Hi guys,

 

I have a HP N40L with a 3TB WD Red parity drive, 1 x 3TB WD Red and 3 x 2TB Seagate. I am using a registered version of unRaid. The NAS is setup with a fixed IP address.

 

On my HTPC (an AMD K6-5400K with 4GB ram), the IP is also set to fixed. I don't have issues copying files to and fro the NAS and pinging the NAS gives 0% losses. The issue I have is whether I am using Windows 7 on my HTPC or window 8, and no matter if I use XBMC or J River, I get random freeze when watching movies being stored on the NAS.

 

There are no errors on the NAS and the HTPC is also reinstalled many times. The problem with the freeze is that I cannot reproduce it at will. Sometimes unraid will run fine for a week and then it returns with a quick hiccup and then it is fine for another 4 days or so. It is very hard to troubleshoot.

 

Anyone experience similar things?

 

Thanks

Why do you think that the problem lies with unRaid and not with the HTPC?  Is it an actual freeze (requiring a reset) or does the movie start back up 4-5 seconds later?

If it's just a 'hiccup' (freeze of 4-5 seconds) it likely could be the hard-drive had to spin up after being  spun-down while the player or unRAID had that part of the movie buffered in memory. If that's the case, then try setting spindown time to be longer.

I can start the movie from the HTPC...it plays fine initially and at a random location it will just freeze. If I am watching the movie from J River, I will need to exit the movie, and then replay the movie again and it will resume at that spot when it froze.

 

The whole thing is very random. I cannot reproduce the issue at will. It just come and go and happens to any movies on the unRaid drives. I also have a USB drive attach to the HTPC and to date I have not experienced any thing like the unRaid NAS. Hence I am thinking the issue is with the NAS.

 

 

I had that issue as well for a few months finally worked out it was marginal RAM in my unraid server. Only picked it up by doing a Memtest in damp mode.

 

Sent from my LG-D802T using Tapatalk

 

 

I have the same issue. Do you have AFP enabled?

Check out the log file once the movie stop and see if any AFP error message appeared. In my case it is the AFP which I have enabled because of TM which is somehow related to the SMB stream. I know it is hard to believe but as soon as the movie freezes the AFP error in the log is presented.

Thanks for the feedback and no...I don't have AFP enabled because I don't have a Mac at home....any other things I might need to check?

Thanks for the feedback and no...I don't have AFP enabled because I don't have a Mac at home....any other things I might need to check?

 

I have the same problem. In XBMC, I just increased the cache buffer size and the problems stopped.

 

<advancedsettings>
<network>
    <buffermode>1</buffermode> 
    <cachemembuffersize>62914560</cachemembuffersize>
    <readbufferfactor>4</readbufferfactor>
  </network>
</advancedsettings>

 

This will force XBMC to cache 60MB of the file

 

I know this is an unRAID problem, but a cannot trace it either, so I use this workaround.

Thanks I will try the cache on XBMC. I am also using J River on my HTPC and I don't think J River support cache for movies....would a cache drive on UnRaid itself be the same as having a cache for XBMC?

Thanks I will try the cache on XBMC. I am also using J River on my HTPC and I don't think J River support cache for movies....would a cache drive on UnRaid itself be the same as having a cache for XBMC?

unRAID cache drives are only for cacheing writes, not reads, so no.

Sorry I was away a few days for offsite work.

 

Any ideas why unRaid has this issue at all? Apart from having a read cache for XBMC is there no other possible ways we can mitigate this issue?

 

unRaid has been working great so far....this is the only issue I have had...

 

 

Run memtest overnight. Run reiserfsck on all of the data disks (See check disk filesystems in my sig.) Is the client a Windows machine? What are its specs?

Any ideas why unRaid has this issue at all? Apart from having a read cache for XBMC is there no other possible ways we can mitigate this issue?

As this is normally associated with a drive having to be spun up, have you taken any action in your share settings to ensure that all the files for a given movie end up on the same physical disk?

Hi Fliptoback, please see this link to a post I put on here a short while ago.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=33405

 

Hope this might be of some help to you, basically had problems and in the end I started using NFS rather than SMB for streaming and it has totally sorted my problem. Also passed this information on to a friend of mine using a similar setup and it has also rectified the problem for him also.

Thanks all.

 

@dgaschk: I have not reiserfschk all the data disks. Will do so if the issues persists...but I find it extremely unlikely that ALL the disks have errors at the same time given that XBMC/J River seem to hang at various parts of the movies which are physically stored in different disks. But it is a good point you raised and thank you.

 

@itimpi: all the files associated with the movies/videos are located at the same disk and in the same folder physical storage.

 

@Poprin: Okay. I read your previous post and it seems very promising. I am going to try tonight and see how it goes. I suspect I will need to try the NFS out for a period of time because the hanging issue is so random I can't reproduce it at will. Only time will time. Thanks for your post. I think you are on to something here.....not sure why NFS is technically better than SMB for this situation but if it works I am happy.

 

I will post back my success/failure story on my next post here. Thanks again.

Okay. This is harder than I thought.

 

NFS support for Windows 8 is only available if you use Windows 8 Enterprise.

 

I am using Windows 8.1 Pro version and NFS support does not come natively built in...

 

What do you guys do to get Windows 8 Pro to talk NFS with unRaid?

Fliptoback you are correct, it looks like NFS only works on 8.1 enterprise, 7 enterprise and ultimate. Not 8.1 pro, which is vaguely ridiculous!

 

Surely someone must have a workaround. Spotted this post but don't have time to research too much. Might be worth a look:

 

https://github.com/GM-Alex/vagrant-winnfsd/issues/12