NFS Discussion

[limetech]

I'd like to try and understand how people want to use NFS.  To be honest, NFS is a bit of pain-in-the-neck to implement properly, in part because user shares are implemented using FUSE, which itself has certain issues vis-a-vis NFS.

 

So to kick things off, I'd like to quote a post from WeboTech (if that's ok) from this thread:

 

...

I have one share called pub (for public files) for all drives, manuals, source code archives, etc, etc.

 

I wget all my files from the internet via telnet on the unraid server.

then unzip/untar them there for the very same reason.

 

(Although not having nfs is killing me).

 

How would you be using nfs?

[takecontrol]

I use it to stream video content to my tvix media player. If I use Samba it stutters and stops playing. I have to leave a windows PC running at all time that runs a windows based program called NetShare (Link: ftp://ftp.dvico.com/Products/TViX/NetShare/) It would be nice to not have to stream all my content through a second PC. Here is the link to the player i use http://www.tvix.co.kr/Eng/products/HDM4000.aspx

[WeeboTech]

One reason for NFS in my network is permission matching among machines.

 

I have small network of 12 unix machines, 5 windows machines + 4(vmware windows machines) + 6 laptops.

For the unix machines permission control is key.

In additionautofs and automounting makes navigation around the machines very easy.

 

For each machine I mount all filesystems locally on each system in a host named directory

Then for each other machine I setup NFS with autofs/automount so I can cd to another hostname without logging in.

 

For example 

/gatekeeper

/hercules

/xena

/overlord

/underlord

/radiobot

/slacky (vmware)

/dev

/kuro1 (kurobox)

/kuro2 (kurobox)

/gollum (readynas NV+)

/unraid (the newest addition

/media (this will be a new very large unraid box).

 

So now with autofs and automount support along with nfs

I just cd /gatekeeper (from any machine) and I'm on that hosts filesystems with all permissions intact.

 

I was planning to consolidate all the home directories onto the unraid server on one spindle which would actually save space on each machine.

 

For my public downloaded files in my ftp area

Where ever I am I

 

cd /gatekeeper/ftp/pub

wget http://www.filedownloadwhateverits.zip

unzip

and do what I need to on that machine.

 

I want to move this area to unraid, only with  the whole permission matching just does not work well.

I've gotten SMBFS so that it does the automounting, but I still find issues with forcing or changing permissions.

 

So now I telnet to the unraid server

wget into a tree.

unzip

then exit out

and do the cd hoping there are no permission issues.

 

I would use the readnas only It's not as fast as the mini itx unraid server I built.

 

Also to remove spindles from my network I was planning to move my music archive to the media/unraid server on one spindle

then nfs automount it from my radiobot music server (which is for my internet radiostation).

 

I know others want nfs for media playing, for me it's about truly integrating it in the unix domain and keeping permissions intact. 

 

Also I've found with SMBFS I have these spurious disconnects with the unix machines.

 

 

> because user shares are implemented using FUSE, which itself has certain issues vis-a-vis NFS.

I was going to ask about this. What are the issues?

Can accessing the /mnt/disk# share instead of the user share alleviate these for the time being?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[WeeboTech]

I should add here..

 

I recently turned my friend onto the unRaid concept.

He was thrilled at the possibility until I told him NFS was not available.

 

He does export all his home directories via NFS.

I think his mail spool and imap store too.

In addition he has MythTV Client boxes around the house and needs to access the Mythtv archive via NFS.

 

He said without NFS unraid is not feasible and he is just going to RAID1 all his drives.

(It;s not done yet, so there still is a possibility).

 

He's building a dual quad core server for his file server.

 

[NLS]

(dual quad core ...for a file server...?)

 

Searching the Internet, most people argue that NFS is preferable for *x to *x setups, while samba (SMB/CIFS) is more preferable for *x to/from Windows setups.

 

Although NFS was created to be OS independent, it is not as "elaborate" when it comes to talking with Windows machines.

 

Samba is pretty active in development while NFS is some predetermined standard.

 

That pretty much sums it up.

 

[WeeboTech]

(dual quad core ...for a file server...?)

 

He's an Astrophysicist.

I thnk he intends to do some of his image processing from the telescope captures

He's one of our high caliber programmers at my job. http://www.interactivedata.com/

 

On my consulting gig, my friend was considering unRaid for our backup server. http://www.empoweringmedia.com/

The backup server was a dual quad core XEON also.

 

My other friend is a CTO for a wall street firm. http://www.evoft.com/

She's a mathematician, computer science nerd and a CTO.

 

Each of these nixed it because they felt it was immature without NFS.

 

So as a Windows only solution, it's great,

for a Unix data repository solution with mixed platforms it's not quite the answer

[bubbaQ]

1) Several media players use NFS but do not support Samba (the combination of NFS and HTTP however, covers all of them).

2) NFS is faster than Samba

  -- higher sustained streaming bitrates.  In short, my HiDef movies stutter under Samba, and do not stutter under NFS or HTTP.

  -- faster file transfers using LIP.

3) When traveling, it is a lot easier to remotely connect back to my server at home over NFS rather than Samba.

4) There are more diagnostic and monitoring tools available for NFS mounts.

5) Permissions, permissions, permissions... and logins to enable permissions must be CLI.

 

[ratokeshi]

My planed use of NFS is a bit off the mainstream.  I plan to use it as shared storage for a XenServer.  I will store Virtual machine disk images on it.  I was hoping to recommend this as as an SMB NFS storage solution.

 

I would gladly take NFS for disk by disk access.  I really don't need shares in the beginning.

 

HTH,

rat

[orb]

What about a mode with user share samba only, and for now a mode without but with samba and nfs.

 

On the side note, and I will cross post in feature request, now that Time Machine is upon us, AFP became a much higher expectation than NFS for me.

 

 

[Guest Sparkie]

LinuxMCE uses NFS. I'm finding that UNRAID and LinuxMCE have a hard time playing nice. If Unraid works seamlessly with LinuxMCE, you might find your sales go up with its popularity.

[WeeboTech]

What is the reason or holdup for not using NFS ?

 

Is it something we could implement ourselves or is there a specific reason to not use it?

 

Can we set it up without issue if we forgo the user shares?

 

I'm considering a new setup on some of my mini itx systems and having their root filesystems over NFS on the UNRAID server.

(this is how my friend uses his file server too).

 

When I really thought about this, I could eliminate a number of spindles by leveraging a large unraid server and ROOT on NFS.

 

I'm even considering maxing the memory on my system to 32GB and possibly using RAM disks for some of the servers.

I know it will take a while to boot up and set each system's ramdisk,

yet... it still will be allot less spindles then I have now.

 

 

[tafkap]

Like takecontrol, i use mainly my unraid server to read video content (DVD and avi files) to my tvix media player and sometimes if i use Samba it stutters and stops playing. So if i have problem i must have to copy the video file(s) to my tvix media, not really practical. And in the setup of my tvix media i can choose NFS protocol, so... 

[WeeboTech]

I noticed that NFS was compiled into the Beta kernel... does this mean it's coming soon to a beta near you? LOL.

 

Acutally, I installed portmap and nfs-utils. Fired it up, set up /etc/exports.

It complained that /mnt could not be exported, although /boot was exported fine.

I mounted a disk on /mnt/disk1 and then exported that.

It seemed to work.

I.E. I could read/write to it.

Nothing big, but just a simple test.

 

So am I opening up a can of worms here?

Is there something I should be prepared to deal with?

 

 

I

[growlf]

Unfortunately, I'm in the camp where NFS is a necessity.  I've been soooo close to buying an unRAID system - it looks wonderful, and would support a majority of my file serving needs.  The hangup comes w/ serving to network media players - specifically, the Popcorn Hour. 

 

I recently purchased the Popcorn Hour A-100 and LOVE IT.  It is the first media appliance that works for me and does everything I want.  The downside is that the A-100 will only play HD media smoothly from an NFS connection.

 

So... my question is... is there ANY solution to make a read-only NFS share possible?  If not, I think I'm gonna have to go the Drobo route

[WeeboTech]

I've gotten NFS to work, but have not fully flushed it out.

The downside is you cannot export the /mnt/user share.

 

I "think" the NFS module is compiled within the kernel already with Beta 6.

 

In my environment I installed these two slackware packages

 

root@Tower:/boot/packages# ls -l port*

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 29730 May 17  2007 portmap-6.0-i486-1.tgz*

root@Tower:/boot/packages# ls -l nfs*

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 201196 Mar 31 22:09 nfs-utils-1.1.2-i486-1.tgz*

 

I then exported the /mnt/disk shares one by one.

You cannot export the /mnt/user share.

 

This is my init script for it (Note it does not take into account the install of packages and startup of PORTMAP which is done in another script)

 

In my installation, I always create a mount point from root that is the name of the host.

 

/Tower in this case.

 

From there I mount any extra data filesystems that I use and plan to export. (this is just my convention).

In older times people used /u1 /u2 /u3 ,etc ,etc.

 

I create /Tower via a tmpfs (not really needed but I plan to do other things YMMV).

Within the /Tower area I create the links to the /mnt/disk? shares. Again probably not needed.

 

I then automatically build the /etc/exports file from the /mnt/disk? names.

You will need to adjust the script for your domain/network.

 

 

 

root@Tower:/boot/config/rc.local# more S90-tmpfs

#!/bin/sh

if [ ${DEBUG:=0} -gt 0 ]
   then set -x -v
fi

P=${0##*/}              # basename of program
R=${0%%$P}              # dirname of program
P=${P%.*}               # strip off after last . character
O=${P%_*}               # Operand
D=${P#${O}_}            # Data (last param before _ character)

H=`hostname`
mkdir /${H}
mount -t tmpfs -o size=1m,mode=0775 tmpfs /${H}

cat <<-EOF > /etc/exports
/${H} *.cotrone.com(rw,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check,nohide,fsid=0)
/boot *.cotrone.com(rw,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check,nohide)
EOF

for disk in /mnt/disk*
do  disk=${disk##*/}
    # echo mkdir ${disk}
    # echo mount -o bind /mnt/${disk} /${H}/${disk}
    cd /${H}
    if [ ! -L ${disk} ]
       then ln -s /mnt/${disk} ${disk}
    fi
    echo "/mnt/${disk}  *.cotrone.com(rw,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check,nohide)" >> /etc/exports
done

/usr/sbin/exportfs -va
/etc/rc.d/rc.nfsd start

 

[WeeboTech]

Anything on the horizon? 

[guitarlp]

Quick question...

 

Is unRAID not being NFS the reason my HD (blu-ray) rips streamed over my network have artifacts and pixelation at times? I've narrowed it down that my unRAID server is causing the issues when streaming media. I can copy an HD movie from my unRAID server to my windows home server and the movie plays fine without any issues.

 

I was going to post on here asking what could be the problem with the unRAID server, and then I saw this thread and thought that maybe this is where my problems are?

[WeeboTech]

I don't know that NFS is "the"actual reason.

However, there has been mention that some media players work better over NFS.

 

Part of the reason may be that your display hardware is starved for data because the network is unable to stream fast enough

That being said, there may be some tunings required in the network and/or application level (SAMBA) which would help.

NFS may be an answer to assist with the root cause of the problem in being able to stream faster.

I would suggest starting a new thread with more information about your network and all the hardware involved.

 

 

[guitarlp]

I don't know that NFS is "the"actual reason.

However, there has been mention that some media players work better over NFS.

 

Part of the reason may be that your display hardware is starved for data because the network is unable to stream fast enough

That being said, there may be some tunings required in the network and/or application level (SAMBA) which would help.

NFS may be an answer to assist with the root cause of the problem in being able to stream faster.

I would suggest starting a new thread with more information about your network and all the hardware involved.

 

 

 

Thank you for the reply. I didn't mean to take this thread off track in any way.

 

I think you're right about the system not being able to stream fast enough. My movies glitch/artifact at the exact some spot each time while playing from the unRAID server. It's as if the bitrate at that exact moment is too much for the unRAID server to handle.

 

I've tired different MOBO's and an Intel Gigabit NIC... I can download at 80+ MB/sec across my network from the unRAID server. It's just the processing being done on the unRAID server that's giving me issues and NFS could be the culprit.

[limetech]

I can download at 80+ MB/sec across my network from the unRAID server.

What is your system & network setup - this is very good 

 

It's just the processing being done on the unRAID server that's giving me issues and NFS could be the culprit.

You meant to say Samba could be the culprit, correct??

[Guest Sparkie]

Currently I've found one of the best linux Media center solutions is MythTv. It is using NFS. People have been stating "across the board" that NFS is better in MythTV and faster in most system environments.

[guitarlp]

I can download at 80+ MB/sec across my network from the unRAID server.

What is your system & network setup - this is very good 

 

It's just the processing being done on the unRAID server that's giving me issues and NFS could be the culprit.

You meant to say Samba could be the culprit, correct??

 

GA-EP35-DS3R with Intel Gigabit NIC... all SATA drives.

 

I started at 25 MB/sec max download on my first unRAID build. The Intel NIC is the thing that brought me up to 80+ MB/sec.

 

And yes... I meant to say Samba could be the culprit.

[tafkap]

Hi all,

 

i'm very interesting by this topic because i can't use my HDD media player connected to my unRAID server with SAMBA protocol. Very often (90% of time), the movie start and after about 5 minutes, the movie freeze and if i copy it on my HDD media player it's good, but sometimes i can watch the movie. It's strange. So i would like to test the NFS protocol, is it possible actually with the last version of unRAID server ?

 

Cheers.

[limetech]

One reason for NFS in my network is permission matching among machines.

 

I have small network of 12 unix machines, 5 windows machines + 4(vmware windows machines) + 6 laptops.

For the unix machines permission control is key.

In additionautofs and automounting makes navigation around the machines very easy.

 

For each machine I mount all filesystems locally on each system in a host named directory

Then for each other machine I setup NFS with autofs/automount so I can cd to another hostname without logging in.

 

What NFS Client do you use on your Windows machines?  Also you have PM.

 

[WeeboTech]

I don't use NFS on windows, only on my Unix boxes.

Windows is working fine with Samba (at least for my needs).