iTunes 10 and unRAID...very slow

[abernardi]

I store my music media on one disk on the unRAID server and the iTunes Music Library file on my local drive on my Mac.  Ever since I upgraded to iTunes 10, iTunes has slowed down significantly.  I think it's a Samba thing.  It's especially slow when I add files or change info in those files.  Also, the whole LAN slows down when iTunes is running.  Anyone notice this?

[prostuff1]

I store my music media on one disk on the unRAID server and the iTunes Music Library file on my local drive on my Mac.  Ever since I upgraded to iTunes 10, iTunes has slowed down significantly.  I think it's a Samba thing.  It's especially slow when I add files or change info in those files.  Also, the whole LAN slows down when iTunes is running.  Anyone notice this?

 

It's not a Samba thing.  You just said that is slowed down when you installed iTunes 10 which implies that iTunes 9 was OK.  My suggestion is to set the disk that your music is on to never spin down.  The delay to spin up a disk can cause iTunes to freak out a little bit.  If you have music spread over several disks I suggest trying to consolidate it on as few disks as possible.

[grimm2000]

I am having the same issue in regards to Itunes 10, but I prefer if possible not to have my drive spun up all the time.  This might be a silly question, but could I have a SSD dive as part of my array in Unraid so their would be a much quicker access?  My music does not take that much space..

[squirrellydw]

I have iTunes on my Mac and I think it is faster. I keep my music drive spun up all the time. What part of iTunes is slow?

[grimm2000]

Actually, for me, it's not slow but I have my *.itl file on my unraid server.  So when it start up and my drive is not spun up it defaults to the c:/ drive.  I have to close,  spin up the drive and then hold the shift key and then select the file.  It's just a pain...

[Rajahal]

This might be a silly question, but could I have a SSD dive as part of my array in Unraid so their would be a much quicker access?  My music does not take that much space..

 

Yes, you can do this.

 

Also - have you guys looked at any other music players, such as Songbird?  I've found iTunes (on both Mac and Windows) to be absolutely the worst music player when it comes to handling large libraries (OK, Windows Media Player is probably a little bit worse).  Foobar is the best for Windows, and Songbird is the best I've found for Mac.  The only downside is that Songbird can no longer control iPods.  It used to be able to, but for some reason they dropped that feature (or maybe it is back by now, I haven't used it in many months).

[grimm2000]

Yes, I have looked into other solutions, but the wife and I both have IPhones.  She would get upset if I switched because she knows how to add music to her Iphone via itunes..  Same thing with my little one, so I might have a revolt.. :'(

[Rajahal]

Understood.  After Songbird dropped iPod support I was forced to go back to iTunes for a while.  I was not a happy camper.

[Paak]

I'm having the same problem.  I recently moved my music to my unRAID and have noticed that iTunes 10 takes an abnormally long time to access things.  I've turned Ping off but that didn't help much.  I just figured I'd have to live with it.

[squirrellydw]

how much music do you guys have?  I have about 250gig and all the files are o unraid with the drive always spun up and I didn't notice any difference, maybe faster a little.

[abernardi]

My collection is huge, over 700GB.  I've been doing a lot of searching and this seems to be a problem with iTunes and SMB.  A lot of people are rolling back to iTunes 9.2.1, so I tried it and I'm still having the same lag.  It takes about 40 sec. to add one song!

[prostuff1]

Are you running wired or wireless?

 

I have a slimmed down copy of my music on my local machine and a full copy of it on my server.  Running via wireless is slow and kind of painful, running via wired is also slow but not as bad a wireless.

 

Now, playing music from the server is pretty much fine.  It helps if the disk is spun up before launching iTunes.

[abernardi]

I'm on a wired gigabit router.  I'm noticing some more things: As always with OS X and SMB, the initial connecting is slow, but once a share or disk is seen, then it's pretty snappy.  So iTunes is playing back just fine.  It's adding songs that is the problem.  But now I'm beginning to suspect it isn't iTunes at all because I rolled iTunes back to 9.2.1 and it's just as slow to write to an SMB disk. 

 

Today I was making some alias's for specific movies and even just moving these alias's from one folder to another on the same SMB disk, using the finder, was getting the same delay!  So now I'm thinking this may be a problem with the Mac OS 10.6.4 update. 

[abernardi]

Wait a minute, something goofy is happening.  The delay has just disappeared.  I was using "DVDRemaster Pro" to pull out some video from an iso image and transcode it.  I noticed it also was slow.  I checked with the "Activity Monitor" and it was reporting that DVDRemaster was using around 150% of the CPU.  HuH? 

 

Anyway, after it finished the whole computer sped up.  I then ran it again with another iso image and it also was snappy.  So, I don't know what's going on here...

[squirrellydw]

So did you ever figure out the problem?  The only time I notice this is when I am on wireless.  Would getting a faster CPU in unraid help out?

[abernardi]

Sorry it took so long to answer, I thought this thread was dead.

 

This is what I've found so far.  Snow Leopard, OS 10.6.x, has a problem with SMB and/or any file system other than HFS+.  HFS+ is the common files system for OS X. 

 

There are hundreds of posts on the web complaining about temporary freezes, slowdowns, sometimes crashes.  Apple has yet to acknowledge the problem and there are a few suggestions out there that seem to have helped people.  I'll be trying out some of these this week and post the results here. 

 

From my own observations, specifically with iTunes, I've noticed some strange behavior.  Here's my setup.  I have an iMac running 10.6.4 (the latest update), the latest iTunes 10.  The iTunes app is located on the local internal HD, I have my iTunes library files and all my media on disk 1 of my unRAID server.  I'm hard wired to the server via a gigabit router.  I have iTunes set to keep the media organized and copy the media files to the server.

 

When importing a song file into iTunes, the file initially seems to copy at a good rate, the file appears in it's proper place and you can see the size increasing as it copies.  Then it stalls for a while, then the name changes to a long hex number for a few seconds and then reverts back to its' normal state.  The process can take 30-40 seconds, even with a small song file.  I looked at the console and I got the following error message:

 

11/8/10 12:24:28 AM /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes[2820] Possible unresolved transaction race -103/(Master Music Library/John Lennon/Rock 'N' Roll,(null))

 

The same thing happens when I make a change in the metadata.  For example, I added onto the name of an album and for each song it changed I got:

 

11/8/10 12:37:36 AM /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes[2820] Possible unresolved transaction race -103/(Master Music Library/John Lennon/Signature Box Set 5 - Walls And Bridges,(null))

 

This happens for each file imported or changed even within iTunes.

 

I followed the first path in the error message:  /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes[2820]. 

 

In the /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/ folder I find the following files:

 

iTunes

libgnsdk_musicid.1.7.1.dylib

libgnsdk_sdkmanager.1.7.1.dylib

libgnsdk_submit.1.7.1.dylib

 

where iTunes is a Unix Executable File.

 

I did some more research and have found some posts about file systems other than HFS+ having trouble with app packages.  I believe that all OS X apps are actually packages, like folders, but appearing as a single file. Other file systems don't seem to know what to do with these.  There was some talk of "flattening" these app packages, but I haven't gone forward with that yet because I'm not sure I understand it enough yet.

 

I've also noticed that in the getinfo box under sharing & permissions I usually get "You can read and write", but with apps I get "You have custom access".  This was something i had noticed before and thought it was a problem on the server, but I didn't realize it until now, I'm getting the custom access on every app.  So I think that's probably normal.

 

I'm wondering if I'm having a permissions problem with the iTunes Unix Executable File.  Right now the permissions are set as follows:

 

system: Read & Write

admin: Read & Write

everyone: Read only

 

Maybe it's trying to write to that file or another one and doesn't have the right permissions since the song file is now on the server and that's causing the stalls?  I'm over my head here.  Anyone have any ideas?

 

 

[davephan]

Have you tried using an internal drive for the 700 GB music collection? Does that slow down too? If it doesn't you could store the 700 GB on a local drive and store a copy on the unRAID server just for backup purposes.

 

Dave

 

[abernardi]

That would be ideal, but I have an iMac with a 320GB HD.  To change a drive in the iMac is a major undertaking.

[Jurgman]

That would be ideal, but I have an iMac with a 320GB HD.  To change a drive in the iMac is a major undertaking.

 

Actually, it's easy to do (with the right tools  )

I changed mine with a 1,5TB after the same itunes music on networkshare problems.

http://www.amfiteatar.org/content/view/155/78/lang,en

[abernardi]

Yeah, I looked it up right after I posted that and it's something I might do, especially if I can score one of those $69 2TB drives

[dgaschk]

I'm wondering if I'm having a permissions problem with the iTunes Unix Executable File.  Right now the permissions are set as follows:

 

system: Read & Write

admin: Read & Write

everyone: Read only

 

Maybe it's trying to write to that file or another one and doesn't have the right permissions since the song file is now on the server and that's causing the stalls?  I'm over my head here.  Anyone have any ideas?

 

 

These values are correct and have nothing to do with the transfer issues. Run <Disk Utility> if you have concerns about permissions on your Mac.

[abernardi]

For the time being I've started using my iTunes & iPhoto backup drive (an external USB drive) as the main drive and backing up to the unRAID.  This way the problem has gone away.  It's definitely something with the metadata with SMB and/or different file systems, but I haven't as yet found any good solutions.  My best guess is that it's a problem inherent in OS X's implementation of Samba.

[SSD]

I have ALWAYS had problems with slow loading of my Music library into iTunes from a network share.  Took hours and hours and hours and ....

 

But ...

 

I have recently rebuilt my HTPC and upgraded to Windows 7 (64 bit).

 

I loaded iTunes 10.1.1.  (Said it was for 64 bit but it loaded it in "Program Files (x86)" so not sure if it is a special 64 bit version or not).

 

I loaded my music collection of ~15,000 off of a unRAID Samba share very quickly (maybe 30-45mins, I didn't time it).  I almost fell out of my chair - I had hoped it would be done tomorrow morning!

 

YMMV but for now I'm very happy with iTunes performance.

[squirrellydw]

SInce I got a new wireless router mine is much faster

[autumnwalker]

Is this issue isolated to OS X or is it also an issue with Windows 7?

 

I'm looking at migrating from WHS to unRAID and run both platforms; however, my iTunes library is on my Windows 7 box. Based on what I'm reading (SMB) it sounds like it's an OS X issue.