December 15, 201015 yr I would definitely appreciate any thoughts/suggestions/guides on how to monitor the network. Situation: Recordings/Media reside on unRaid server. Sometimes (not often) while watching, get pauses/hangs during playback from media player (Sage HD200/HD300 media extenders). Trying to figure out where the problem might be and think the primary place for me to look would be at the network. Network setup is: modem ==> router ==> switch ==> everything else Static IP on unRaid, Sage TV server, and Media Extenders HOST files have entries for: Media Extender has unRaid and Sage TV server entries Sage TV server has unRaid and Media Extender entries unRaid has only the default (not sure how to set it up to be persistent) Do I need to also specify entries on the router? unRAID has: Local Master = Yes Gateway = router ip DNS ips are for my ISP DNS ips Do not see any packet lost root@Tower:/root -> ethtool eth0 Settings for eth0: Supported ports: [ TP MII ] Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full Supports auto-negotiation: Yes Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes Speed: 1000Mb/s Duplex: Full Port: MII PHYAD: 0 Transceiver: internal Auto-negotiation: on Supports Wake-on: pumbg Wake-on: g Current message level: 0x00000033 (51) Link detected: yes root@Tower:/root -> ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:30:48:b0:a7:33 inet addr:192.168.1.150 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:3472791137 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:3143236563 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:3834269176 (3.5 GiB) TX bytes:3901023233 (3.6 GiB) Interrupt:25 Base address:0x8000 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:2589389 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:2589389 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:365168902 (348.2 MiB) TX bytes:365168902 (348.2 MiB) Any tools to log/monitor network traffic so I can try to determine if there is an issue somewhere on the network? Hard to fix what you can't find out is wrong.
December 15, 201015 yr Unless you have an enterprise class switch that allows for port monitoring/mirroring you will be limited to tools you can run on a target machine unless someone has gotten tcpdump installed and running on unRAID. This means you would have to troubleshoot using sage client instead of one of your extenders. Just set up client on a windows machine and install Wireshark and you can watch any traffic you want. Unfortunately, this takes the HDx00's out of the mix, so if you want to go down this road you won't be able to rule out the extenders, but maybe you can at least point the finger towards or away from them.
December 15, 201015 yr I believe SageTV streams the files from the Server for extenders in Extender mode. The extender only reads the files directly when in standalone mode. So you should be able to monitor to/from on the server and see traffic to the extender. So wireshark could work if used from the server. A test without wireshark would be to play them back while in standalone mode that way if you see no studder you know it is a problem on the server and not a network issue (at least when only a single stream - unRAID to extender).
December 15, 201015 yr Author is there something similiar to wireshark that I could run on the unRaid server?
December 15, 201015 yr or would any of the unix flavors work on unRaid? Try to find a "Slackware" package. It would be most likely to only need shared libraries that are already in unRAID. I did a quick search. Here is one http://repository.slacky.eu/slackware-12.1/network/wireshark/1.0.5/wireshark-1.0.5-i486-1sl.tgz I've got no idea if it will work, but it is a start Download with wget http://repository.slacky.eu/slackware-12.1/network/wireshark/1.0.5/wireshark-1.0.5-i486-1sl.tgz Install with installpkg wireshark-1.0.5-i486-1sl.tgz
December 16, 201015 yr Author Started reading the WireShark documentation. Looks like it'll take me a bit to understand what it is saying. Looks like it'll do what I want it to do, just need to figure it out From the little understanding I have of it so far, it looks like I could monitor the traffic in my entire network from 1 machine. Which means I might be able to monitor the stuff going to the extenders also. Just need to come up to speed faster than the wife wants a resolution...mounting task
December 16, 201015 yr Started reading the WireShark documentation. Looks like it'll take me a bit to understand what it is saying. Looks like it'll do what I want it to do, just need to figure it out From the little understanding I have of it so far, it looks like I could monitor the traffic in my entire network from 1 machine. Which means I might be able to monitor the stuff going to the extenders also. Just need to come up to speed faster than the wife wants a resolution...mounting task Nothing like pressure from the better half to resolve this yesterday! Wireshark is a very capable network monitoring utility, however, it will not be able to monitor the entire network due to the way switches handle network traffic. The simple version is that if you have communication from unraid <-> switch <-> HD300 the traffic is only active on the ports that the devices are connected to. If you were using a hub (ewwww) then traffic between the two devices would be on all the ports up for grabs; odds are you aren't using a hub though More details here. To monitor traffic between the unRAID box and the HD300 you will have to get wireshark or tcpdump running on the unRAID box.
December 16, 201015 yr Author Thanks for that advice. Probably play on my windows laptop to learn wireshark then once understand how to use it, try to put it on unRaid. Will take a look into tcpdump also. Another thing I was thinking, maybe removing the non-media center connection from the switch and connect them to the router instead. modem ==> wireless router (2 PC connections and switch) == > switch (unRaid server, SageTV server, HD200, HD300) Or would that even make a difference?
December 16, 201015 yr Doubtful that moving those other devices off the switch will make much of a difference unless they are generating enough traffic to cause the switch to hiccup. It's a good idea to rule it out, just don't get your hopes up The good news is it's much easier to do than getting wireshark up and running, then making sense out of the data it collects!
December 16, 201015 yr Author yes. doubt it will make any difference, but in my experiences when troubleshooting complete unknown, start eliminating stuff from the situation...either you get lucky, or at least less you have to look into/worry about.
December 20, 201015 yr I finally reached my current goal of getting an unRAID dev system set up in a virtual machine this AM and decided to test it out by building a package for tcpdump. Ended up I had to build 2 packages, one for pcap and another for tcpdump. That just reinforced the process I built it in a 4.6 environment and tested in a 4.5.6. It seemed to work just fine! I think you'll be better suited to troubleshoot this by capturing via tcpdump then loading the capture file into wireshark for analysis. Wireshark has the specific info you need for that here. There are plenty of tcpdump tutorials out there; some with not enough info and some with information overload! Here are a few: http://danielmiessler.com/study/tcpdump/ http://openmaniak.com/tcpdump.php http://www.securitytube.net/Packet-Sniffing-using-Tcpdump-video.aspx The idea is the more precise you can make your capture and still get everything that is relevant, the lest sifting and sorting you have to do when you analyze the captured data It's not hard to run up huge capture files, and since you will be capturing video, your gonna do just that. Make sure your not saving your capture file to your ramdrive or your flash disk. I'd recommend saving it to a cache drive if you have one installed, or if not, going directly to one of your array disks. All that said, to install the packages copy them to your unraid box, I just copied them into the /root directory for testing, and issue: installpkg libpcap-1.1.1-i486-1.tgz installpkg tcpdump-4.1.1-i486-1.tgz tcpdump will be available until you reboot. If you want to make the installation persist across reboots, copy the packages to your flash drive and have the go script install them on reboot. The packages are too big to upload here so anyone that wants them feel free to PM me and I'll send you a link.
December 20, 201015 yr I finally reached my current goal of getting an unRAID dev system set up in a virtual machine this AM and decided to test it out by building a package for tcpdump. Ended up I had to build 2 packages, one for pcap and another for tcpdump. That just reinforced the process I built it in a 4.6 environment and tested in a 4.5.6. It seemed to work just fine! I think you'll be better suited to troubleshoot this by capturing via tcpdump then loading the capture file into wireshark for analysis. Wireshark has the specific info you need for that here. There are plenty of tcpdump tutorials out there; some with not enough info and some with information overload! Here are a few: http://danielmiessler.com/study/tcpdump/ http://openmaniak.com/tcpdump.php http://www.securitytube.net/Packet-Sniffing-using-Tcpdump-video.aspx The idea is the more precise you can make your capture and still get everything that is relevant, the lest sifting and sorting you have to do when you analyze the captured data It's not hard to run up huge capture files, and since you will be capturing video, your gonna do just that. Make sure your not saving your capture file to your ramdrive or your flash disk. I'd recommend saving it to a cache drive if you have one installed, or if not, going directly to one of your array disks. All that said, to install the packages copy them to your unraid box, I just copied them into the /root directory for testing, and issue: installpkg libpcap-1.1.1-i486-1.tgz installpkg tcpdump-4.1.1-i486-1.tgz tcpdump will be available until you reboot. If you want to make the installation persist across reboots, copy the packages to your flash drive and have the go script install them on reboot. The packages are too big to upload here so anyone that wants them feel free to PM me and I'll send you a link. Very cool!! If you could get unMenu packages created for these that would be great. It would allow new unRAID users to click a few buttons to download and install the entire things. Not sure about were to host the files (creat a google code account maybe, or talk to JoeL about it). It should be incredibly easy to get an unMenu package created for these two things, once we have a link to them somewhere on the web.
December 20, 201015 yr unMenu packages are just slackware packages right? If so these 2 would be ready to go as is; they would just need the supporting unMenu scripts/code to be incorporated into the unMenu codebase along with hosting space. I'll dig into the process and see what comes up
December 20, 201015 yr unMenu packages are just slackware packages right? If so these 2 would be ready to go as is; they would just need the supporting unMenu scripts/code to be incorporated into the unMenu codebase along with hosting space. I'll dig into the process and see what comes up Essentially yes. The unMenu packages are really a fancy shell script that the package manager understand and interprets. Take a look at the ones that are available (the simpler ones will do, dmidecode for example) and you should be able to pick it up fairly easily.
December 20, 201015 yr OK I whipped up an unMenu conf script that seems to work. I'm hosting the files on my network share at school. Uptime is pretty good and I doubt this will generate enough traffic that the admins will get mad at me If they do I'll search for an alternative. The script is attached. Save in \\tower\flash\packages\ and it can be handled like all the other unMenu packages. I would appreciate some feedback on whether everything works as expected too! tcpdump-unmenu-package.conf
December 20, 201015 yr OK I whipped up an unMenu conf script that seems to work. I'm hosting the files on my network share at school. Uptime is pretty good and I doubt this will generate enough traffic that the admins will get mad at me If they do I'll search for an alternative. The script is attached. Save in \\tower\flash\packages\ and it can be handled like all the other unMenu packages. I would appreciate some feedback on whether everything works as expected too! Send a PM off to JoeL and he should be able to give some feedback and get this added to the main unMenu release list.
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