January 31, 200917 yr So here's something that has been bothering me for a while... Unraid data is stalling when I start looking at a new directory listing. First off I'm on 4.4b2 at the moment (because it's 'working' for the most part So Let's say all drives are spun down initially. I play some music which happens to be off drive 4 Music is playing. No Problem If i goto ANY share directly on any drive, the directory listing pops right up and all is fine for instance: \\unraid\Videos\ \\unraid\TV\ \\unraid\Music\ or \\unraid\disk 4\ \\unraid\disk 4\TV \\unraid\disk 4\Music Unraid will show the top level directories under those shares. Music still playing The problem comes when I then drill down (double click) further into the directory Unraid stalls for a moment if it hasn't been there, stops delivering the music data, I hear some hard drive activity, and then displays the directory listing and resumes the music This happens regardless of the amount of files in a given directory that I'm clicking into. Once this initial hiccup takes place, I can browse anywhere in that directory with no issues. I initially thought this was due to a drives spinning up, but today I discovered this is also taking place on a drive that has already spun up. For instance Disk 4 in my previous example Start song directly from \\unraid\disk 4\music\arist1\song1.mp3 I can now browse freely among the artists and directories under music. No problem. If I go up a directory level from music to \\disk 4\ works ok. Then goto \\disk4\TV\ still ok So Let's say I now enter \\unraid\disk 4\TV\Recordings Unraid stalls for a moment, stops delivering the music data, then displays this directory and music resumes. Once this initial hiccup is over here I can go in and out of directories with no issues. Has anyone seen something like this before? I can goto 4.4.2 full and try again, but I didn't want to upgrade until I bounced this off you guys.
February 1, 200917 yr So here's something that has been bothering me for a while... Unraid data is stalling when I start looking at a new directory listing. I initially thought this was due to a drives spinning up, but today I discovered this is also taking place on a drive that has already spun up. Are you using user shares, or direct disk shares. It would be interesting to test this on direct disk shares if it is occuring only on the user shares. Perhaps when multiple clients access a file system via user share, it does not handle the multiple requests simultaneously.
February 1, 200917 yr Id just like to add, I think I'm seeing this too. Occasionally when watching a movie streamed from unRaid, the movie will freeze. I put this down to drives spinning up/down and have been considering posting about this potential issue for a while now. I assumed perhaps my power supply was to fault.. causing the system to 'hang' temporarily when a drive spins up/down. Now seeing the OPs message, I'm not sure sure it is related to spin up/down. I'm using user shares.
February 1, 200917 yr Author Yeah, This takes place on user shares AS WELL AS direct disk shares. You can see my example regarding disk shares (even on the same disk) on the bottom half of the original post I too thought it was drive spin down / spin up, but discovered yesterday that wasn't the case. Even if it was, I don't see why the drive that was spinning and serving data would stop doing so. I was testing this as I was posting , so it was just me hitting the shares. One user. I don't remember this being an issue pre 4.4, but I can't go back and test because I require 4.4 to see all the drives in my 'array'
February 1, 200917 yr I see the same thing ... only worse, I think I ensured all disks were spun-down. I browsed to server, then disk 2, then drilled down and selected 5 files and right-clicked to add to VLC's playlist. Music started playing. Then went back to server, dbl-clicked disk 4... music stopped while disk 4 was spinning up. Dbl clicked a top directory and music broke up twice while disk was spinning up. Dbl clicked a folder and music broke up twice while directory listed. Running unRaid 4.4.2. Quad core q6600 with 8gb ram. I currently have the LS-r trick disabled. Syslog shows nothing except my spindown events. User Shares disabled.
February 1, 200917 yr I too experience this problem with user shares enabled running 4.4.2 pro w/ cache enabled.
February 5, 200917 yr I also have this same issue. It's rather embarrassing when this happens as I built this monster server to avoid issues like this but something simple like browsing a directory causes pausing.
February 12, 200917 yr I have also seen this, but only when my drives were spun down. So what I do between the hours of 7pm to 11pm, is keep my drives spun up. Too bad there is no option to spin up drives at a certain time and keep them up until the next time specified. My wife was getting annoyed as she was going through photos while I was watching a movies from unraid. Easy temp fix, that I plan on using long term. At least my drives are off while I sleep and while at work! What is the easiest way to set this up in crontab or other?
February 14, 200917 yr What is the easiest way to set this up in crontab or other? Yes, you can set it up with crontab and a few jobs/calls to touch or read a file once or twice an hour during the hours you want the drive to stay awake. I was going to suggest calling hdparm with the -S parameter, however emhttp has been adjusted to force the drives to spin down if it does not see activity. Therefore you need to force activity during the hours you want the drive to stay awake. A read will only affect the drive read, a write will affect the drive and the parity drive.
February 15, 200917 yr I get this as well when playing music/watching a film and another drive spins up. Thought it was just normal behaviour as its always done it for me, 4.3.3, 4.4 beta2 and 4.4.2. At first I wasnt using a cache drive, but now I'm using one and have synced all my folder structure to the cache drive, then leave that on an individual never spin down to avoid the problem when I'm just browsing folders. If I go into a folder that has some files and therefore requires a spin up, I still get it. Is there anyone that doesnt get this?
February 21, 200917 yr I realize that Unraid support mainly is done by the forum members but having paid for the product how do you go about getting issues like these addressed instead of just letting the topic die with the issue still occurring?
February 21, 200917 yr Maybe the cache_pressure thingy might help http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1822.msg13409#msg13409 I have been doing a bit of wooly thinking about this (or something similar), comments appreciated: For those of us with lots of ram (3-4 GB), would not a dedicated, possibly dynamic, ramdisk JUST for INODES (file list) be a good idea? On startup, after the emHTTP interface is up, all disks in array are scanned (ls kinda thing) in turn and entries in the ramdisk are built. Entries are updated on each update to the array. A spinned-down disk is ignored (obviously). On a parity check, all disks are spun-up, therefore a good time to do a full build. Maybe such a thing would help avoid the pause during browsing with spun-down drives? Malcolm..
February 21, 200917 yr Author The oddity here though, is why is read data being interrupted when it's already being 'streamed' regardless of a spin up taking place on another drive? Leaving all drives spun up as suggested does alleviate this issue, but then you don't get the power, heat, and noise benefits of unraid. When I mounted all these drives natively under Ubuntu as the OS I didn't have this data interruption issue, and was I spinning drives up and down at will. Caching the directory structure doesn't solve the underlying issue. Usually after doing a directory search, the next step is to launch a file. When you would launch the file, you would interrupt whatever anyone else was doing on the system at that time ie. listening to music.
February 21, 200917 yr When I mounted all these drives natively under Ubuntu as the OS I didn't have this data interruption issue, and was I spinning drives up and down at will. The "data-interruption issue" is probably the result of a lock placed on some resource while waiting for data from a device. That same lock on resources is being also respected by the network driver. Normally, the lock is held only for a few milliseconds, as the data is returned quickly because the drive is already spinning. When a drive is sleeping, the lock is held until the drive spins up. (potentially stopping all other processes needing similar resources) I suspect it might be a lock placed by the "md" driver, so you might not see the same behavior under native Ubuntu unless you also set up a "raid-5" array on it using the stock "md" driver. (Don't do this with your current disks, as it will probably be incompatible with the existing reiser file-system.) Joe L.
February 21, 200917 yr I realize that Unraid support mainly is done by the forum members but having paid for the product how do you go about getting issues like these addressed instead of just letting the topic die with the issue still occurring? To answer this question generally .. I would suggest that you do your best to isolate the problem. For example, try installing 4.3.3 and determine if it occurs there. Capture syslogs to see if there are hints. Ask questions here and follow suggestions. etc. If, after alll that you, you have a problem that you can't live with, send Tom an PM and/or an email. Note that Tom is generally very attentive to the forum for several weeks after a new release. If there are going to be issues, this is the time they will typically be found. We went from 4.4.0 ro 4.4.1 to 4.4.2 in a matter of a few days as the kinks were worked out of 4.4. After that Tom is generally pretty nonparticipative in the forums. Reaching him via email is likely the best way. To answer this question specifically ... I am not sure whether this particular issue will be seen as a serious defect by Tom. It may be seen as more of an annoyance - or perhaps as a Linux issue and not an unRAID issue. It doesn't corrupt data or anything. The manual doesn't advertise that spinup won't cause this brief unresponsiveness. Do I think Tom should know this is happening? Absolutely. Will he be able to fix? Not sure, but if it does not happen in 4.3.3 and does happen in 4.4.2, he may be able to fix. Will an email from some folks cause him to immediately spring into action on this issue? I am slightly pessimistic, but the only way to know is to try. One last thought, does this slowdown occur when a cache drive is spun up - or only when an array disk is spun up? If it is happening on a cache disk, chances are it is an issue internal to Linux and likely something Tom can't fix himself (of course he can report it as a defect to the Linux communiity and hopefully get it addressed in a future version). If it is only happening in array disks, the chances of a fix from Tom are much better IMO.
March 25, 200917 yr This same problem happens to me. It happens on all the versions of unraid that I have tried. I have used 4.2.4, 4.3.3 and now 4.4.2. As I said they all have the exact same issue. It is a little bit annoying.
June 2, 200917 yr Another 4.4.2 user here with the same problem which manifests itself by bu-ray rips from both folders and .iso images pausing/stalling temporarily during playback on a Windows Vista 32 bit client. This is from a user share set to a split level of 1. I'd say it's more than a little bit annoying. Can anyone running 4.4.2 confirm they are able to play back blu-ray rips with no such problems during the entire movie? Similar behavior has been reported in this thread http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3566.0 Tom, can you comment?
June 2, 200917 yr Another 4.4.2 user here with the same problem which manifests itself by bu-ray rips from both folders and .iso images pausing/stalling temporarily during playback on a Windows Vista 32 bit client. This is from a user share set to a split level of 1. I'd say it's more than a little bit annoying. Can anyone running 4.4.2 confirm they are able to play back blu-ray rips with no such problems during the entire movie? Similar behavior has been reported in this thread http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3566.0 Tom, can you comment? I've seen the same behaviour, but it seems to me to be concurrent with the need to spin up a drive to get the directory listing. The pause occurs (I think) while the unRAID OS is waiting for a drive to spin up. During that period of time, no network I/O occurs, so movies have a very annoying freeze-up. It is very annoying. Tom, any ideas? Joe L.
June 2, 200917 yr Author I have only been able to mitigate such things by making sure my files are consolidated onto a single drive. It's still not ideal though. When I'm watching a DVD and my wife decides to listen to some music upstairs and the movie stalls, that's a media server fail in my book.
June 2, 200917 yr Author As a side note, I don't see this problem under Ubuntu if I say force /hdb and /hdc to spindown using hdparm, Start to pull files from /hda via SMB, and then make a directory call or directly access a file under /hdb or /hdc. The file from /hda continues to stream fine with no hiccups. The only difference here is that I'm using an EXT4 formatting on the drives and not Reisfer FS. Not sure what difference that is really making.
June 2, 200917 yr I've seen the same behaviour, but it seems to me to be concurrent with the need to spin up a drive to get the directory listing. The pause occurs (I think) while the unRAID OS is waiting for a drive to spin up. During that period of time, no network I/O occurs, so movies have a very annoying freeze-up. It is very annoying. Tom, any ideas? Joe L. Thanks Joe. I'm probably missing something but if I'm the only one using the system while watching a movie and all the movie files are on the same disk which is already spun up why would there be a need to spin up any other drive to get a directory listing during the movie?
June 2, 200917 yr I've seen the same behaviour, but it seems to me to be concurrent with the need to spin up a drive to get the directory listing. The pause occurs (I think) while the unRAID OS is waiting for a drive to spin up. During that period of time, no network I/O occurs, so movies have a very annoying freeze-up. It is very annoying. Tom, any ideas? Joe L. Thanks Joe. I'm probably missing something but if I'm the only one using the system while watching a movie and all the movie files are on the same disk which is already spun up why would there be a need to spin up any other drive to get a directory listing during the movie? Are there any windows PCs on the LAN that might be attempting to refresh their directory listing? (part of their indexing service) I know there are on mine... I also know that I can initiate the same pause if most of my disks are idle, and we are watching a movie on the media-player, and I go to access a file on a drive on a disk that was previously spun down from a PC. If there are no other devices on the LAN, and nothing else to potentially spin up a drive, then I have no idea either. It is very annoying though... at the movie just "freezes" You can be sure it is a global lock being applied somewhere... Joe L.
June 2, 200917 yr I've been getting the same thing for a couple of months and thought it had to do with the latest beta versions I was using. I reverted back to 4.4.2 and while I get it less, it does still occur. I didn't know this thread even existed before today and was out of ideas as to what may be the cause. At least I know I'm not alone...
June 2, 200917 yr Thanks Joe. I'm probably missing something but if I'm the only one using the system while watching a movie and all the movie files are on the same disk which is already spun up why would there be a need to spin up any other drive to get a directory listing during the movie? Are there any windows PCs on the LAN that might be attempting to refresh their directory listing? (part of their indexing service) I know there are on mine... I also know that I can initiate the same pause if most of my disks are idle, and we are watching a movie on the media-player, and I go to access a file on a drive on a disk that was previously spun down from a PC. ... Joe L. Ah good thinking, thanks hadn't thought of that. The answer is yes in my case. I'll test with those machines off and if that seems to be it investigate how to not have them index the unraid system....
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