I want into a directory, and I do see the occasional slow download speed, but I'd pin that on the remote servers.

Lately I've been experimenting with archiving utilities like youtube-dl, PixivUtil2, and others.

I was experimenting with GinNoKami's docker container when I saw PixivUtil2 was erroring out with

(<class 'urllib.error.URLError'>, URLError(gaierror(-2, 'Name does not resolve')

It would do this intermittently, when I tried to download images/posts, some images would error out while others were fine, and while having the utility browse through users' bookmark pages (to download their bookmarks), PixivUtil2 was getting the error while trying to fetch the webpages (PixivUtil2 seems to walk the pages of a user's bookmarks in order to get a list of images to get).

 

Other machines on my network are fine. I have a desktop physically sitting next to the NAS, plugged into the same router, with the same path to the internet, and it doesn't have the same problems the NAS has when accessing things on the internet. I even did a few runs of PixivUtil2 from the desktop machine and it worked fine for everything I tested. YoutubeDL also works fine from the desktop, but I haven't tested it from the NAS yet.

 

Considering the NAS also seems to be having issues while checking for/downloading its own stuff, I'm pretty sure something's acting up with the NAS itself, and not the applications.

 

I don't think this type of stuff is likely to show up meaningfully in (unraid's) logs, how can I troubleshoot this?

I have just found an error in the Fix Common Problems plugin;
 

Realtek R8168 NIC found

The default Realtek NIC driver is known to have issues, consider installing the driver plugin from Community Applications if you are having stability issues or trouble with networking. Search for: r8168 in Community Applications, install the plugin and reboot your server.

This sounds about right, considering the problems I've been having. Though it's very strange, I built this server in late 2020 and have never had networking issues with it until some time in 2022/2023.

 

But I'm getting ready for bed now, so I'll have to come back and look at this avenue later. In the meantime, if anyone thinks of anything else, feel free to post, just in case.

I installed one of the plugins for my server, and so far things seem to have improved, but the docker container I'm playing with will still throw errors randomly. Docker updates still hang on initial file fetches, but not for as long, and it no longer locks up the webUI (as far as I can tell). Once actual download starts, the files actually seem to download at a much faster speed (current Unraid UI doesn't show actual download speed, just % of layer downloaded).

I had to install the plugin manually, since the Community Applications page would just glitch and not do anything when I clicked "install" on the CA app.

I downloaded the file from the github repo to my Windows machine;

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jinlife/unraid-r8125-r8152-driver/main/unraid-r8168.plg

Then manually moved that file to the NAS's plugin folder over the network.

\\server\flash\config\plugins

I suppose I could have remoted into the NAS and used wget to put the file there manually, too.

 

According to some forum posts from around the internet (including the Unraid forums), some changes were made recently to the Linux kernel that have messed with some Realtek network drivers, which explains why I didn't notice these problems until "a few OS updates ago." Of course I minded my own business and didn't see the recent commotion around these drivers; it was working fine for years, why should I suddenly have to worry about troubleshooting things and messing with my server to get its network working now? Linux updates usually fix these things, not cause them.

 

At this point I'm less suspicious that it's something wrong with Unraid or the NAS itself, but I'll continue to look into what's making this docker container act squirrely. Maybe it could be the downloader utility itself...