Experimental and Snapshot RC4 releases available for testing on the DNS-320/321/323/325

[João Cardoso]

Hi,

Snapshot and Experimental releases are now available at sourceforge.

Snapshots releases were tested and are expected to work fine.

Experimental releases were not tested and might have issues, a serial adapter is recommended.

If you find any issue, please report back.

Feedback is specially important for the experimental releases.

Enjoy,

João

SNAPSHOT README:

The Alt-F-0.1RC4-<box>-YYYY-MM-DD.bin are snapshots of the current Alt-F development status

and are intended for testing on the DNS-323-rev-A1/B1/C1 and the DNS-325-rev-A1 boards.

They are a pre-release of the upcoming RC4.

The Conceptronic-CH3SNAS and Fujitsu-Siemens-DUO35LR are equivalent to a DNS-323-rev-B1.

In order to test and use it, go to System->Firmware, select the more recent

Alt-F-0.1RC4-<box>-YYYY-MM-DD.bin file, hit the Upload button, and in the next page hit

the TryIt or the FlashIt buttons.

The firmware has been successfully flashed on DNS-323-rev-B1 and DNS-325-rev-A1 boards.

After rebooting the status page should display "Alt-F 0.1RC4 Status Page".

If you used the TryIt mode and the reboot fails and the Status pages does not appears,

you can try to reboot by keeping the front-button pressed until the right amber led

starts flashing, and then releasing the button, which should reboot the

box and bring it back to the previously flashed firmware.

It the front-button test fails and the led does not starts flashing, you

have to unplug the power plug.

If your setup needs any kernel module supplied through the kernel-modules Alt-F package,

they will not work.

Packages already installed on disk might also not work, as some infrastructure changes

have been made. You have to wait until RC4 is released to update packages.

This is expected and has no other negative consequences.

-If you have any 'ffp' installation, rename the 'ffp' folder to something

else before flashing, as it might conflicts with Alt-F. You can safely

install ffp later under Alt-F control.

EXPERIMENTAL README:

This directory contains experimental firmware, it is advised to have a 3.3V serial adapter

on your box when testing it, in case something does not runs OK.

If you use them, please report back your experiences on the forum:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt-f 

Attach the System Log and the System Configuration

(System->Utilities->View Logs) when reporting.

Only with your collaboration it is possible to fix any issue.

After successfully flashing Alt-F you can always revert back to the

vendor's firmware by using Alt-F Firmware Upgrade page, that accepts

both Alt-F and the vendor's firmware.

Alt-F *DOES NOT* format or change your disks in any way, your data is safe.

-The Alt-F-0.1RC4-DNS-320.bin was not tested by me, but a previous version was tested

by (at least) two users that reported that it worked on rev-A1 boards with minor issues.

See the box bottom label to know what hardware revision you have. The DNS-320 is

similar to the DNS-325, which has been flash-tested, except for the system temperature

reading and fan control.

-The Alt-F-0.1RC4-DNS-321.bin was not yet flash-tested, but the previous RC3 worked OK.

This new version works fine on a DNS-323 when using the TryIt mode, but as now it uses

most of its flash-memory, it should be flashed in order to be tested.

-To use those files you have to use them as a normal vendor firmware

upgrade, i.e., use the box vendor's firmware upgrade page to apply

(flash) them, or, if already using Alt-F, use System->Firmware to FlashIt.

-If you have any 'ffp' installation, rename the 'ffp' folder to something

else before flashing, as it might conflicts with Alt-F. You can safely

install ffp later under Alt-F control.

-You might want to read the How to Use Wiki, as those instructions also apply.

https://sourceforge.net/p/alt-f/wiki/Home

[Luca Avalle]

Hi!

I have a DNS 320 B, since I am not satisfied with this box, I am now up for tests!

I a mtrying to install the ALT+F, but the buttons for fw upgrade remains greyed out, why?

[Luca Avalle]

I answer my own post.... Do not use CHROME, use IE.

The update is in progress.... let's see

Il giorno giovedì 6 marzo 2014 22:33:55 UTC+1, Luca Avalle ha scritto:

Hi!

I have a DNS 320, since I am not satisfied with this box, I am now up for tests!

[Luca Avalle]

First Test was KO.... the firmware was not installed

Il giorno giovedì 6 marzo 2014 22:33:55 UTC+1, Luca Avalle ha scritto:

Hi!

I have a DNS 320 B, since I am not satisfied with this box, I am now up for tests!

[Joao Cardoso]

On Mar 6, 2014 9:50 PM, "Luca Avalle" <luca....@gmail.com> wrote:

> First Test was KO.... the firmware was not installed
>

Can you please tell us what the box bottom label says? Model, hardware rev, fw rev...

Thanks

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[Luca Avalle]

Hi!

H/W Ver B1

FW 1.0

S/N ends with B1E

I am definetely up for tests :)

Worst case I will brick it, no worries

[mv_cz]

Hi thank you for your effort, I flashed your firmware to my DNS-320 (rev A1) last weekend, flashing process went okay.

I think you did a great job. At first I was surprised, that my d-link can actually glow amber :-)  I use 2x 2TB drives in Raid1 and after first boot up with Alt-F firmware I got this superblock corrupt error https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=cs#!topic/alt-f/nuGn555lzVA Don't know what d-link's firmware was actually doing to partitions, but their size was a little bit different between my two physical drives. Because I had backup of all my data, I simply wiped out both disks, created new Raid1 with ext4, did raid rebuild (about 14 hours) and then copied back all my data across network.

No problems so far, but I wanted to ask, whether is there any chance of regulating fan speed or changing treshold temperature. I've previously replaced fan with quieter one, so it maxes out at 4500rpm (instead of 6k) and lower speed is definitely lower than 3000rpm that is displayed. I'm fine with that and understand, that Alt-F simply translates high speed revs to 6000rpm and low speed to 3000rpm no matter what speed the fan is actually running. The problem is, that cooling down DNS-320 with this little fan is pointless. System temperature is showing about 44-47C (but hard drives are at about 35C), but the fan still spins at low speed, which is disturbing. Is there any chance to increase treshold temperature? I mean to turn on fan at about 50C reported system temperature for example?

Apart from that, I've measured samba transfer speed to and from NAS over the network. Write performance is ok, reading is about 1/3 slower than with d-link firmware. More on that is here: http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=51588.msg229791#msg229791

Dne pátek, 28. února 2014 16:12:43 UTC+1 João Cardoso napsal(a):

[João Cardoso]

On Friday, March 7, 2014 6:45:50 AM UTC, Luca Avalle wrote:

Hi!

H/W Ver B1

FW 1.0

S/N ends with B1E

So we now know that Alt-F doesn't work with the DNS-320-rev-B1, but works on the DNS-320-rev-A1.

Thanks for reporting back! That's the only way I have to be aware of any issues with hardware that I don't have.

Experimental releases has that purpose and everyone trying them should report (of course no duplicate reports for the same hardware are needed :)

But what happened exactly?

-Was the Alt-F firmware file rejected?

-Did it start applying?

-Did the box reboot by itself, asked you to reboot, or you had to pull the power plug?

-How long did it takes?

-Did the box return to the D-Link firmware after reboot?

-Was you on a wired or wireless connection? (the D-Link firmware update seems to be vulnerable to this, don't know why)

I am definetely up for tests :)

Unfortunately there is not much that you can do, unless you have a serial connection setup in the box for diagnostics.

Thanks!

[João Cardoso]

On Friday, March 7, 2014 7:18:28 AM UTC, mv_cz wrote:

Hi thank you for your effort, I flashed your firmware to my DNS-320 (rev A1) last weekend, flashing process went okay.

I think you did a great job. At first I was surprised, that my d-link can actually glow amber :-)  I use 2x 2TB drives in Raid1 and after first boot up with Alt-F firmware I got this superblock corrupt error https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=cs#!topic/alt-f/nuGn555lzVA Don't know what d-link's firmware was actually doing to partitions, but their size was a little bit different between my two physical drives. Because I had backup of all my data, I simply wiped out both disks, created new Raid1 with ext4, did raid rebuild (about 14 hours) and then copied back all my data across network.

Excelent. ah, if everybody had a backup of their backup life would be easier :)

 

No problems so far, but I wanted to ask, whether is there any chance of regulating fan speed or changing treshold temperature.

If you read the previous "DNS-320/325 experimental release available" topic you will see that temperature reading was not available for the DNS-320 at the time. This has now been corrected with chris help.

But I need diagnostics that it is realy working.

Does a 'dns320-temp.sh' process appears under System->Utilities->View Logs, "Running processes"?

Does the Status page displayed system temperature changes when the box changes from idle to several (tens of?) minutes of disk transfers? 

 

I've previously replaced fan with quieter one, so it maxes out at 4500rpm (instead of 6k) and lower speed is definitely lower than 3000rpm that is displayed. I'm fine with that and understand, that Alt-F simply translates high speed revs to 6000rpm and low speed to 3000rpm no matter what speed the fan is actually running. The problem is, that cooling down DNS-320 with this little fan is pointless. System temperature is showing about 44-47C

ah, so it changes

 

(but hard drives are at about 35C), but the fan still spins at low speed, which is disturbing. Is there any chance to increase treshold temperature? I mean to turn on fan at about 50C reported system temperature for example?

Yes, Services->System->sysctrl Configure.

You can change the trip point for fan off/low and fan low/fast. There is a 1ºC hysteresis around trip points, so it fan off is set to 40ºC it will turn off at 39ºC and will only turn on again at 41ºC, to prevent fan start/stop wear.

Apart from that, I've measured samba transfer speed to and from NAS over the network. Write performance is ok, reading is about 1/3 slower than with d-link firmware. More on that is here: http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=51588.msg2297histeresys91#msg229791

Thanks for the pointer, advertising and *real* benchmark comparative data :-)

As you now have full access to samba, you might want to experiment with several smb.conf tuning (among others).

-"use sendfile" is really effective?

-will adding to "socket options"  SO_SNDBUF=131072 SO_RCVBUF=131072 (or bigger values) change something?

see https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/DDWv4NRkVe4/_zQJRMzDvtgJ

Also, can you compare ftp or other network protocols transfer speed? This "speed" subject has always been a source of distress, I suspect that it has something to do with the linux network driver (or similar low-level infrastructures)

Thanks

 

[mv_cz]

On Friday, March 7, 2014 5:44:59 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

If you read the previous "DNS-320/325 experimental release available" topic you will see that temperature reading was not available for the DNS-320 at the time. This has now been corrected with chris help.

But I need diagnostics that it is realy working.

Does a 'dns320-temp.sh' process appears under System->Utilities->View Logs, "Running processes"?

Does the Status page displayed system temperature changes when the box changes from idle to several (tens of?) minutes of disk transfers? 

Yes, I did read it (my plan was to flash your first dns320 version but until I did full backup you've released temperature fixed version), so I checked this immediatelly after the flash. Dns320-temp.sh is running, checked via top. Status page displays temperature correctly and accordingly rises/lowers with system load.

 

Yes, Services->System->sysctrl Configure.

You can change the trip point for fan off/low and fan low/fast. There is a 1ºC hysteresis around trip points, so it fan off is set to 40ºC it will turn off at 39ºC and will only turn on again at 41ºC, to prevent fan start/stop wear.

I haven't notice that, thank you! Will try it when I get home.

Thanks for the pointer, advertising and *real* benchmark comparative data :-)

As you now have full access to samba, you might want to experiment with several smb.conf tuning (among others).

-"use sendfile" is really effective?

-will adding to "socket options"  SO_SNDBUF=131072 SO_RCVBUF=131072 (or bigger values) change something?

see https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/DDWv4NRkVe4/_zQJRMzDvtgJ

Also, can you compare ftp or other network protocols transfer speed? This "speed" subject has always been a source of distress, I suspect that it has something to do with the linux network driver (or similar low-level infrastructures)

Thanks

 

Yes my plan for the weekend was tuning samba performance; about year ago, I played with socket option on standard d-link firmware with ffp installed but with no luck (it must have had something to do with low available ram). So again, thank you for link, I'll try it. And will also try ftp, but samba is most used in home environment, so I started with it, haven't looked on ftp config yet, so i don't know whether is running by default or not :)
I did not enable any additional services to conserve as much memory as possible.

[mv_cz]

On Friday, March 7, 2014 5:44:59 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

Yes, Services->System->sysctrl Configure.

You can change the trip point for fan off/low and fan low/fast. There is a 1ºC hysteresis around trip points, so it fan off is set to 40ºC it will turn off at 39ºC and will only turn on again at 41ºC, to prevent fan start/stop wear.

Unfortunately this doesn't work for me, the first "box" in web management of sysctrl is empty only with label "Unknown board", but the nas itself does regulate the fan somehow (above 40C it turns on fan to mid speed). Is there anything I could do to let Alt-F recognize dns-320 board for fan control?

Thanks for the pointer, advertising and *real* benchmark comparative data :-)

As you now have full access to samba, you might want to experiment with several smb.conf tuning (among others).

-"use sendfile" is really effective?

-will adding to "socket options"  SO_SNDBUF=131072 SO_RCVBUF=131072 (or bigger values) change something?

see https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/DDWv4NRkVe4/_zQJRMzDvtgJ

Also, can you compare ftp or other network protocols transfer speed? This "speed" subject has always been a source of distress, I suspect that it has something to do with the linux network driver (or similar low-level infrastructures)

Thanks

 

You were absolutely right.  With default configuration, "use send file" was not present in smb.conf at all. So I added it and my read speed immediately bumped up back to ~30 MB/s (from mere 18 MB/s)! Write speed were at approx same level (13 MB/s). Setting send and receive buffers to 65535 increases write and read speed to 31/14 MB/s, Finally I've set buffers to 131071 only to be satisfied with 32/15 MB/s read/write speeds. So far, I've been testing with smaller files, will upload my results to DNS forum later.

I also tested FTP performance with larger file and results are really good:
Copied (07.03.2014 21:51:48): ftp://nas/mnt/md0/Programy/BT5R2-GNOME-32.iso -> d:\BT5R2-GNOME-32.iso 2 713 892 864 bajtů, 41 385 kB/s (read)
Copied (07.03.2014 21:57:04): d:\BT5R2-GNOME-32.iso -> ftp://nas/mnt/md0/BT5R2-GNOME-32.iso 2 713 892 864 bajtů, 11 697 kB/s (write)
During copying via FTP I usually see numbers at around 45 MB/s !!! But sometimes, for second transfer speed drops to 0 and then continues back at 45-46 MB/s speed. At those speeds, nas CPU is at 100% and memory is almost full, so I think, nas reached its limits.

[João Cardoso]

On Friday, March 7, 2014 9:22:50 PM UTC, mv_cz wrote:

On Friday, March 7, 2014 5:44:59 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

Yes, Services->System->sysctrl Configure.

You can change the trip point for fan off/low and fan low/fast. There is a 1ºC hysteresis around trip points, so it fan off is set to 40ºC it will turn off at 39ºC and will only turn on again at 41ºC, to prevent fan start/stop wear.

Unfortunately this doesn't work for me, the first "box" in web management of sysctrl is empty only with label "Unknown board",

My mistake, please try the attached patch.

In short, in /usr/www/cgi-bin/sysctrl.cgi support has to been added for the DNS-320:

-if test "$board" = "DNS-323-C1" -o "$board" = "DNS-323-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-325-A1"; then 

+if test "$board" = "DNS-323-C1" -o "$board" = "DNS-321-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-325-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-320-A1"; then 

-if test "$board" = "DNS-323-C1" -o "$board" = "DNS-321-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-325-A1"; then

+if test "$board" = "DNS-323-C1" -o "$board" = "DNS-321-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-320-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-325-A1"; then

The changes will not survive a reboot.

 

but the nas itself does regulate the fan somehow (above 40C it turns on fan to mid speed).

fan control is done by the 'sysctrl' daemon

Is there anything I could do to let Alt-F recognize dns-320 board for fan control?

Thanks for the pointer, advertising and *real* benchmark comparative data :-)

As you now have full access to samba, you might want to experiment with several smb.conf tuning (among others).

-"use sendfile" is really effective?

-will adding to "socket options"  SO_SNDBUF=131072 SO_RCVBUF=131072 (or bigger values) change something?

see https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/DDWv4NRkVe4/_zQJRMzDvtgJ

Also, can you compare ftp or other network protocols transfer speed? This "speed" subject has always been a source of distress, I suspect that it has something to do with the linux network driver (or similar low-level infrastructures)

Thanks

 

You were absolutely right.  With default configuration, "use send file" was not present in smb.conf at all. So I added it and my read speed immediately bumped up back to ~30 MB/s (from mere 18 MB/s)! Write speed were at approx same level (13 MB/s).

hmmm... reading same files? sure they aren't being cached at the desktop computer?

 

Setting send and receive buffers to 65535 increases write and read speed to 31/14 MB/s, Finally I've set buffers to 131071 only to be satisfied with 32/15 MB/s read/write speeds. So far, I've been testing with smaller files, will upload my results to DNS forum later.

The rcv/snd buffers values are negotiated between the server and the client, and they should be OK. But on small memory machines they seems to be too conservative.

The "use sendfile" is equally effective for large files?

[Luca Avalle]

Hello again, thank you so much for feeding back, looks interesting :)

So, some answers:

-Was the Alt-F firmware file rejected?

No (apparently)

-Did it start applying?

Yes

-Did the box reboot by itself, asked you to reboot, or you had to pull the power plug?

Box did not reboot, the webpage of fw uupdate just kept the "wait logo (circle spinning)

-How long did it takes?

Dunno, after 10m I refreshed the page and the browser asked for login again

-Did the box return to the D-Link firmware after reboot?

-Was you on a wired or wireless connection? (the D-Link firmware update seems to be vulnerable to this, don't know why)

WiFi, I will try wired 1gbit

Can you please try with another FW version so I can test again?

Thanks

[mv_cz]

On Saturday, March 8, 2014 3:11:59 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

 

My mistake, please try the attached patch.

In short, in /usr/www/cgi-bin/sysctrl.cgi support has to been added for the DNS-320:

-if test "$board" = "DNS-323-C1" -o "$board" = "DNS-323-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-325-A1"; then 

+if test "$board" = "DNS-323-C1" -o "$board" = "DNS-321-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-325-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-320-A1"; then 

-if test "$board" = "DNS-323-C1" -o "$board" = "DNS-321-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-325-A1"; then

+if test "$board" = "DNS-323-C1" -o "$board" = "DNS-321-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-320-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-325-A1"; then

The changes will not survive a reboot.

Thank you very much, your patch is working like a charm. 

hmmm... reading same files? sure they aren't being cached at the desktop computer?

 

Hope not, for testing purposes, I'm using this little tool (http://www.808.dk/?code-csharp-nas-performance), it creates randomly generated files for each pass which then sends to/read from NAS. I use 4-pass smaller (100 MB) file and 5-pass larger (400 MB) file.

 

The rcv/snd buffers values are negotiated between the server and the client, and they should be OK. But on small memory machines they seems to be too conservative.

The "use sendfile" is equally effective for large files?

Yes, it is. In fact use sendfile has the biggest impact on samba read performance. Playing with buffer values only fine-tunes these numbers. Real world scenario doesn't differ from testing numbers and read/write performance is similiar and consistent across 100M, 400M or 2GB+ files. Although d-link managed (in older firmwares) to achieve about 40MB/s+ read speed of larger files (in exchange for 10MB/s slower read of smaller files), their last official firmware (2.03) is so bad, that reading from nas is actually slower than writing to it .....

[João Cardoso]

hmmm... reading same files? sure they aren't being cached at the desktop computer?

 

Hope not, for testing purposes, I'm using this little tool (http://www.808.dk/?code-csharp-nas-performance), it creates randomly generated files for each pass which then sends to/read from NAS. I use 4-pass smaller (100 MB) file and 5-pass larger (400 MB) file.

OK.

 

 

The rcv/snd buffers values are negotiated between the server and the client, and they should be OK. But on small memory machines they seems to be too conservative.

The "use sendfile" is equally effective for large files?

Yes, it is. In fact use sendfile has the biggest impact on samba read performance.

OK then. "Use sendfile" will be the default, and I will add an option in the webUI to enable/disable it.

Could you please post your comparative benchmark results? The ones that justify the change?

 

Playing with buffer values only fine-tunes these numbers.

My results on a linux computer (see https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/ud1EzxnGrnw/tGqcYpqfNrEJ) does not confirm that.

I can only imagine that it applies also to the "use sendfile" option, i.e., it depends on the client/server interaction.

I could also add a snd/rcv buffer size option to the webUI, with "auto" as the default.

Thanks!

[mv_cz]

On Sunday, March 9, 2014 10:37:58 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

OK then. "Use sendfile" will be the default, and I will add an option in the webUI to enable/disable it.

Could you please post your comparative benchmark results? The ones that justify the change?

Yes I've uploaded my actual results on friday here http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=51588.msg229791#msg229791 

But another interesting thing happened later. I was happy with transfer speeds, so I moved on and installed miniDLNA client. Bunch of additional sw (libraries) was installed into Alt-F folder on md0, that was ok. But since then, even while miniDLNA service is stopped (checked, that is really not running), I'm getting max speeds over samba at about 25MB/s.
Rebooting didn't help, disabling "use sendfile" makes it even worse. It appers, that I can't "get back" to previous performance state. To be correct, FTP speed is also negatively influenced (read speed dropped from 41 MB/s to about 31-33 MB/s).

 

[João Cardoso]

On Monday, March 10, 2014 11:19:09 AM UTC, mv_cz wrote:

On Sunday, March 9, 2014 10:37:58 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

OK then. "Use sendfile" will be the default, and I will add an option in the webUI to enable/disable it.

Could you please post your comparative benchmark results? The ones that justify the change?

Yes I've uploaded my actual results on friday here http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=51588.msg229791#msg229791 

But another interesting thing happened later. I was happy with transfer speeds, so I moved on and installed miniDLNA client. Bunch of additional sw (libraries) was installed into Alt-F folder on md0, that was ok.

Not really, most of these packages are pre-installed -- the package Remove button should be grayed (disabled). If you install additional packages (which you shouldn't do as they were built for RC3 and *might* not work) the Remove button is enabled.

 

But since then, even while miniDLNA service is stopped (checked, that is really not running),

When Alt-F packages are installed, the disk starts playing a role, and that can have implications -- read the "how to costumise firmware" wiki for details.

If you remove that capability (use the RemoveAll installed package button, you might have to reboot), will throughput increase again?

Don't worry, pre-installed packages will not be removed, they live in the firmware (but configuration files will be deleted).

I'm getting max speeds over samba at about 25MB/s.

I was not aware of such throughput degradation when Alt-F packages are installed -- if you confirm that.

 

Rebooting didn't help, disabling "use sendfile" makes it even worse. It appers, that I can't "get back" to previous performance state. To be correct, FTP speed is also negatively influenced (read speed dropped from 41 MB/s to about 31-33 MB/s).

a lot. Looks like everything slows down...

PS-there is another not yet handled potential issue: is the left/right bay/slot indication in the status page correct? I have a fix for the DNS-325 that I don't know if I shall apply to the DNS-320.

At around line 215 of /usr/sbin/hot.sh:

if grep -q DNS-325 /tmp/board; then

the left and right bays are swapped for the DNS-325, should that be applied to the DNS-320 also?

Added: You can't test that unless you hot-plug drives, which I understand you might not want to do (and you should unmount/stop RAID/etc first -- Disk->Utilities->Eject does it all).

As a diagnostic It will be enough to see if currently the bays are incorrectly labeled.

[João Cardoso]

On Saturday, March 8, 2014 5:41:16 PM UTC, Luca Avalle wrote:

Hello again, thank you so much for feeding back, looks interesting :)

So, some answers:

-Was the Alt-F firmware file rejected?

No (apparently)

-Did it start applying?

Yes

-Did the box reboot by itself, asked you to reboot, or you had to pull the power plug?

Box did not reboot, the webpage of fw uupdate just kept the "wait logo (circle spinning)

-How long did it takes?

Dunno, after 10m I refreshed the page and the browser asked for login again

-Did the box return to the D-Link firmware after reboot?

-Was you on a wired or wireless connection? (the D-Link firmware update seems to be vulnerable to this, don't know why)

WiFi, I will try wired 1gbit

Can you please try with another FW version so I can test again?

Thanks Luca, but I can't change anything because I don't know what to change, so the end result will be the same -- Alt-F does not works on the DNS-320-rev-B1.

If you brick the box or stop using it I will be willing to pay the postal posts (of the inner motherboard only, to reduce costs), in order to make Alt-F support it. Do you live in Europe/Italy, right?

João

[Luca Avalle]

Hi, yes, I live in Luxembourg, no probs with payments, I could ship u the box for free.

I would like to give u more info in order to trouble shoot.

Ho can I build the serial port?

[João Cardoso]

On Monday, March 10, 2014 6:18:09 PM UTC, Luca Avalle wrote:

Hi, yes, I live in Luxembourg, no probs with payments, I could ship u the box for free.

Thanks from Porto/Portugal :-)

But only after RC4, or else it will never be released.

I would like to give u more info in order to trouble shoot.

Ho can I build the serial port?

You can try this DNS-320 specific forum

http://forum.dsmg600.info/viewforum.php?id=14

http://dns323.kood.org/dns-320

[mv_cz]

On Monday, March 10, 2014 6:12:53 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

Not really, most of these packages are pre-installed -- the package Remove button should be grayed (disabled). If you install additional packages (which you shouldn't do as they were built for RC3 and *might* not work) the Remove button is enabled.

 

When Alt-F packages are installed, the disk starts playing a role, and that can have implications -- read the "how to costumise firmware" wiki for details.

If you remove that capability (use the RemoveAll installed package button, you might have to reboot), will throughput increase again?

Don't worry, pre-installed packages will not be removed, they live in the firmware (but configuration files will be deleted).

I was not aware of such throughput degradation when Alt-F packages are installed -- if you confirm that.

Thanks for your reply and clarification.  So I used removeAll button, saved, rebooted, confirmed that "everything was gone" (Alt-F folder from HDD also disappered), measured speeds....... and no improvement at all, measured twice, again after reboot, rebooted even my router and nothing. Still getting simmilar numbers

Before disabling Alt-F packages:
NAS performance tester 1.4 http://www.808.dk/?nastester
Running warmup...
Running a 400MB file write on drive Z: 5 times...
Iteration 1:     13,91 MB/sec
Iteration 2:     14,14 MB/sec
Iteration 3:     13,62 MB/sec
Iteration 4:     13,91 MB/sec
Iteration 5:     13,78 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (W):     13,87 MB/sec
------------------------------
Running a 400MB file read on drive Z: 5 times...
Iteration 1:     26,03 MB/sec
Iteration 2:     25,98 MB/sec
Iteration 3:     26,32 MB/sec
Iteration 4:     25,85 MB/sec
Iteration 5:     26,18 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (R):     26,07 MB/sec
------------------------------

After disabling Alt-F packages:
Running warmup...
Running a 400MB file write on drive Z: 5 times...
Iteration 1:     12,54 MB/sec
Iteration 2:     14,40 MB/sec
Iteration 3:     14,92 MB/sec
Iteration 4:     14,51 MB/sec
Iteration 5:     14,83 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (W):     14,24 MB/sec
------------------------------
Running a 400MB file read on drive Z: 5 times...
Iteration 1:     26,32 MB/sec
Iteration 2:     26,06 MB/sec
Iteration 3:     25,90 MB/sec
Iteration 4:     26,15 MB/sec
Iteration 5:     25,59 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (R):     26,00 MB/sec
------------------------------

Honestly I don't know, what went wrong, maybe flashing would help? The problem is, that before enabling DLNA (and other services) I didn't change anything else in my config, that's for sure. On friday, I applied samba tweaks (use sendfile and buffers), measured those high numbers, verified several times (including reboot) and then happily went to bed :) On saturday, I enabled miniDLNA, measured againd and speeds were about 23-26MB/s.

 

a lot. Looks like everything slows down...

PS-there is another not yet handled potential issue: is the left/right bay/slot indication in the status page correct? I have a fix for the DNS-325 that I don't know if I shall apply to the DNS-320.

At around line 215 of /usr/sbin/hot.sh:

if grep -q DNS-325 /tmp/board; then

the left and right bays are swapped for the DNS-325, should that be applied to the DNS-320 also?

Added: You can't test that unless you hot-plug drives, which I understand you might not want to do (and you should unmount/stop RAID/etc first -- Disk->Utilities->Eject does it all).

As a diagnostic It will be enough to see if currently the bays are incorrectly labeled.

I did it slightly different way. On "Disk"->"Utilites" page, then showed health status for each drive, noted their serial numbers and then checked against their physical labels. And yes they are swapped on DNS-320 too. So could you please apply your fix to DNS-320?

[João Cardoso]

On Tuesday, March 11, 2014 7:13:37 PM UTC, mv_cz wrote:

On Monday, March 10, 2014 6:12:53 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

Not really, most of these packages are pre-installed -- the package Remove button should be grayed (disabled). If you install additional packages (which you shouldn't do as they were built for RC3 and *might* not work) the Remove button is enabled.

 

When Alt-F packages are installed, the disk starts playing a role, and that can have implications -- read the "how to costumise firmware" wiki for details.

If you remove that capability (use the RemoveAll installed package button, you might have to reboot), will throughput increase again?

Don't worry, pre-installed packages will not be removed, they live in the firmware (but configuration files will be deleted).

I was not aware of such throughput degradation when Alt-F packages are installed -- if you confirm that.

Thanks for your reply and clarification.  So I used removeAll button, saved, rebooted, confirmed that "everything was gone" (Alt-F folder from HDD also disappered), measured speeds....... and no improvement at all, measured twice, again after reboot, rebooted even my router and nothing.

Did you poweroff/rebooted also the MS-Win machine? I have to do that on my wife's MS-Vista often.

No.

 

The problem is, that before enabling DLNA (and other services) I didn't change anything else in my config, that's for sure. On friday, I applied samba tweaks (use sendfile and buffers), measured those high numbers, verified several times (including reboot) and then happily went to bed :) On saturday, I enabled miniDLNA, measured againd and speeds were about 23-26MB/s.

No clue, sorry.

Removing the Alt-F folder returned the box to the previous state. If you want a full "factory reset" you can "Clear Settings" (System->Settings) and reboot.

Are you on RAID?

 

 

a lot. Looks like everything slows down...

I have conducted my own fast "tests" and couldn't confirm that ftp throughput to a linux machine depends on Alt-F packages being installed or not.

 

PS-there is another not yet handled potential issue: is the left/right bay/slot indication in the status page correct? I have a fix for the DNS-325 that I don't know if I shall apply to the DNS-320.

At around line 215 of /usr/sbin/hot.sh:

if grep -q DNS-325 /tmp/board; then

the left and right bays are swapped for the DNS-325, should that be applied to the DNS-320 also?

Added: You can't test that unless you hot-plug drives, which I understand you might not want to do (and you should unmount/stop RAID/etc first -- Disk->Utilities->Eject does it all).

As a diagnostic It will be enough to see if currently the bays are incorrectly labeled.

I did it slightly different way. On "Disk"->"Utilites" page, then showed health status for each drive, noted their serial numbers and then checked against their physical labels. And yes they are swapped on DNS-320 too. So could you please apply your fix to DNS-320?

OK thanks, now done.

Joao

[mv_cz]

On Wednesday, March 12, 2014 2:26:49 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

Did you poweroff/rebooted also the MS-Win machine? I have to do that on my wife's MS-Vista often.

Yes, several times :) I'm testing on my home PC-desktop which I do not use regularly, only during weekends. But i cross-checked on my gf's laptop which also has gigabit adapter.

 

No clue, sorry.

Removing the Alt-F folder returned the box to the previous state. If you want a full "factory reset" you can "Clear Settings" (System->Settings) and reboot.

Are you on RAID?

 

Yes, my drives are @RAID1

 

I have conducted my own fast "tests" and couldn't confirm that ftp throughput to a linux machine depends on Alt-F packages being installed or not.

 

OK, I didn't thik, this could be problem, having basic packages installed or not doesn't influence the amount of free memory or cpu utilization.
So if I have time, I could clear settings and try again. I also have pair of unused 80GB/7200rpm drives, so I might measure several tests in other non-RAID or RAID configurations.

OK thanks, now done.

No problem, that's me who would like to thank you. I admire your job, It's very well done.

[mv_cz]

Hi, being off for sime time, but not inactive with testing my NAS ;-) . So at first I cleared settings and set up everything again (only basics, such as users, shares, IP, time). Measued performance and nothing happened, I was still at about 25MB/s read speeds :( I mostly gave up, so I installed miniDLNA client and used my NAS for same time in an usual way - that means listening to the music via dlna on my AVR, or watching movies on my mediaplayer (LAN player with samba support hooked to a TV) and rare file transfers. Then after a three days or so I measured transfers speed again and it was all OK!!! reading over 30MB/s again.

Don't know what actually helped me, but few days earlier, I updated my desktop NIC's drivers (realtek latest drivers), restarted 100Mbit switch (which is not connected directly to NAS but it servers as port-multiplicator to connect AVR, TV and media player since these all devices have only 100Mbit ports) and re-plugged all RJ45 cables during cleaning my room :) But it's fine again and it "lasts" over 4 days now. I've even enabled transmissionBT client with no speed penalty (of course I'm not downloading any torrents when measuring transfer speeds). So with Alt-F installed, "enabled" Alt-F packages and with started miniDLNA and transmissionBT services, I'm getting this results (and I must admit, you were right that installing Alt-F packages don't negatively influence throughput):

NAS performance tester 1.4 http://www.808.dk/?nastester
Running warmup...
Running a 400MB file write on drive Z: 5 times...

Iteration 1:     12,84 MB/sec
Iteration 2:     12,53 MB/sec
Iteration 3:     12,54 MB/sec
Iteration 4:     12,62 MB/sec
Iteration 5:     12,32 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (W):     12,57 MB/sec
------------------------------

Running a 400MB file read on drive Z: 5 times...

Iteration 1:     33,81 MB/sec
Iteration 2:     35,22 MB/sec
Iteration 3:     32,51 MB/sec
Iteration 4:     33,77 MB/sec
Iteration 5:     35,66 MB/sec
------------------------------
Average (R):     34,20 MB/sec
------------------------------

Actually, when using windows explorer, it seems that transfer is capped at about 36MB/s like on my screenshot below (that is while downloading acronis truebackup image right after NAS restart, so no caching here). So the performance seems to be maxed out.

But there is one thing that doesn't work exactly right - and that's "Boot Enabled" checkbox. If I tick checkbox next to miniDLNA or transmissionBT service and save my settings they won't start after next reboot. I must manually start these services every time I reboot my NAS, which is fine for transmissionBT client, but I'would like to have my miniDLNA service running at all times. I thought that It has something to do with my settings, but tried it before clearing settings and of course after new setup with same result.

[João Cardoso]

On Thursday, March 20, 2014 7:56:51 PM UTC, mv_cz wrote:

Hi, being off for sime time, but not inactive with testing my NAS ;-) . So at first I cleared settings and set up everything again (only basics, such as users, shares, IP, time). Measued performance and nothing happened, I was still at about 25MB/s read speeds :( I mostly gave up, so I installed miniDLNA client and used my NAS for same time in an usual way - that means listening to the music via dlna on my AVR, or watching movies on my mediaplayer (LAN player with samba support hooked to a TV) and rare file transfers. Then after a three days or so I measured transfers speed again and it was all OK!!! reading over 30MB/s again.

Don't know what actually helped me, but few days earlier, I updated my desktop NIC's drivers (realtek latest drivers), restarted 100Mbit switch (which is not connected directly to NAS but it servers as port-multiplicator to connect AVR, TV and media player since these all devices have only 100Mbit ports) and re-plugged all RJ45 cables during cleaning my room :) But it's fine again and it "lasts" over 4 days now. I've even enabled transmissionBT client with no speed penalty (of course I'm not downloading any torrents when measuring transfer speeds). So with Alt-F installed, "enabled" Alt-F packages and with started miniDLNA and transmissionBT services, I'm getting this results (and I must admit, you were right that installing Alt-F packages don't negatively influence throughput):

NAS performance tester 1.4 http://www.808.dk/?nastester
Running warmup...
Running a 400MB file write on drive Z: 5 times...

Iteration 1:     12,84 MB/sec
Iteration 2:     12,53 MB/sec
Iteration 3:     12,54 MB/sec
Iteration 4:     12,62 MB/sec
Iteration 5:     12,32 MB/sec

------------------------------
Average (W):     12,57 MB/sec

Doesn't increasing the samba network receive buffer changes this?

------------------------------

Running a 400MB file read on drive Z: 5 times...

Iteration 1:     33,81 MB/sec
Iteration 2:     35,22 MB/sec
Iteration 3:     32,51 MB/sec
Iteration 4:     33,77 MB/sec
Iteration 5:     35,66 MB/sec

------------------------------
Average (R):     34,20 MB/sec
------------------------------

Actually, when using windows explorer, it seems that transfer is capped at about 36MB/s like on my screenshot below (that is while downloading acronis truebackup image right after NAS restart, so no caching here). So the performance seems to be maxed out.

But there is one thing that doesn't work exactly right - and that's "Boot Enabled" checkbox. If I tick checkbox next to miniDLNA or transmissionBT service and save my settings they won't start after next reboot. I must manually start these services every time I reboot my NAS,

hmmm, I see, I have to check that.

Can you please watch the System Log and search for "hot_aux"? (System->Utilities->View Logs, System Log, Filter by "hot_aux" at page bottom)

A reference to "Alt-F directory found in  ..." should appears followed by boot-enabled services start messages. Does it?

The log will get truncated a few hours or days since the last reboot, if the "Alt-F directory found ..." message does not appears, please try this after the next reboot.

What is the output of the command 'ls -la /Alt-F/etc/init.d/'? 

 

Thanks

[Syahmi Azhar]

This firmware working fine with my DNS-320. Thank you very much!
I got around 50MB/s read on ftp. There is no other issue I found yet.

I'm looking at the repo and there is no RC4 available on the tree. Would be very happy if I can get the source for latest releases.

Thanks!

[Joao Cardoso]

On Mar 21, 2014 11:47 AM, "Syahmi Azhar" <syah...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This firmware working fine with my DNS-320. Thank you very much!
> I got around 50MB/s read on ftp. There is no other issue I found yet.
>
> I'm looking at the repo and there is no RC4 available on the tree.

It's trunk, but is unstable and build instructions are outdated.

Would be very happy if I can get the source for latest releases.
>
> Thanks!
>

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[mv_cz]

On Thursday, March 20, 2014 11:08:59 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

Doesn't increasing the samba network receive buffer changes this?

That's already with buffers set to SO_SNDBUF=131071 SO_RCVBUF=131071 (i.e. my optimal settings) 

hmmm, I see, I have to check that.

Can you please watch the System Log and search for "hot_aux"? (System->Utilities->View Logs, System Log, Filter by "hot_aux" at page bottom)

A reference to "Alt-F directory found in  ..." should appears followed by boot-enabled services start messages. Does it?

The log will get truncated a few hours or days since the last reboot, if the "Alt-F directory found ..." message does not appears, please try this after the next reboot.

What is the output of the command 'ls -la /Alt-F/etc/init.d/'? 

 

Thanks

I had to reboot, Alt-F direcotry is found, but no service started:

Mar 21 19:35:49 nas user.notice hot_aux: Finish fscking md0: fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010) /dev/md0 has been mounted 23 times without being checked, check forced. /dev/md0: 43993/122068992 files (1.2% non-contiguous), 271241748/488246912 blocks
Mar 21 19:35:50 nas user.info kernel: EXT4-fs (md0): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
Mar 21 19:35:50 nas user.notice hot_aux: Users directory found in md0
Mar 21 19:35:50 nas user.notice hot_aux: Public directory found in md0
Mar 21 19:35:50 nas user.notice hot_aux: Alt-F directory found in md0
Mar 21 19:35:51 nas user.notice aufs: waiting for lock
Mar 21 19:35:51 nas user.notice aufs: got lock
Mar 21 19:35:51 nas user.notice aufs: remove lock

Both services are still ticked as "boot enabled".

And /Alt-F/etc/init.d/ directory is not present, at all :-( Only /Alt-F/etc/ is there.
But the "classic" /etc/init.d/ directory contains both scripts (for dlna and transmissionbt):

[root@nas]# ls -la /etc/init.d/
total 160
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root           720 Mar 16 16:46 .
drwxr-xr-x   25 root     root          4096 Mar 21 19:16 ..
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root           760 Dec 14  2010 S10syslog
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          1156 Feb 27 15:53 S11sslcert
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root           756 Feb 11 16:10 S11urandom
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          1977 Feb 27 15:53 S13modload
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          1133 Feb 27 15:53 S19quota
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1212 Feb 27 15:53 S20dbus
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root           329 Sep 24  2010 S21sysctrl
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root           476 Feb  8 18:33 S26cron
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           474 Feb 27 15:53 S27at
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           575 Feb 27 15:53 S28smart
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           740 Nov 21  2011 S29mdadm
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1609 Feb  8 18:36 S30backup
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1117 Feb  8 18:35 S31cleanup
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          1239 Feb  8 18:34 S31news
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           798 Mar 15  2013 S40portmap
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          1795 Feb  2 14:08 S41inetd
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           664 Feb 27 15:53 S41stunnel
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1207 Feb 27 15:53 S42dnsmasq
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1747 Feb 27 15:53 S43ntp
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           501 Feb 27 15:53 S44ddns
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1296 Feb 27 15:53 S50avahi_daemon
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1338 Feb 27 15:53 S51netatalk
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          2084 Mar 12  2013 S60nfs
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1035 Nov 10 18:32 S60nfs_client
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          1058 Feb 27 15:53 S61smb
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           932 Feb 28  2012 S62dropbear
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           765 Feb 27 15:53 S63vsftpd
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           504 Feb 27 15:53 S64iscsitarget
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           653 Feb 27 15:53 S80forked_daapd
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          1284 Feb 27 15:53 S80minidlna
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          2261 Feb 27 15:53 S81transmission
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root           675 Aug 17  2013 S98ffp
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          2378 Dec  6 21:07 S99user
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          6772 Feb 11 14:50 common
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          2656 Jan 24 05:11 rcE
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         10200 Feb 23 21:30 rcS
-rwxr-xr-x    2 root     root           943 Jan 21 17:02 rcall

And the last strange thing is, that right after reboot, web gui tells me, I have to save my settings and that smb.conf has changed. Tried with another reboot right away. Maybe transmissionBT shared folders?

[João Cardoso]

On Friday, March 21, 2014 6:24:07 PM UTC, mv_cz wrote:

On Thursday, March 20, 2014 11:08:59 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

Doesn't increasing the samba network receive buffer changes this?

That's already with buffers set to SO_SNDBUF=131071 SO_RCVBUF=131071 (i.e. my optimal settings) 

hmmm, I see, I have to check that.

Can you please watch the System Log and search for "hot_aux"? (System->Utilities->View Logs, System Log, Filter by "hot_aux" at page bottom)

A reference to "Alt-F directory found in  ..." should appears followed by boot-enabled services start messages. Does it?

The log will get truncated a few hours or days since the last reboot, if the "Alt-F directory found ..." message does not appears, please try this after the next reboot.

What is the output of the command 'ls -la /Alt-F/etc/init.d/'? 

 

Thanks

I had to reboot, Alt-F direcotry is found, but no service started:

Mar 21 19:35:49 nas user.notice hot_aux: Finish fscking md0: fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010) /dev/md0 has been mounted 23 times without being checked, check forced. /dev/md0: 43993/122068992 files (1.2% non-contiguous), 271241748/488246912 blocks
Mar 21 19:35:50 nas user.info kernel: EXT4-fs (md0): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
Mar 21 19:35:50 nas user.notice hot_aux: Users directory found in md0
Mar 21 19:35:50 nas user.notice hot_aux: Public directory found in md0
Mar 21 19:35:50 nas user.notice hot_aux: Alt-F directory found in md0
Mar 21 19:35:51 nas user.notice aufs: waiting for lock
Mar 21 19:35:51 nas user.notice aufs: got lock
Mar 21 19:35:51 nas user.notice aufs: remove lock

Both services are still ticked as "boot enabled".

And /Alt-F/etc/init.d/ directory is not present, at all

ah, that is the issue, and it applies to all usually disk-installed packages that on the DNS-320/321/325 are instead pre-installed on flash memory. The "save settings" (on flash) does not apply to those kind of packages. I have to devise a way to fix that.

For now, try the following, after ssh/telnet the box as the 'root' user (and having "installed" Alt-F packages using Packages->Alt-F)

aufs.sh -n

mkdir -p /Alt-F/etc/init.d

aufs.sh -r

Now try changing the boot-enable of minidlna/Transmission and see if they appear under /Alt-F/etc/init.d/ (which are on disk and will survive a reboot without the need to "save settings"). Or,using the command line 'rcminidlna enable/disable' or 'rctransmission enable/disable' (in general, 'rc<servicename> start|stop|status|enable|disable|help'

If S80minidlna appears under /Alt-F/etc/init.d/ and is executable (the 'x' in the first column in the 'ls -la' command) the service should start at boot (as a matter of fact when the Alt-F folder is found on a filesystem).

Did it works?

NEVER manipulated any file under /Alt-F without first executing  'aufs.sh -n'

:-( Only /Alt-F/etc/ is there.

What does 'ls -la /Alt-F/etc' shows?

hmm, have to think about this... and has smb.conf really changed? It should change when shares are added/removed/modified, and, for Transmission, if a Transmision share is not defined (the Transmission initscript S81transmission creates the share if it does not exists, which modifies smb.conf)

 

[João Cardoso]

On Friday, February 28, 2014 3:12:43 PM UTC, João Cardoso wrote:

Hi,

Snapshot and Experimental releases are now available at sourceforge.

Snapshots releases were tested and are expected to work fine.

Experimental releases were not tested and might have issues, a serial adapter is recommended.

If you find any issue, please report back.

Feedback is specially important for the experimental releases.

Enjoy,

João

During my RC4 release tests I found a serious stop-press bug, which will delay the RC4 release date.

The issue is related with a missing RAID5 kernel module in RC4, so RAID5 is not working. As the missing kernel component is "huge" (87KB), it does not fit  the available flash-memory space and it is not easy to fix.

[mv_cz]

On Friday, March 21, 2014 8:28:17 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

ah, that is the issue, and it applies to all usually disk-installed packages that on the DNS-320/321/325 are instead pre-installed on flash memory. The "save settings" (on flash) does not apply to those kind of packages. I have to devise a way to fix that.

For now, try the following, after ssh/telnet the box as the 'root' user (and having "installed" Alt-F packages using Packages->Alt-F)

aufs.sh -n

mkdir -p /Alt-F/etc/init.d

aufs.sh -r

Now try changing the boot-enable of minidlna/Transmission and see if they appear under /Alt-F/etc/init.d/ (which are on disk and will survive a reboot without the need to "save settings"). Or,using the command line 'rcminidlna enable/disable' or 'rctransmission enable/disable' (in general, 'rc<servicename> start|stop|status|enable|disable|help'

If S80minidlna appears under /Alt-F/etc/init.d/ and is executable (the 'x' in the first column in the 'ls -la' command) the service should start at boot (as a matter of fact when the Alt-F folder is found on a filesystem).

Did it works?

NEVER manipulated any file under /Alt-F without first executing  'aufs.sh -n'

Thank you for your quick answer. Tried it, directory was created but nothing happens while changing boot services running whether it is webgui or via command line. After reboot (several times), miniDLNA service is stopped and the directory is always empty.

hmm, have to think about this... and has smb.conf really changed? It should change when shares are added/removed/modified, and, for Transmission, if a Transmision share is not defined (the Transmission initscript S81transmission creates the share if it does not exists, which modifies smb.conf)

The smb.conf file stays the same and after each reboot it tries to save settings for unknown reason (yes, I saved it when message pops-up). It must have something to do with transmissionBT client, because after reboot I can't start it even manually and it says, that it is not configured. So i must go to configuration, select transmissionBT dir (browse to my default folder for torrents /mnt/md0/Public/RW) and save. Then I can start it manually, but after reboot settings are not saved, even though this entry is in smb.conf all the time (after reboot):

[Transmission]
        comment = Transmission Download area
        path = /mnt/md0/Public/RW
        valid users = +BT
        read only = no
        available = yes

Permissions for both /etc/samba/ and /Alt-F/etc/init.d folders (and all /Alt-F folder) are OK. Root can r+w or eXecute when necessary, but for unknown reason I think that not all config is saved.

 

[Robert Fargher]

On 14-03-21 12:37 PM, João Cardoso wrote:
>
>
> The issue is related with a missing RAID5 kernel module in RC4, so
> RAID5 is not working. As the missing kernel component is "huge"
> (87KB), it does not fit the available flash-memory space and it is
> not easy to fix.
>

Why is this an issue? You need a minimum of 3 physical disks to do
RAID5.

--
Cheers,
Rob

[João Cardoso]

On Friday, March 21, 2014 9:12:45 PM UTC, Robert Fargher wrote:

On 14-03-21 12:37 PM, João Cardoso wrote:
>
>
> The issue is related with a missing RAID5 kernel module in RC4, so
> RAID5 is not working. As the missing kernel component is "huge"
> (87KB), it does not fit  the available flash-memory space and it is
> not easy to fix.
>

   Why is this an issue?

There are Alt-F users currently using RAID5 on their boxes. If RC4 fails for them they will become angry

 

 You need a minimum of 3 physical disks to do
RAID5.

As the Alt-F propaganda says: "Alt-F has (...) RAID 5 (with external USB disk) ..."

There is even a top-posted topic that shows empirical performances "tests" on RAID5 :-)

 

--
Cheers,
Rob

[João Cardoso]

On Friday, March 21, 2014 8:39:11 PM UTC, mv_cz wrote:

On Friday, March 21, 2014 8:28:17 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

ah, that is the issue, and it applies to all usually disk-installed packages that on the DNS-320/321/325 are instead pre-installed on flash memory. The "save settings" (on flash) does not apply to those kind of packages. I have to devise a way to fix that.

For now, try the following, after ssh/telnet the box as the 'root' user (and having "installed" Alt-F packages using Packages->Alt-F)

aufs.sh -n

mkdir -p /Alt-F/etc/init.d

aufs.sh -r

Now try changing the boot-enable of minidlna/Transmission and see if they appear under /Alt-F/etc/init.d/ (which are on disk and will survive a reboot without the need to "save settings"). Or,using the command line 'rcminidlna enable/disable' or 'rctransmission enable/disable' (in general, 'rc<servicename> start|stop|status|enable|disable|help'

If S80minidlna appears under /Alt-F/etc/init.d/ and is executable (the 'x' in the first column in the 'ls -la' command) the service should start at boot (as a matter of fact when the Alt-F folder is found on a filesystem).

Did it works?

NEVER manipulated any file under /Alt-F without first executing  'aufs.sh -n'

Thank you for your quick answer. Tried it, directory was created but nothing happens while changing boot services running whether it is webgui or via command line. After reboot (several times), miniDLNA service is stopped and the directory is always empty.

OK, my mistake. Try instead:

aufs.sh -n
mkdir -p  /Alt-F/etc/init.d/
cp /etc/init.d/S80minidlna /Alt-F/etc/init.d/
aufs.sh -r

 

All pre-installed packages not part of the DNS-323 base firmware suffer from this issue. For details take a look on the"customizing firmware" wiki.

For the DNS-320/325 affected packages that will not preserve configuration changes across reboots are:

alsa-lib

avahi

db

dbus

expat

ffmpeg-libs

flac-libs

forked-daapd

gettext

iscsitarget

jpeg-libs

kernel-modules

lame

libantlr

libavl

libconfuse

libcurl

libdaemon

libevent

libevent2

libexif

libgcrypt

libglib2

libgpg-error

libid3tag

libogg

libunistring

libvorbis

minidlna

mxml

ncurses

netatalk

ntfs-3g

ntfs-3g-ntfsprogs

quota-tools

readline

sqlite-libs

taglib

transmission

Only packages that have configuration files or initscripts will be affected (and not all them have).

The cure is to make a copy of the original configuration file to the Alt-F directory

E.g., if changes to file /etc/foo.conf are not preserved across reboots, it must be copied to /Alt-F/etc/foo.conf (remember using 'aufs.sh -n' first)

More complex cases, such as /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf need to be copied to /Alt-F/etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf:

aufs.sh -n
mkdir-p /Alt-F/etc/avahi
cp /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf /Alt-F//etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf
aufs.sh -r

hmm, have to think about this... and has smb.conf really changed? It should change when shares are added/removed/modified, and, for Transmission, if a Transmision share is not defined (the Transmission initscript S81transmission creates the share if it does not exists, which modifies smb.conf)

The smb.conf file stays the same and after each reboot it tries to save settings for unknown reason (yes, I saved it when message pops-up). It must have something to do with transmissionBT client, because after reboot I can't start it even manually and it says, that it is not configured.

It should be the above issue.

Transmission stores its configuration file in /var/lib/transmission/settings.json, Does /Alt-F/var/lib/transmission/ exists? If not apply the above cure.

Thanks a lot for your feedback, this is a real issue and I was not aware of it. It is a design flaw and I don't yet know how to automatically handle it.

Please notice that this issue only affects packages that was designed to be installed on disk, as in the DNS-323, not on flash-memory as in the DNS-320/321/325. The base packages handle configuration changes through "save settings".

[mv_cz]

On Saturday, March 22, 2014 12:20:30 AM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

 

OK, my mistake. Try instead:

aufs.sh -n
mkdir -p  /Alt-F/etc/init.d/
cp /etc/init.d/S80minidlna /Alt-F/etc/init.d/
aufs.sh -r

 

All pre-installed packages not part of the DNS-323 base firmware suffer from this issue. For details take a look on the"customizing firmware" wiki.

For the DNS-320/325 affected packages that will not preserve configuration changes across reboots are:

Thank you very much, that helped. Minidlna service is starting automatically.

The cure is to make a copy of the original configuration file to the Alt-F directory

E.g., if changes to file /etc/foo.conf are not preserved across reboots, it must be copied to /Alt-F/etc/foo.conf (remember using 'aufs.sh -n' first)

More complex cases, such as /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf need to be copied to /Alt-F/etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf:

aufs.sh -n
mkdir-p /Alt-F/etc/avahi
cp /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf /Alt-F//etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf
aufs.sh -r

It should be the above issue.

Transmission stores its configuration file in /var/lib/transmission/settings.json, Does /Alt-F/var/lib/transmission/ exists? If not apply the above cure.

Thanks a lot for your feedback, this is a real issue and I was not aware of it. It is a design flaw and I don't yet know how to automatically handle it.

Please notice that this issue only affects packages that was designed to be installed on disk, as in the DNS-323, not on flash-memory as in the DNS-320/321/325. The base packages handle configuration changes through "save settings".

Ok, thanks you for clarification. I think, i get it :)  The /Alt-F/var/lib/transmission/ folder exists and contains settings.json file all time with last modification date that corresponds to my last changes, BUT after reboot it somehow manages to default to its original state.
So I start my NAS and then try to start transmissionBT service manually. It says, that it's dir doesn't exist. I look to the settings.json and it contains "watch-dir": "/Public" which really doesn't exist. Then I change configuration via webgui and point to the right directory (/Transmission on my hdd) and succesfully start the service. At this moment, settings.json contains the "right" directory /mnt/md0/Transmission and everything is ok.
To be correct there are two location of this file: one is in /var/lib/transmission/ and the other is /Alt-F/var/lib/transmission/ (they are not linked, right?). Just to be sure, I checked, that both files content is the same and I even try to copy /var/lib/transmission/settings.json to /Alt-F/var/lib/transmission/ with aufs.sh as you noted. But it didn't help, I also try to "backup" samba's config to /Alt-F/etc/samba/smb.conf, but the situation is still the same.

Once I reboot my NAS, settings.json file is defaulted (and points to /Public folder). And web gui tells me I have to save my settings because smb.conf has changed, which is not correct and (unlike settings.json) I have correct [Transmission] share entry in smb.conf that survives reboots.

[João Cardoso]

On Saturday, March 22, 2014 4:46:21 PM UTC, mv_cz wrote:

On Saturday, March 22, 2014 12:20:30 AM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

 

OK, my mistake. Try instead:

aufs.sh -n
mkdir -p  /Alt-F/etc/init.d/
cp /etc/init.d/S80minidlna /Alt-F/etc/init.d/
aufs.sh -r

 

All pre-installed packages not part of the DNS-323 base firmware suffer from this issue. For details take a look on the"customizing firmware" wiki.

For the DNS-320/325 affected packages that will not preserve configuration changes across reboots are:

Thank you very much, that helped. Minidlna service is starting automatically.

The cure is to make a copy of the original configuration file to the Alt-F directory

E.g., if changes to file /etc/foo.conf are not preserved across reboots, it must be copied to /Alt-F/etc/foo.conf (remember using 'aufs.sh -n' first)

More complex cases, such as /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf need to be copied to /Alt-F/etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf:

aufs.sh -n
mkdir-p /Alt-F/etc/avahi
cp /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf /Alt-F//etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf
aufs.sh -r

It should be the above issue.

Transmission stores its configuration file in /var/lib/transmission/settings.json, Does /Alt-F/var/lib/transmission/ exists? If not apply the above cure.

Thanks a lot for your feedback, this is a real issue and I was not aware of it. It is a design flaw and I don't yet know how to automatically handle it.

Please notice that this issue only affects packages that was designed to be installed on disk, as in the DNS-323, not on flash-memory as in the DNS-320/321/325. The base packages handle configuration changes through "save settings".

Ok, thanks you for clarification. I think, i get it :) 

Good.

What we are doing is a hack, I have to devise a proper solution :-(

 

The /Alt-F/var/lib/transmission/ folder exists and contains settings.json file all time with last modification date that corresponds to my last changes, BUT after reboot it somehow manages to default to its original state.

OK, found the culprit.

When the Alt-F folder is found the contents of /var/lib/* are copied to /Alt-F/var/lib, overriding the changes you made with the default values from the firmware (everything under / comes from the "immutable" flash-memory, and only when a folder/file under /Alt-F exists it will override the / ones.

The /var/lib to /Alt-F/var/lib copying was probably intended to preserve user current settings when Alt-F packages are installed. I have to fix/think about this.

 

So I start my NAS and then try to start transmissionBT service manually. It says, that it's dir doesn't exist. I look to the settings.json and it contains "watch-dir": "/Public" which really doesn't exist. Then I change configuration via webgui and point to the right directory (/Transmission on my hdd) and succesfully start the service. At this moment, settings.json contains the "right" directory /mnt/md0/Transmission and everything is ok.
To be correct there are two location of this file: one is in /var/lib/transmission/ and the other is /Alt-F/var/lib/transmission/ (they are not linked, right?). Just to be sure, I checked, that both files content is the same and I even try to copy /var/lib/transmission/settings.json to /Alt-F/var/lib/transmission/ with aufs.sh as you noted. But it didn't help, I also try to "backup" samba's config to /Alt-F/etc/samba/smb.conf, but the situation is still the same.

Don't worry with the smb.conf changes. it's a consequence of the Transmission share creation by the Transmission initscript. That will be solved automatically when the configuration files issue becomes solved.

As you are not going to reboot the box very often (it's a 24/7 box, right?) it's only a minor inconvenient until I fix it.

Again, thanks for the feedback! And keep reporting issues you find, that's the only way to fix them.

Joao

[mv_cz]

On Saturday, March 22, 2014 8:43:00 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:
 

OK, found the culprit.

When the Alt-F folder is found the contents of /var/lib/* are copied to /Alt-F/var/lib, overriding the changes you made with the default values from the firmware (everything under / comes from the "immutable" flash-memory, and only when a folder/file under /Alt-F exists it will override the / ones.

The /var/lib to /Alt-F/var/lib copying was probably intended to preserve user current settings when Alt-F packages are installed. I have to fix/think about this.

I thought it might work this way, but what seems strange to me, that the copied files to Alt-F have still the original file change date. Like when i list the /Alt-F/var/lib/transmission directory it seems by date, that nothing has changed :)

 

Don't worry with the smb.conf changes. it's a consequence of the Transmission share creation by the Transmission initscript. That will be solved automatically when the configuration files issue becomes solved.

As you are not going to reboot the box very often (it's a 24/7 box, right?) it's only a minor inconvenient until I fix it.

Again, thanks for the feedback! And keep reporting issues you find, that's the only way to fix them.

Joao

Ok, no problem with that, I must thank you for your support. I'm perfectly happy with your release and with Alt-F functionality as a whole. Now my box is 24/7, most of the time idling in my living room, something that was not possible with dlink's firmware and it's annoying turn-the-fan-on-every-15-minutes-for-no-reason feature ;-)

[André Adrian]

Hi,

thanks for Alt-F, it so much better than the original firmware. I have a DNS 320 A and almost everything works fine. I had to apply the temperature sensor patch  you posted earlier. Also i used the wizard for the first disk. After that i had to manually initialize and activate the swap partition. 

The problem i still have, is that the disks don't go into standby when the nas is not used. I can put both into standby manually, but the do it never from alone. After putting them in standby manually, the first disk spins up after a short while again, even when i don't access the nas. 

I can't let it run 24/7 because of that. What can i do to make the disk standby work?

Thanks for all your work.

On Friday, February 28, 2014 4:12:43 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

Hi,

Snapshot and Experimental releases are now available at sourceforge.

Snapshots releases were tested and are expected to work fine.

Experimental releases were not tested and might have issues, a serial adapter is recommended.

If you find any issue, please report back.

Feedback is specially important for the experimental releases.

Enjoy,

João

SNAPSHOT README:

The Alt-F-0.1RC4-<box>-YYYY-MM-DD.bin are snapshots of the current Alt-F development status

and are intended for testing on the DNS-323-rev-A1/B1/C1 and the DNS-325-rev-A1 boards.

They are a pre-release of the upcoming RC4.

The Conceptronic-CH3SNAS and Fujitsu-Siemens-DUO35LR are equivalent to a DNS-323-rev-B1.

In order to test and use it, go to System->Firmware, select the more recent

Alt-F-0.1RC4-<box>-YYYY-MM-DD.bin file, hit the Upload button, and in the next page hit

the TryIt or the FlashIt buttons.

The firmware has been successfully flashed on DNS-323-rev-B1 and DNS-325-rev-A1 boards.

After rebooting the status page should display "Alt-F 0.1RC4 Status Page".

If you used the TryIt mode and the reboot fails and the Status pages does not appears,

you can try to reboot by keeping the front-button pressed until the right amber led

starts flashing, and then releasing the button, which should reboot the

box and bring it back to the previously flashed firmware.

It the front-button test fails and the led does not starts flashing, you

have to unplug the power plug.

If your setup needs any kernel module supplied through the kernel-modules Alt-F package,

they will not work.

Packages already installed on disk might also not work, as some infrastructure changes

have been made. You have to wait until RC4 is released to update packages.

This is expected and has no other negative consequences.

-If you have any 'ffp' installation, rename the 'ffp' folder to something

else before flashing, as it might conflicts with Alt-F. You can safely

install ffp later under Alt-F control.

EXPERIMENTAL README:

This directory contains experimental firmware, it is advised to have a 3.3V serial adapter

on your box when testing it, in case something does not runs OK.

If you use them, please report back your experiences on the forum:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt-f 

Attach the System Log and the System Configuration

(System->Utilities->View Logs) when reporting.

Only with your collaboration it is possible to fix any issue.

After successfully flashing Alt-F you can always revert back to the

vendor's firmware by using Alt-F Firmware Upgrade page, that accepts

both Alt-F and the vendor's firmware.

Alt-F *DOES NOT* format or change your disks in any way, your data is safe.

-The Alt-F-0.1RC4-DNS-320.bin was not tested by me, but a previous version was tested

by (at least) two users that reported that it worked on rev-A1 boards with minor issues.

See the box bottom label to know what hardware revision you have. The DNS-320 is

similar to the DNS-325, which has been flash-tested, except for the system temperature

reading and fan control.

-The Alt-F-0.1RC4-DNS-321.bin was not yet flash-tested, but the previous RC3 worked OK.

This new version works fine on a DNS-323 when using the TryIt mode, but as now it uses

most of its flash-memory, it should be flashed in order to be tested.

-To use those files you have to use them as a normal vendor firmware

upgrade, i.e., use the box vendor's firmware upgrade page to apply

(flash) them, or, if already using Alt-F, use System->Firmware to FlashIt.

-If you have any 'ffp' installation, rename the 'ffp' folder to something

else before flashing, as it might conflicts with Alt-F. You can safely

install ffp later under Alt-F control.

-You might want to read the How to Use Wiki, as those instructions also apply.

https://sourceforge.net/p/alt-f/wiki/Home

[João Cardoso]

On Tuesday, April 1, 2014 7:50:12 PM UTC+1, André Adrian wrote:

Hi,

thanks for Alt-F, it so much better than the original firmware. I have a DNS 320 A and almost everything works fine. I had to apply the temperature sensor patch  you posted earlier. Also i used the wizard for the first disk. After that i had to manually initialize and activate the swap partition. 

The problem i still have, is that the disks don't go into standby when the nas is not used. I can put both into standby manually, but the do it never from alone. After putting them in standby manually, the first disk spins up after a short while again, even when i don't access the nas. 

This is typically  caused by running services accessing the disk. Try stopping most services (minidlna?) and see if any makes the difference.

Is the "first disk" (as you call it above) the one where you installed the Alt-F folder for Alt-F packages?

I can't let it run 24/7 because of that. What can i do to make the disk standby work?

The timeout for disk spindown in under Disk->Utilities->Spindown; that is a one time setup, after that it is up to the disk to spin up/down, depending whether is is accessed.

[André Adrian]

On Tuesday, April 1, 2014 10:44:00 PM UTC+2, João Cardoso wrote:

On Tuesday, April 1, 2014 7:50:12 PM UTC+1, André Adrian wrote:

The problem i still have, is that the disks don't go into standby when the nas is not used. I can put both into standby manually, but the do it never from alone. After putting them in standby manually, the first disk spins up after a short while again, even when i don't access the nas. 

This is typically  caused by running services accessing the disk. Try stopping most services (minidlna?) and see if any makes the difference.

Is the "first disk" (as you call it above) the one where you installed the Alt-F folder for Alt-F packages?

I called it first because it was the first i put into the device. The Alt-F Packages are installed on that disk. There was an old ffp installation on the other disk, which i had previous in the device and put into the Nas after installing Alt-F with the 'first' disk. Whatever was in that ffp folder caused the disk access and prevented the disk to spin down,

Now everything works just fine. Thanks for your help.

[João Cardoso]

On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 4:38:01 PM UTC+1, André Adrian wrote:

On Tuesday, April 1, 2014 10:44:00 PM UTC+2, João Cardoso wrote:

On Tuesday, April 1, 2014 7:50:12 PM UTC+1, André Adrian wrote:

The problem i still have, is that the disks don't go into standby when the nas is not used. I can put both into standby manually, but the do it never from alone. After putting them in standby manually, the first disk spins up after a short while again, even when i don't access the nas. 

This is typically  caused by running services accessing the disk. Try stopping most services (minidlna?) and see if any makes the difference.

Is the "first disk" (as you call it above) the one where you installed the Alt-F folder for Alt-F packages?

I called it first because it was the first i put into the device.

better call it left/right bay/slot, to prevent ambiguities

 

The Alt-F Packages are installed on that disk.

I must stress that for the experimental and snapshot RC4 releases only the shipped packages in the installed firmware are know to work.

Installing other packages from the sourceforge packages feed is not guaranteed to work. As a matter of fact, such packages start/stop initscripts will not work; only after RC4 is released those packages will be updated (and will stop working for RC3 and previous releases)

 

There was an old ffp installation on the other disk, which i had previous in the device and put into the Nas after installing Alt-F with the 'first' disk. Whatever was in that ffp folder caused the disk access and prevented the disk to spin down,

Yes, the install instructions say to remove/rename 'ffp' folders from disks. ffp can afterwards be installed using Alt-F ffp package manager, but even so conflicting services must not be enabled for ffp.

Now everything works just fine. Thanks for your help.

Great! 

[André Adrian]

Hi,

i just wanted to tinker around more, so i installed a serial cable.  Was very easy. While putting the box back together, i noticed something:

On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 5:54:59 PM UTC+2, João Cardoso wrote:

On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 4:38:01 PM UTC+1, André Adrian wrote:

I called it first because it was the first i put into the device.

better call it left/right bay/slot, to prevent ambiguities

My DNS-320 and Alt-F have different meanings of left and right. It doesn't really matter to me, just posted if someone else gehts irritated.

[João Cardoso]

Thanks, that has already been reported for the DNS-325 and (hopefully) fixed.

It can be more than irritating, as when you manipulate filesystems, RAID components, disks and partitions you might be wrongly guided by Alt-F webUI saying that a disk is in the wrong side, and you risk losing your data!

Thanks

[Mark Townley]

alt f install has been fine till I logged in today and was greeted with temp and fan speed not being reported and a degraded md0.  now I dunno what md0 is as its not listed as a viewable drive, I also had to re-install transmission an re-start the miniDLNA service :/  iv no idea whats going on or what to do to be honest...... help! lol

edit
I just noticed I have to re-install both miniDLNA and Transmission again after doing so earlier 

[mv_cz]

Hi, maybe md0 is (was) your swap partiton? Look into Disk->Partitioner it might be due to incorrect partition sizes for swap on each of your drives. After installing Alt-F to my DNS-320 i had simmilar problem with broken RAID, but it was on data partition, so I did backup and started creating all partitions from scratch.
Regarding temperature and fan speed, look in to Services->system whether sysctrl is running or not? I have no problems showing temperature or fan activity, but for settings fan threshlods, you have to patch sysctrl.cgi as Joao posted on 8. March here in this thread.

With re-starting miniDLNA service it is same for me too. Joao mentioned it several posts above, you have to copy run scripts to your data drives and then it will be ok. For transmission there is no final solution yet (after reboot I have to always configure transmissionbt and run manually, but it is not problem, because now I have 14 days uptime with no problems).

[Mark Townley]

er... looking at the above fixes all looks a bit complicated, im half tempted to copy all my data off the drive and re-flash the fw and get it to setup the disks correctly.  Can I just flash the alt f firmware again or would I have to go back to stock?

[mv_cz]

I don't think it is necessary to flash it at all. I would only reset to default to settings and than play with partitions and various settings. As long as you have data backup, it shlould be ok and if you manage to repair swap raid (don't know why swap has to be in raid - maybe Joao will explain), you'll not have to move/erase data partition.

[João Cardoso]

On Saturday, April 5, 2014 3:47:35 PM UTC+1, Mark Townley wrote:

alt f install has been fine till I logged in today and was greeted with temp and fan speed not being reported

This has already been reported and a fix posted. The next release will have it fixed. Remenber that this is an experimental release, intended for users to report issues.

 

and a degraded md0.

Probably you RAID has as original components sda1 and sdb1; sda1 is not, for some reason, being used by the RAID. To add it to the RAID in the RAID webUI, RAID maintenance section,  under Component Operations, first select sda1 under Partitions, and afterwards Add it under Operations. Do this only if your files appear in the RAID array (to check for it, the fastest is to use Setup->Folders and browse though /mnt/md0 -- are your folders should appear there.)

 

  now I dunno what md0 is as its not listed as a viewable drive,

A share is not the same thing as a folder. A share is a network offer of an existing folder.

Under Services->Network->smb->Configure, define a new share browsing the existing folders. Start with some sub-folder of /mnt/md0; only the Folder  field and "Browsable" needs to be defined, use the Browse button.

 

I also had to re-install transmission an re-start the miniDLNA service

There are some issues with what used to be disk-instalable packages, namely minidlna and Transmission; once you set it up it should work until the box is rebooted. That issues will be also solved for the RC4 release.

[Boojin]

D-link DNS-320A

Stopping all services and disks... done.

MBR partitioning disk sda... done.

MBR partitioning disk sdb... done.

Creating and activating swap in disk sda... done.

Creating and activating swap in disk sdb... failed:

swapon error, st=0: swapon: /dev/sdb1: Invalid argument

……….

[Menorca Man]

El viernes, 21 de marzo de 2014 20:37:09 UTC+1, João Cardoso escribió:

During my RC4 release tests I found a serious stop-press bug, which will delay the RC4 release date.

The issue is related with a missing RAID5 kernel module in RC4, so RAID5 is not working. As the missing kernel component is "huge" (87KB), it does not fit  the available flash-memory space and it is not easy to fix.

Hi João,

Thank you for all the hard work you are putting into developing this firmware. However, I suspect that the vast majority of people who have been waiting for RC4 to be finalised are using their DNS-3xx in either RAID 0 or RAID 1 rather than RAID 5. Therefore, if it isn't feasible to squeeze the RAID 5 kernel into the limited memory available, perhaps it would be possible to finalise RC4 as it stands and release it as "RC4_(RAID 0/1)", stating that it is for use on RAID 0 and RAID 1 devices only. After all, those are the functions that most people bought their DNS-3xx for in the first place!!

You could then look to see what functionality in RC4 might reasonably be omitted in order to make room for the RAID 5 kernel component. That particular firmware could then be released as "RC4_(RAID 5)" for those few users who really need this feature. Not a perfect solution I agree but a reasonable compromise don't you think?

Kind regards

Tom     

[João Cardoso]

This is an elusive bug that has been reported by a couple of users (search the bug report/old issues https://sourceforge.net/p/alt-f/_list/tickets).

It seems to appear when disks are new and don't have any partition table, but it is not a definitive conclusion. I'm more inclined to believe that it it is a race condition: the device is not yet made available by the kernel after the disk being partitioned.

I think that if you repeat the procedure it will succeed. Or, if you are command line inclined, you can use the mkswap/swapon commands, after verifying that /dev/sdb1 indeed exists.

In any case, your boot setup is rather odd.

-Was the kernel log obtained after of before using the disk wizard?

-What was the setup you previously had on the disks?

From the kernel log:

md/raid1:md0: active with 2 out of 2 mirrors

md0: detected capacity change from 0 to 542769152

 md0: unknown partition table

Adding 530044k swap on /dev/md0.  Priority:1 extents:1 across:530044k

using swap on a RAID1?

md/raid1:md0: Disk failure on sda1, disabling device.

md/raid1:md0: Operation continuing on 1 devices.  

assembling that RAID1 partially failed, it started degraded only with sdb1

 

Adding 524284k swap on /dev/sda1.  Priority:1 extents:1 across:524284k 

this is the normal situation, swap on sda1  (and/or sdb1, which is missing because it belongs to a RAID1?)

Thanks

[João Cardoso]

On Thursday, April 10, 2014 12:41:30 AM UTC+1, Menorca Man wrote:

El viernes, 21 de marzo de 2014 20:37:09 UTC+1, João Cardoso escribió:

During my RC4 release tests I found a serious stop-press bug, which will delay the RC4 release date.

The issue is related with a missing RAID5 kernel module in RC4, so RAID5 is not working. As the missing kernel component is "huge" (87KB), it does not fit  the available flash-memory space and it is not easy to fix.

Hi João,

Thank you for all the hard work you are putting into developing this firmware. However, I suspect that the vast majority of people who have been waiting for RC4 to be finalised are using their DNS-3xx in either RAID 0 or RAID 1 rather than RAID 5. Therefore, if it isn't feasible to squeeze the RAID 5 kernel into the limited memory available, perhaps it would be possible to finalise RC4 as it stands and release it as "RC4_(RAID 0/1)", stating that it is for use on RAID 0 and RAID 1 devices only. After all, those are the functions that most people bought their DNS-3xx for in the first place!!

You could then look to see what functionality in RC4 might reasonably be omitted in order to make room for the RAID 5 kernel component. That particular firmware could then be released as "RC4_(RAID 5)" for those few users who really need this feature. Not a perfect solution I agree but a reasonable compromise don't you think?

Kind regards

Tom     

Thanks for the suggestion Tom.

I think that I will move cifs out of the kernel image and ship it into the kernel modules instead. That will only affect users that mount windows shares locally, but they will be able to do that after they install the kernel modules package.

This contrasts with RAID5 missing, where the system would not even "boot".

[Menorca Man]

Hi again João,

O.K. Sounds like a good plan!! If you feel this is the best way forward then by all means go for it.

Regards

Tom 

[Joao Cardoso]

On 04/12/2014 10:56 AM, Павел абырвалг wrote:

[And his message was classified as SPAM by Google and vanished after I approved it]

It works on Dlink DNS-325

Part version RNS325A2A....A2E, HW ver A2

It works! It works faster than oficial DLINK firmware.

Thanks!

So now we know that RC4 will work on the DNS-320-rev-A1/A2, DNS-321-rev-A1/A2, DNS-323-rev A1/B1/C1, DNS-325-rev-A1/A2.

Nice! World domination is next :-)

and thanks!

[nmcar]

Hi. Firstly, thank you for your great job with this FW. I had a lot of troubles with D-Link's v. 2.03 and so I decided to try this.

I could successfully install it on my DNS-320 A1 this afternoon and, even though I could not try transfer speeds yet, I noticed that I could access a lot faster to my files with my Windows computer. Pictures thumbnails loaded faster and movies did not stutter.

I started miniDLNA and transmission and started to play a movie. While I was doing this, I noticed in the status page that the temperature had reached 52°C and when I tried to find the fan setup, I had the same problem as mv_cz. Shortly after, the temperature reached 54°C and the NAS turned off.

I was reading your reply and I guess the attached patch could help me to set the fan speed and control temperature. However, since I am a noobie with linux, I wanted to ask you how to install this patch.

Thank you.

El sábado, 8 de marzo de 2014 11:11:59 UTC-3, João Cardoso escribió:

On Friday, March 7, 2014 9:22:50 PM UTC, mv_cz wrote:

On Friday, March 7, 2014 5:44:59 PM UTC+1, João Cardoso wrote:

Yes, Services->System->sysctrl Configure.

You can change the trip point for fan off/low and fan low/fast. There is a 1ºC hysteresis around trip points, so it fan off is set to 40ºC it will turn off at 39ºC and will only turn on again at 41ºC, to prevent fan start/stop wear.

Unfortunately this doesn't work for me, the first "box" in web management of sysctrl is empty only with label "Unknown board",

My mistake, please try the attached patch.

In short, in /usr/www/cgi-bin/sysctrl.cgi support has to been added for the DNS-320:

-if test "$board" = "DNS-323-C1" -o "$board" = "DNS-323-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-325-A1"; then 

+if test "$board" = "DNS-323-C1" -o "$board" = "DNS-321-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-325-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-320-A1"; then 

-if test "$board" = "DNS-323-C1" -o "$board" = "DNS-321-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-325-A1"; then

+if test "$board" = "DNS-323-C1" -o "$board" = "DNS-321-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-320-A1" -o "$board" = "DNS-325-A1"; then

The changes will not survive a reboot.

 

but the nas itself does regulate the fan somehow (above 40C it turns on fan to mid speed).

fan control is done by the 'sysctrl' daemon

Is there anything I could do to let Alt-F recognize dns-320 board for fan control?

Thanks for the pointer, advertising and *real* benchmark comparative data :-)

As you now have full access to samba, you might want to experiment with several smb.conf tuning (among others).

-"use sendfile" is really effective?

-will adding to "socket options"  SO_SNDBUF=131072 SO_RCVBUF=131072 (or bigger values) change something?

see https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt-f/DDWv4NRkVe4/_zQJRMzDvtgJ

Also, can you compare ftp or other network protocols transfer speed? This "speed" subject has always been a source of distress, I suspect that it has something to do with the linux network driver (or similar low-level infrastructures)

Thanks

 

You were absolutely right.  With default configuration, "use send file" was not present in smb.conf at all. So I added it and my read speed immediately bumped up back to ~30 MB/s (from mere 18 MB/s)! Write speed were at approx same level (13 MB/s).

hmmm... reading same files? sure they aren't being cached at the desktop computer?

 

Setting send and receive buffers to 65535 increases write and read speed to 31/14 MB/s, Finally I've set buffers to 131071 only to be satisfied with 32/15 MB/s read/write speeds. So far, I've been testing with smaller files, will upload my results to DNS forum later.

The rcv/snd buffers values are negotiated between the server and the client, and they should be OK. But on small memory machines they seems to be too conservative.

The "use sendfile" is equally effective for large files?

 

I also tested FTP performance with larger file and results are really good:
Copied (07.03.2014 21:51:48): ftp://nas/mnt/md0/Programy/BT5R2-GNOME-32.iso -> d:\BT5R2-GNOME-32.iso 2 713 892 864 bajtů, 41 385 kB/s (read)
Copied (07.03.2014 21:57:04): d:\BT5R2-GNOME-32.iso -> ftp://nas/mnt/md0/BT5R2-GNOME-32.iso 2 713 892 864 bajtů, 11 697 kB/s (write)
During copying via FTP I usually see numbers at around 45 MB/s !!! But sometimes, for second transfer speed drops to 0 and then continues back at 45-46 MB/s speed. At those speeds, nas CPU is at 100% and memory is almost full, so I think, nas reached its limits.

[mattg]

I have another confirmation that RC4 works on DNS-321 Rev A1/A2. I flashed from RC3 without issues. The only issue I see at the moment is with Alt-F packages page. It claims that some applications need updating, but when I update, it does not work and it says it needs to be updated. It seems like new versions are already installed and it just sees that the package is different instead of actually seeing if it is newer. Thanks for all of the hard work! I love the new features you have added.

[João Cardoso]

On Sunday, April 13, 2014 1:47:58 AM UTC+1, nmcar wrote:

Hi. Firstly, thank you for your great job with this FW. I had a lot of troubles with D-Link's v. 2.03 and so I decided to try this.

I could successfully install it on my DNS-320 A1 this afternoon and, even though I could not try transfer speeds yet, I noticed that I could access a lot faster to my files with my Windows computer. Pictures thumbnails loaded faster and movies did not stutter.

I started miniDLNA and transmission and started to play a movie. While I was doing this, I noticed in the status page that the temperature had reached 52°C and when I tried to find the fan setup, I had the same problem as mv_cz. Shortly after, the temperature reached 54°C and the NAS turned off.

What was the displayed fan speed in the status page? the fan should be turning fast, you should hear it.

The box turning off is a safety measure, the value can be set to a different value. But the 'sysctrl' system service has to be running.

I was reading your reply and I guess the attached patch could help me to set the fan speed and control temperature. However, since I am a noobie with linux, I wanted to ask you how to install this patch.

transfer the file to the box, then ssh or telnet the box as the 'root' user, same passwd as the webUI passwd, then

cd /usr/www/cgi-bin

patch -i /path/where/patch/is/sysctrl.cgi.patch

 

Thank you.

[João Cardoso]

On Sunday, April 13, 2014 10:18:01 AM UTC+1, mattg wrote:

I have another confirmation that RC4 works on DNS-321 Rev A1/A2. I flashed from RC3 without issues. The only issue I see at the moment is with Alt-F packages page. It claims that some applications need updating, but when I update, it does not work and it says it needs to be updated. It seems like new versions are already installed and it just sees that the package is different instead of actually seeing if it is newer.

Yes, that's a known issue, might be fixed now, not sure, as each software package uses its own release scheme.

Anyway, all RC4 shipped packages have a higher version number than existing sourceforge packages, so there is no point trying to update them. And installing new packages will probably fail, so I don't advise you to do that for now, please wait for the RC4 release.

[nmcar]

El domingo, 13 de abril de 2014 10:48:47 UTC-3, João Cardoso escribió:

Hi Joao, Thank your for your prompt reply.

What was the displayed fan speed in the status page? the fan should be turning fast, you should hear it.

The box turning off is a safety measure, the value can be set to a different value. But the 'sysctrl' system service has to be running.

 

When the temperature was peaking at 52-54°C, the fan speed was at 6000 rpm and I could hear it.  The sysctrl service was running. 

I was reading your reply and I guess the attached patch could help me to set the fan speed and control temperature. However, since I am a noobie with linux, I wanted to ask you how to install this patch.

transfer the file to the box, then ssh or telnet the box as the 'root' user, same passwd as the webUI passwd, then

cd /usr/www/cgi-bin

patch -i /path/where/patch/is/sysctrl.cgi.patch

Thank you for the instructions. I followed them, and after pressing enter, the terminal said "patching sysctrl.cgi" but nothing else appeared on the screen. I left the session and rebooted the box.

After it rebooted, the status page showed md0 as degraded and the USB, left and right leds turned amber. The power button is blue, and they don't blink.

When I accessed the configuration page of sysctrl, it was unchanged.

Did I do something wrong?

The status page shows the fan working at 3000 rpm. 

I attach my system configuration log. Does it help?

Thnak you

 

Thank you.

[nmcar]

I forgot to attach the system log. Here it goes.

[João Cardoso]

On Sunday, April 13, 2014 4:39:16 PM UTC+1, nmcar wrote:

El domingo, 13 de abril de 2014 10:48:47 UTC-3, João Cardoso escribió:

Hi Joao, Thank your for your prompt reply.

What was the displayed fan speed in the status page? the fan should be turning fast, you should hear it.

The box turning off is a safety measure, the value can be set to a different value. But the 'sysctrl' system service has to be running.

 

When the temperature was peaking at 52-54°C, the fan speed was at 6000 rpm and I could hear it.  The sysctrl service was running. 

What was the room temperature? Is the fan output blocked?

It is odd that the temperature rises so much with the fan turning at the top speed! There is something wrong! Or there is not enough input clearing to allow input air to cool the box or not enough clearing at the box back to allow heated air to escape from the box. You should fix that. (I don't know how the DNS-320 input/output venting is done, top/bottom/back...)

 

I was reading your reply and I guess the attached patch could help me to set the fan speed and control temperature. However, since I am a noobie with linux, I wanted to ask you how to install this patch.

transfer the file to the box, then ssh or telnet the box as the 'root' user, same passwd as the webUI passwd, then

cd /usr/www/cgi-bin

patch -i /path/where/patch/is/sysctrl.cgi.patch

Thank you for the instructions. I followed them, and after pressing enter, the terminal said "patching sysctrl.cgi" but nothing else appeared on the screen.

Hope you changed  '/path/where/patch/is/' for the real path where you downloaded the patch, such as /mnt/md2/blabla ;-)

I left the session and rebooted the box.

 Depending on several circumstances, the patch will not survive a reboot.

After it rebooted, the status page showed md0 as degraded

You are using a very odd setup, with swap over a RAID1. Nothing really wrong, but a waste of CPU resources.

You said "since I am a noobie with linux", who set up the box for you?

You have three RAID devices: md0 (RAID1, 530MB, swap), md1 (RAID1, 267BG, ext3), md2 (JBOD, 1.3T, ext3)

plus two non RAID filesystems:  sda4 (474MB, ext3) and sdb4 (470MB, ext3)

I guess that most, if not all of your data is on md2.

The reason why md0 is degraded (it is swap, no data is at risk) is related with the following, from the log you attached:

md: kicking non-fresh sda1 from array!

md/raid1:md0: active with 1 out of 2 mirrors

Adding 530044k swap on /dev/md0.  Priority:1 extents:1 across:530044k 

I would destroy the md0 RAID1 array and let swap work on disk partitions, as it is usually done. As swap uses two disk partitions (sda1 and sdb1), it already behaves as a kind of RAID0.

If you want to change that, please open a new topic, as that is not related with this topic subject.

I also noticed the following from the log:

root: You need to install Alt-F 'ipkg' package, use menu Packages->Alt-F

To use some built in software you need to do that. 

 

and the USB, left and right leds turned amber. The power button is blue, and they don't blink.

When I accessed the configuration page of sysctrl, it was unchanged.

 

the patch will not survive a reboot.

[nmcar]

El domingo, 13 de abril de 2014 13:33:46 UTC-3, João Cardoso escribió:

On Sunday, April 13, 2014 4:39:16 PM UTC+1, nmcar wrote:

El domingo, 13 de abril de 2014 10:48:47 UTC-3, João Cardoso escribió:

What was the room temperature? Is the fan output blocked?

It is odd that the temperature rises so much with the fan turning at the top speed! There is something wrong! Or there is not enough input clearing to allow input air to cool the box or not enough clearing at the box back to allow heated air to escape from the box. You should fix that. (I don't know how the DNS-320 input/output venting is done, top/bottom/back...)

 

The room temperature is 23°C. The NAS is on a shelve aside the router and modem, and it is 10-15 cms off the wall. The DNS-320 has a small fan and I guess the air flows in from the unions of the side walls with the front panel, which are not sealed. I had owned this NAS for two years and it usually works with the fan at high speeds. But with the vendor's firmware, it seldom shut down due to high temperature (mostly in hot summer days) but not at this time (I live in Argentina and it is autumn at this time).

I took the upper lid off two let the NAS release heat, but it seems not to be working. After a few minutes the NAS has been on, it passed the 45°C mark and it keeps rising the temperature. 

One thing I note from the status page is that the CPU is at 100% when I am doing nothing. Could this be related to md0 that you say is a waste of CPU resources? If this is the reason of the processor being under strain, I will destroy md0. But I will start a new topic as requested.

 

Hope you changed  '/path/where/patch/is/' for the real path where you downloaded the patch, such as /mnt/md2/blabla ;-)

Yes, I did it. I did it again without rebooting the box and it worked. Thank you.

 Depending on several circumstances, the patch will not survive a reboot.

OK.

 

After it rebooted, the status page showed md0 as degraded

You are using a very odd setup, with swap over a RAID1. Nothing really wrong, but a waste of CPU resources.

You said "since I am a noobie with linux", who set up the box for you?

Actually, when I set up the box with the vendor's firmware, I read a little on forums and wanted to have a mirrored partition for some personal files (500 GB) and a big non-mirrored partition for movies, music, etc. So I set up, with the firmware's wizard, a 500 GB Raid 1 partition and a 3 TB JBOD partition, which were name Volume 1 and Volume 2 respectively. I have to 2TB hard drives. 

When I flashed this firmware, I read that I could select to leave the disks untouched and so I did. But I noticed that the wizard created these md0 partitions. Or at least, if they were created by the vendor's FW, I had not seen them before.

Actually, I just want to have the same two partitions, that now are md1 and md2.

I am really a noobie in linux. The few things I know, I learnt them by installing fun plug when I was on the vendor's FW. But I just followed instructions and learnt a little bit on the process.

 

You have three RAID devices: md0 (RAID1, 530MB, swap), md1 (RAID1, 267BG, ext3), md2 (JBOD, 1.3T, ext3)

plus two non RAID filesystems:  sda4 (474MB, ext3) and sdb4 (470MB, ext3)

I guess that most, if not all of your data is on md2.

The reason why md0 is degraded (it is swap, no data is at risk) is related with the following, from the log you attached:

md: kicking non-fresh sda1 from array!

md/raid1:md0: active with 1 out of 2 mirrors

Adding 530044k swap on /dev/md0.  Priority:1 extents:1 across:530044k 

I would destroy the md0 RAID1 array and let swap work on disk partitions, as it is usually done. As swap uses two disk partitions (sda1 and sdb1), it already behaves as a kind of RAID0.

If you want to change that, please open a new topic, as that is not related with this topic subject.

I will do that.

By the way, I destroyed md0 from the disk settings but it showed up again after reboot.

 

I also noticed the following from the log:

root: You need to install Alt-F 'ipkg' package, use menu Packages->Alt-F

To use some built in software you need to do that. 

When I wanted to start transmission, I received a similar message. But then I could access through the web UI. I also started mini DLNA. I do not understanf what you mean.

 

 

and the USB, left and right leds turned amber. The power button is blue, and they don't blink.

After I momentarity destroyed md0, the amber lights dissapeared. When I rebooted the box, they showed up again.

[João Cardoso]

Sorry for the late reply, life got in the way :-)

On Sunday, April 13, 2014 7:55:14 PM UTC+1, nmcar wrote:

El domingo, 13 de abril de 2014 13:33:46 UTC-3, João Cardoso escribió:

On Sunday, April 13, 2014 4:39:16 PM UTC+1, nmcar wrote:

El domingo, 13 de abril de 2014 10:48:47 UTC-3, João Cardoso escribió:

What was the room temperature? Is the fan output blocked?

It is odd that the temperature rises so much with the fan turning at the top speed! There is something wrong! Or there is not enough input clearing to allow input air to cool the box or not enough clearing at the box back to allow heated air to escape from the box. You should fix that. (I don't know how the DNS-320 input/output venting is done, top/bottom/back...)

 

The room temperature is 23°C. The NAS is on a shelve aside the router and modem, and it is 10-15 cms off the wall. The DNS-320 has a small fan and I guess the air flows in from the unions of the side walls with the front panel, which are not sealed. I had owned this NAS for two years and it usually works with the fan at high speeds. But with the vendor's firmware, it seldom shut down due to high temperature (mostly in hot summer days) but not at this time (I live in Argentina and it is autumn at this time).

I took the upper lid off two let the NAS release heat, but it seems not to be working. After a few minutes the NAS has been on, it passed the 45°C mark and it keeps rising the temperature. 

Is this normal on the DNS-320? Does any other owner want to share their experiences in this respect?

You now know that you can change the shutdown/warning temperature limit, and the fan speed trip points,  using Services->System->sysctrl, Configure (after applying the pach)

Anyway, what is really important is the disk temperature, the fan is there mostly to cool them.

In summer I often left my DNS-323 front panel open, and it cools down a bit more that way.

 

One thing I note from the status page is that the CPU is at 100% when I am doing nothing.

No disk activity?

 

Could this be related to md0 that you say is a waste of CPU resources? 

If this is the reason of the processor being under strain, I will destroy md0.

Don't know.

 

(...)

I also noticed the following from the log:

root: You need to install Alt-F 'ipkg' package, use menu Packages->Alt-F

To use some built in software you need to do that. 

When I wanted to start transmission, I received a similar message. But then I could access through the web UI. I also started mini DLNA. I do not understanf what you mean.

minidlna and transmission (and other packages) need to save information on disk; when you specify a filesystem using the Packages->Alt-F menu, a folder called Alt-F will be created there and minidlna/transmission will store their databases there.

The sda4/sdb4 filesystems that suddenly appeared on your system after flashing Alt-F is the place where the D-Link firmware stored that kind of information;  when you use the Packages->Alt-F menu you can specify either sda4 or sdb4 (or md1 or md2, in your case).

[nmcar]

Hi Joao. Thank you for your reply.

I guess the CPU was at 100% all the time because it was scanning shares for miniDLNA. Once it scanned all file, the CPU went down to 10%. The temperature usually rises up to 53° C but last time I used the box it started cooling down to 49°C.

One further question: since I applied the patch for sysctrl, the md0 raid device appears as degraded and the usb, L and R drives leds are amber. How can I fix it? Do I have to destroy md0 as you suggested? I do not want to waste CPU resources as this box is not powerful and I would like to save them for file transfers. I opened a new topic for that. I tried to destroy md0 from the Disk, RAID menu, but it showed up again.

Thank you.

[mv_cz]

On Wednesday, April 16, 2014 2:44:50 AM UTC+2, nmcar wrote:

Hi Joao. Thank you for your reply.

I guess the CPU was at 100% all the time because it was scanning shares for miniDLNA. Once it scanned all file, the CPU went down to 10%. The temperature usually rises up to 53° C but last time I used the box it started cooling down to 49°C.

I can confirm this, that it is "normal" behavior for DNS-320. The box is made of plastic with inner metal frame, the NAS sucks air from holes located in front-down of the unit beneath usb cover. And then tries to blow hot air at the back with unreasonably small and loud 5V fan :-( I replaced this standard fan with quieter one, now it is better - at low speeds it is now possible to watch movies :) and at full revs it is comparable to low speed noise of the previous fan.

Regarding temperatures it depends heavily on your room temperature - here in Europe is spring, so room temperature is about 20-21C. I set treshold to start fan at about 47C and therefore most of time my nas is quiet. When is in idle with HDDs spin-down it reaches about 44C thus is dead-silent. Under normal load (playing vides) it ocassionally rotates at low speed to lower temperature. And when making heavy load (caching DNLA files, huge transfers) then it reaches full speed.
This is another great feature of Alt-F, with standard firmware you have no option to set noise/temperature that suits your needs and Dlink's firmware spins on/off the fan each 15 minutes or so, even though the unit is idle with harddrives already span down.

[Stefan Abermann]

Hello,

has anyone tested the installation on the dns-320L?

I'd like to try alt-f but I fear to brick the device.
Thanks for your insights!

Am Freitag, 28. Februar 2014 16:12:43 UTC+1 schrieb João Cardoso:

Hi,

Snapshot and Experimental releases are now available at sourceforge.

Snapshots releases were tested and are expected to work fine.

Experimental releases were not tested and might have issues, a serial adapter is recommended.

If you find any issue, please report back.

Feedback is specially important for the experimental releases.

Enjoy,

João

SNAPSHOT README:

The Alt-F-0.1RC4-<box>-YYYY-MM-DD.bin are snapshots of the current Alt-F development status

and are intended for testing on the DNS-323-rev-A1/B1/C1 and the DNS-325-rev-A1 boards.

They are a pre-release of the upcoming RC4.

The Conceptronic-CH3SNAS and Fujitsu-Siemens-DUO35LR are equivalent to a DNS-323-rev-B1.

In order to test and use it, go to System->Firmware, select the more recent

Alt-F-0.1RC4-<box>-YYYY-MM-DD.bin file, hit the Upload button, and in the next page hit

the TryIt or the FlashIt buttons.

The firmware has been successfully flashed on DNS-323-rev-B1 and DNS-325-rev-A1 boards.

After rebooting the status page should display "Alt-F 0.1RC4 Status Page".

If you used the TryIt mode and the reboot fails and the Status pages does not appears,

you can try to reboot by keeping the front-button pressed until the right amber led

starts flashing, and then releasing the button, which should reboot the

box and bring it back to the previously flashed firmware.

It the front-button test fails and the led does not starts flashing, you

have to unplug the power plug.

If your setup needs any kernel module supplied through the kernel-modules Alt-F package,

they will not work.

Packages already installed on disk might also not work, as some infrastructure changes

have been made. You have to wait until RC4 is released to update packages.

This is expected and has no other negative consequences.

-If you have any 'ffp' installation, rename the 'ffp' folder to something

else before flashing, as it might conflicts with Alt-F. You can safely

install ffp later under Alt-F control.

EXPERIMENTAL README:

This directory contains experimental firmware, it is advised to have a 3.3V serial adapter

on your box when testing it, in case something does not runs OK.

If you use them, please report back your experiences on the forum:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt-f 

Attach the System Log and the System Configuration

(System->Utilities->View Logs) when reporting.

Only with your collaboration it is possible to fix any issue.

After successfully flashing Alt-F you can always revert back to the

vendor's firmware by using Alt-F Firmware Upgrade page, that accepts

both Alt-F and the vendor's firmware.

Alt-F *DOES NOT* format or change your disks in any way, your data is safe.

-The Alt-F-0.1RC4-DNS-320.bin was not tested by me, but a previous version was tested

by (at least) two users that reported that it worked on rev-A1 boards with minor issues.

See the box bottom label to know what hardware revision you have. The DNS-320 is

similar to the DNS-325, which has been flash-tested, except for the system temperature

reading and fan control.

-The Alt-F-0.1RC4-DNS-321.bin was not yet flash-tested, but the previous RC3 worked OK.

This new version works fine on a DNS-323 when using the TryIt mode, but as now it uses

most of its flash-memory, it should be flashed in order to be tested.

-To use those files you have to use them as a normal vendor firmware

upgrade, i.e., use the box vendor's firmware upgrade page to apply

(flash) them, or, if already using Alt-F, use System->Firmware to FlashIt.

-If you have any 'ffp' installation, rename the 'ffp' folder to something

else before flashing, as it might conflicts with Alt-F. You can safely

install ffp later under Alt-F control.

-You might want to read the How to Use Wiki, as those instructions also apply.

https://sourceforge.net/p/alt-f/wiki/Home

[mv_cz]

Hi it's me again. Only to inform you that I'm happily running 0.1 RC4 on my DNS-320 revA without any further issues or reboots for 37 days so far:

[root@nas]# uptime
 21:11:46 up 37 days,  6:52,  0 users,  load average: 0.07, 0.04, 0.05

[João Cardoso]

On Tuesday, April 29, 2014 8:15:31 PM UTC+1, mv_cz wrote:

Hi it's me again. Only to inform you that I'm happily running 0.1 RC4 on my DNS-320 revA without any further issues or reboots for 37 days so far:

[root@nas]# uptime
 21:11:46 up 37 days,  6:52,  0 users,  load average: 0.07, 0.04, 0.05

Thanks.

I know that its been a while since the pre-pre-release, but there are always tiny details to fix.

I'm currently fixing the build procedure, so everybody can (hopefully) build their own Alt-F firmware.

Joao

[João Cardoso]

On Wednesday, April 16, 2014 10:57:54 AM UTC+1, Stefan Abermann wrote:

Hello,

has anyone tested the installation on the dns-320L?

I'm pretty sure that nobody has, but experienced beta testers with a serial adapter are needed and welcome.

 

I'd like to try alt-f but I fear to brick the device.

That will almost surely happens, see what happens when one attempts to flash a DNS-320-rev-A firmware on a  rev-B box

[Giulio Sichel]

Hi folks!
I've installed Alt-F experimental release on my DNS-320 rev. A1 and it works perfectly.
Thank you for your efforts, you're doing a great job!

If compared to my previous ffp installation with d-link firmware, memory footprint is considerably
reduced. I've faced only a problem with services' startup at boot (transmission and minidlna in my case)
but I've solved it as suggested in this thread:

aufs.sh -n
cp /etc/init.d/S80minidlna /Alt-F/etc/init.d/
cp /etc/init.d/S81transmission /Alt-F/etc/init.d/
aufs.sh -r

Then I've created a user script to copy some dotfiles (.profile, .bashrc, .vimrc) to root home directory
and to copy settings.json (Transmission config file) to /var/lib/transmission/ .

It would be great to have an IRC client like irssi or weechat as a package. I've tried to build it installing
gcc, automake, autoconf, ecc... (some of them from ffp) but I got some errors on library tests from the
configure script. I should try to follow the package building procedure reported on the wiki.

[Mark Townley]

how do you apply the .patch file?  my dns320 fan is on more than its off while idle, im worried it will burn out, the system temp is only 39c/102f

[João Cardoso]

On Sunday, May 18, 2014 6:19:17 PM UTC+1, Mark Townley wrote:

how do you apply the .patch file?  my dns320 fan is on more than its off while idle, im worried it will burn out, the system temp is only 39c/102f

-Upload the patch to a folder in the box, e.g.. /mnt/sda2

-ssh or telnet the box and login as the 'root' user, same pass as the webUI

-execute the commands:

cd /usr/www/cgi-bin
patch -i /mnt/sda2/sysctrl.cgi.patch

The patch only allows you to access the 'sysctrl' webUI  to change  the fan trip points. Read the sysctrl webUI online help 

page.

[Mark Townley]

cool, I managed to do that. I just needed to tweak the fan by a couple of degrees to match my enviroment

[steven samson]

What I have done to successfully compile Altf RC4 on a fresh debian wheezy

# Install dependencies 

apt-get install build-essential sed  bison libreadline-dev subversion flex gettext intltool libncurses5-dev pkg-config  zlib1g-dev

# get lastest sources from svn repo ( actually r2968)

svn checkout http://alt-f.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/alt-f alt-f-read-only
cd alt-f-read-only

# export variables and choose your right dlink model
export BLDDIR=$PWD/build
export PATH=$PATH:$PWD/bin:$BLDDIR/build_arm/staging_dir/usr/bin:

. exports dns323

# I edited download url  modification for these files : 

• package/devio/devio.mk
  
• package/inadyn-mt/inadyn-mt.mk
  
• package/nfs-utils/nfs-utils.mk
  

# Compile all programs (take a long time)

make 

echo $?

The last output should be "0" and means a successfully compilation.

# Build firmware 

./mkinitramfs.sh sqsplit # sqsplit only applies to the DNS-320/325
./mkfw.sh sqsplit        # sqsplit only applies to the DNS-320/325

#Finish and have fun :D

[João Cardoso]

On Tuesday, June 10, 2014 9:45:24 PM UTC+1, steven samson wrote:

What I have done to successfully compile Altf RC4 on a fresh debian wheezy

# Install dependencies 

apt-get install build-essential sed  bison libreadline-dev subversion flex gettext intltool libncurses5-dev pkg-config  zlib1g-dev

Actually the dependencies varies depending on the linux distro.

 

# get lastest sources from svn repo ( actually r2968)

svn checkout http://alt-f.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/alt-f alt-f-read-only
cd alt-f-read-only

# export variables and choose your right dlink model
export BLDDIR=$PWD/build
export PATH=$PATH:$PWD/bin:$BLDDIR/build_arm/staging_dir/usr/bin:

Actually those two exports are not needed, 'exports' already do it

. exports dns323

Notice that a space must exists between the '.' and the 'exports'.

The accepted options are 'dns323', 'dns321', 'dns325' (for the DNS-320/325), 'pkgs' (for all packages). Without any option the current .config is used.

If you select 'pkgs', after the build you can use './mkpkgs.sh -all' to build all the packages, which will be located in the 'pkgs' subdirectory. You can point the Alt-F packages feed to there. The 'mkpkgs.sh' script accepts a lot of options.

The build tree will be located in the 'build' subdirectory. The 'dl' subdirectory will contain all downloaded source tarballs, and will be reused.

# I edited download url  modification for these files : 

• package/devio/devio.mk
  
• package/inadyn-mt/inadyn-mt.mk
  
• package/nfs-utils/nfs-utils.mk

It would be useful to know the right URL... 

 

# Compile all programs (take a long time)

make 

echo $?

The last output should be "0" and means a successfully compilation.

I would recommend to save the build log, for inspection in case of error (most of the time the error is not visible in the last output lines); use 'make >& build.log; echo $?' to save it.

 

# Build firmware 

./mkinitramfs.sh sqsplit # sqsplit only applies to the DNS-320/325
./mkfw.sh sqsplit        # sqsplit only applies to the DNS-320/325

You will find the firmware files in the $BINARIES directory (which was set by 'exports')

 

#Finish and have fun :D

 

Thanks.