GoFlex Net - slow file transfers (no replies)

A few months ago I stumbled on the doozan forum researching other things related to linux, and found the idea of using these kirkwood devices as a file server very intriguing.

So I recently purchased a new-in-box GoFlex Net (because it has 2 SATA ports) and followed the instructions to set up the serial connection, install the newest uboot, and the 6.5.7 rootfs. (although I admit my environments may not be perfect because it will not boot with the uEnv.txt file)

There seems to be something going on with the file transfers, as they seem quite slow.

I have my current set up as follows:

- uboot.2017.07-tld-1.goflexnet
- Debian-6.5.7-kirkwood-tld-1-rootfs

-load_dtb_addr=0x2c00000

- booting to a 4gb USB thumbdrive
- dphys-swapfile installed with the swapfactor set to 5 (thinking of using HDD for swap later)

- have also installed vim, ntfs-3g, samba, fake-hwclock, and transmission-daemon

- used bind to load log files to /tmp/var/log (and added commands to /etc/rc.local at the end)

- set the file at /etc/sysctl.d/local.conf with the following
vm.min_free_kbytes = 16384
vm.swappiness = 10

net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1

-fstab entry for the hard drive has - ntfs-3g noatime,big_writes,permissions 0 1

- zswap enabled

- the samba config file has very few lines

#samba config file

[global]
	workgroup = WORKGROUP
	server string = Samba Server %v
	netbios name = Goflex
#	netbios aliases = Fileserver
	security = user
	map to guest = bad user
	dns proxy = no
#	ntlm auth = yes
	Hosts allow = 127., 192.168.1.


[6TB-A]
 path = /mnt/drives/6TB-A
    browseable = yes
	writeable       = yes
	guest ok        = no
	read only = no

	
[6TB-B]
 path = /mnt/drives/6TB-B
    browseable = yes
	writeable       = yes
	guest ok        = no
	read only = no

I have checked both the network throughput and the drive performance, and they both seem fine.
While booting it shows the ethernet adapter with flow control disabled.
TSO is on.


Only 1 drive in the Goflex Net currently - 6TB Toshiba mounted at /mnt/drives/6TB-A (I plan to have another 6TB drive in the future)

hdparm shows the following:

hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   472 MB in  2.00 seconds = 235.63 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 298 MB in  3.00 seconds =  99.19 MB/sec

I have another linux computer running CentOS 7 sharing a 4tb drive over the network with IP 192.168.1.2. This is currently set up in the smb.config of the GoFlex Net to mount this network drive at /mnt/drives/ on boot.

root@debian:/mnt/drives/6TB-A# time cp /mnt/drives/4tb/bigfile .

real    0m46.279s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m10.886s

root@debian:/mnt/drives/6TB-A# time cp bigfile /mnt/drives/4tb

real    0m27.544s
user    0m0.011s
sys     0m8.372s

I have also set up a iperf server on the CentOS (gigabit Netgear XR500 router in the middle) and ran the following:

root@debian:/mnt/drives/6TB-A# iperf -c 192.168.1.2 -n 1000M -r
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size:  128 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.2, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 43.8 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  1] local 192.168.1.8 port 50382 connected with 192.168.1.2 port 5001 (icwnd/mss/irtt=14/1448/259)
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  1] 0.0000-10.3220 sec  1000 MBytes   813 Mbits/sec
[  2] local 192.168.1.8 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.2 port 60652
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  2] 0.0000-14.1505 sec  1000 MBytes   593 Mbits/sec

Running the iperf test with the bigfile:

root@debian:/mnt/drives/6TB-A# iperf -c 192.168.1.2 -F bigfile
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.2, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  1] local 192.168.1.8 port 41738 connected with 192.168.1.2 port 5001 (icwnd/mss/irtt=14/1448/271)
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  1] 0.0000-20.8813 sec   488 MBytes   196 Mbits/sec

So the issue appears to be with the drive throughput.

I share the drives over the network to several Windows based computers and also Android Smart TVs (used for TV shows and movies).

Current Windows transfer rates (copying from 6TB Goflex to anything on the network) are showing between 14MB/s and 20MB/s. Most 4K movies require higher speeds than this.

Copying to/from the CentOS hosted 4TB drive usually runs at 60-80MB/s.

Any ideas/suggestions to get this higher?

Thanks