May 15, 20179 yr I had this issue a long time ago, and I fixed it by changing the network settings in the Unraid server, I turned off Enable Bonding and Enable Bridging, and setting the IP to static. That solved the issue back then. I cannot remember if the DNS Server options were already available or if they were not. I can see that there is no way to turn them off. I am pretty sure that the fault is software, will revert to an older version of the server to see if it corrects it. Right now it's near unusable for me (movies stop 10+ times during playback, but unpredictably in terms of when). I play them through a window PC, connected to the same switch, via Emby and tested also directly with windows media player, both have issues.
May 15, 20179 yr Author Does anyone have a working link to 6.1.9? It seems to be the one that many people reverted to so it would be a good way to test. On http://lime-technology.com/download/ the oldest I can find is 6.2.4. I am also on version 5 of my motherboard's bios, a Gigabyte G33-DS3R, will upgrade to v7 (2009 so I don't think we will see another one of those) and test with the current version of Unraid.
May 15, 20179 yr Author i decided to hold off the BIOS upgrade in case it totals my MB for not benefit. Instead I decided to backup my original flash, then downgraded to 6.2.4 by copying over bzimage and bzroot from 6.2.4. Rebooting now and will do some testing first to see if the problem is really software based.
May 15, 20179 yr Community Expert Double check and be sure that the NIC drivers for the Windows machine is up-to-date. I had some old RealTek drivers on some of my Windows machines that was giving me fits with download speeds. Updating seems to have resolved the problem. Oh, and go directly to the manufacturer's (computer or MB) website to get any driver. Don't trust the generic drivers from Microsoft update!
May 15, 20179 yr Author Good point, I am using the network port on the motherboard, and I believe I am suing the latest drivers from the manufacturer, but I will check just to be sure. I can also test playback from another windows 10 machine. First testing with 6.2.4, with IP set to automatic, and it still displayed the same issues. Set the IP to fixed and I'm into a half hour of testing (after rebooting the server) and no stutters so far. That was the setting I changed to make the stutter disappear originally, but on the new version of unraid that doesn't make any difference.
May 15, 20179 yr Community Expert OK, I didn't look at your system at first. But it appears that you have an old Celeron CPU that is very low on the passmark scale. I had issues with a AMD sempron 140 (&145) with much of the same issues. The details are post up in this thread: To save you a lot of reading, what I finally did was install an Intel NIC card (They were less then $30 at that time.) That fixed the problem. Of course, if you look at my current setup, I have swapped out those MB's for new ones and there is not issues with them. (In my opinion, this thing started when certain kernel optimization were made to improve Docker and VM performance.) To be fair, the only time I noticed a problem was on playback of BluRAY iso rips. I have never transcoded any video on my server to save on storage space. So I do have a few ISO files that are over 40GB but most are in the 15GB to 35Gb range.
May 15, 20179 yr Author Just watch a bluray rip, Avg CPU usage on the server 14%, memory usage 21%, stutters after watching the whole movie = none. Something in the latest version of Unraid does not agree with my the motherboard networking component in my opinion. Installing another NIC card would not solve a problem with an unperforming motherboard, but would solve a software problem with a motherboard networking component. I do not use docker or VM, just plain barebone unraid for pure storage purposes. I have another machine that I use as server for EMBY (Windows) and I have turned transcoding off so everything plays at the highest resolution.
May 15, 20179 yr Community Expert I had a considerable closed discussion with the folks at LimeTech back when I detected this problem. It was definitely traced to RealTek NIC and its software at the time. You have to understand that the driver for this software is currently a part of the Linux kernel and the entire situation was very confusing at the time. (As I recall, the driver was actually provided by a support team of Linux users because support from RealTek for Linux was 'uneven'.) LimeTech had previously compiled a set of modules for the version of Linux that unRAID uses with the driver code provided by RealTek. They opted about that time that they were not going to continue that practice. It apparently only affects certain low end CPU's and then only if they are streaming high bit rate video streams. You are about the third case to post up in the two years since I posted up about the issue.
May 15, 20179 yr Author I had stutters with the lowest rate encodings, not just the high end ones. Sub 1.5GB files for movies. The stutters were so bad that playback in Emby would stop and return to the UI, where I had to choose resume. I mean it was so bad that it was making every movie unplayable to the end without several stops and resume. This issue has not occurred on unraid to me for a long time (I would say 1year +), until I recently upgraded the unraid software. I will do further testing, and see if it continues to stay "fixed" on . I will also have a look around in the house and see if there is a spare Intel Giga NIC that I can use for testing with the latest version of unraid. Thanks for your help so far my friend!
May 15, 20179 yr Community Expert One more thing. Be sure that you have rebooted your router and all of your network switches. They all run some version of Linux to manage their operation and an occasional reboot has been known to 'fix' things.
May 16, 20179 yr Author Interesting, I had the same instinctive thought, and rebooted all the switches between the Unraid server, and the PC, then even carried my tower (HEAVVY) down the stairs to the front room, so it would be on the same switch. No change. I have another switch and a wi-fi extender (Nighthawk) and the BT Broadband router, which I didn't reboot. Will try that too. The router has only a single Lan cable going to the switch where the Server and the HTPC were connected, so I didn't think it would have an impact. Testing update, watched three movies, and it did crash playback once during one of the movies. Much better on this version of Unraid, but I think the problem is still there. So I will dig that Intel network card out of my components junkyard for more testing...
May 16, 20179 yr Had a similar problem with this Realtek-Crap. My Board has this crappy RTL8111E on it. Changed the NIC to an Intel and all was fine. So try it. Edited May 16, 20179 yr by Zonediver
May 16, 20179 yr Author Found this in my junkyard http://www.sunix.com/en/product_detail.php?pid=266#specifications_lg It's based on a Marvell 8503 chipset though. Will give it a spin tonight.
May 16, 20179 yr Hmmmmm... Marvell-Chipset... i dont know... Intel is recommanded and working without issues. But yes, try it and see what happens. Edited May 16, 20179 yr by Zonediver
May 16, 20179 yr Author If that fails, was thinking of buying this one instead https://www.scan.co.uk/products/1-port-intel-pro-1000-gt-desktop-pci-gigabit-10-1000-(copper)-network-card-oem
May 16, 20179 yr @Intel-PCI: Working well (same as mine) but only with 95MB/sek max. If you have a spare PCIe-Slot, you can also use this https://www.scan.co.uk/products/1-port-intel-gigabit-pro-1000ct-pci-e-desktop-network-adapter-oem Edited May 16, 20179 yr by Zonediver
May 16, 20179 yr Author Thanks for the suggestions Zonediver! I'll test the one I have tonight and see how it performs with the latest version of unraid. If it fails I will order the Intel one you suggested right away. Edited May 16, 20179 yr by gnollo missing one line
May 17, 20179 yr Author Network card installed, transfer speed average 30MB/s with peakes of 36MB/s. Now time for some movie watching testing.
May 18, 20179 yr Author Plenty testing, so far no stutters or crashes, seems like you were spot on on the onboard network component being the problem. Hopefully this closes the issue.
May 19, 20179 yr Even a TP Link NIC will work better than any Marvell or RealTek crap. Just pick up a dual port from Amazon or elsewhere, assuming you a PCIe slot available.
May 22, 20179 yr Author Funnily enough, I found one of those TP Link cheapo cards in my junkyard, will follow our suggestion and switch, as I have small glitches again, altough much better than before.
May 22, 20179 yr Community Expert 9 minutes ago, gnollo said: Funnily enough, I found one of those TP Link cheapo cards in my junkyard, will follow our suggestion and switch, as I have small glitches again, altough much better than before. Problem is that those cheap cards are still using the CPU to do a lot of the work. The Intel Network cards have some on-board processing that takes some of the heavy lifting off of the CPU.
May 22, 20179 yr Author Just tested moving files to Unraid from my PC, CPU usage on the server is mostly at 100%. If I play the same Bluray rip from the server usage is mostly ranging between 10-50%. This is on the Marvell chipset, not I will test the TP-Link.
May 22, 20179 yr Author Card Installed, CPU loads on the server pretty similar, which I would expect. Now let's see if I have any playback issues at all during testing.
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.