[sOLVED] : old NIC MAC address was hardcoded in hwaddr field!

 

I recently cannibalized some hardware and moved my unraid server from a 2006-era Celeron with 2GB of ram to a miniITX Atom330 + ION board + 4GB

ram. It's got SATAII and gigabit networking, plus 4 SATA ports, so I figured I would be good. However, the performance is EXTREMELY bad.

 

[EDIT - I am wrong, this log is actually from 2009. I guess it does not keep the syslog up to date on the USB key. Unfortunately, I can't load the web UI right now and telnet doesnt work - I will try collecting a log again tomorrow]

 

Current version: 5.0rc8

/var/log/syslog: attached [it says nov2, but the date on the server is wrong]

Hardware:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500037

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133093

3x 1.5TB samsung eco drives

 

I had absolutely no issues before migrating the hardware.

 

Symptoms:

1. The system can take about 1 minute just to list a directory via SMB - with about 20 entries

2. The web interface is extremely intermittent - most requests will time out, although I get lucky every once and a while

3. Telnet is extremely slow / unusable

4. Streaming video simply does not work - it constantly stutters. I don't have actual MB/S read numbers, but its bad. Windows recognizes the SMB shares and can browse them

 

Clues:

1. The previous, good unraid install was on the same network port + cable. No issues.

2. This machine was used for something else prior, and had no NIC-based issues

3. I started at 4.4.2 - which was rock solid for years - then upgraded to 4.7 (no luck) and then to 5.0rc8 (no luck). This is currently where I'm at

4. I can't make out any clear errors in syslog

5. ifconfig is reporting everything correctly about my interface

6. top shows virtually 0 CPU & mem usage

7. googling indicates that people have used the atom330 with no issue

8. the symptoms indicate this HAS to be a network issue. why else would telnet be so slow?

9. Have tried multiple clients, no difference

10. Have tried MTU9000, no difference

 

Note: the syslog attached is from the same hardware but from the 4.4.2 install. I can't download the new one from the webui since I can't access it, but the behavior is exactly the same after upgrading so it should provide insight.

 

Thanks in advance!

Sounds like the network.cfg file on the flash drive might be forcing a hardware MAC address line where both your machines are colliding on the same lan.

 

That would explain the poor performance when getting file listings.

 

Edit the config/network.cfg file, make sure the line for HWADDR is either missing, or looks like this:

HWADDR=

If it has a MAC address, it will force it on the network card and cause all kinds of issues if there is a second machine on the LAN with that same MAC address.

 

Thank you! That was EXACTLY the issue. Since I cannibalized the hardware, the old NIC with the mac address in the HWADDR: field was being used on the network still. Genius!

 

Now it looks like I have a few permission-based surprises from upgrading to 5.0 to deal with, but this is so great!