Linux NAS distros?

Today I've been messing around with FreeNAS and have come across a really random problem and that is basically if I try to put ANY file onto the shares (FTP or SMB) it will only upload at about 3kilobytes a second or so and as such a 40MB file takes around 22mins to put onto the nas.
Pulling files however is ok and I get about 15mb/s.

Does anyone have any idea why this would be happening at all?
I've ensured it's on full duplex, 100mbps etc but still to no avail and its really starting to rub my nipples the wrong way (for want of a better phrase).
I've also had a go with several other out the box NAS solutions but they all seem to suck for configurability with any form of relative ease.

Any suggestions of what I can try or alternatives that are just as good?

 

The major problem with freenas is that it is slow as hell.
I have never actually heard of the fact that writing to a drive goes this slow.
What sort of hardware do you have in this box?

 

Athlon 1Ghz
40GB IDE drive (for testing)
512MB ram

 

Use ebox: http://ebox-platform.com

Just use the samba module and either delete or deactivate the others through the control panel.

 

Yea can't say I've ever thought it a performance monster, but it has done the job before. I think it's a bit fussy with some network hardware.

 

If ebox is no good I'll slip a PCI nic into one of the 2 available PCI slots and see how it goes. I didn't really think it could be the card but its worth a go.
Cheers Bindi (though I know it's not exactly what you said it's put me on a path)]

::edit:: Ok, that didn't help either, using a realtek 8139c PCI card.

 

Realtek NIC are good compatibility wise, but they are true CPU burners. But I doubt it's your nic that's acting up, since your NAS can upload at a decent speed.

I haven't played around much with FreeNAS, but I noticed it was slowish. I ended up just installing Debian on the box and have unlimited configurability/options available.

 

Yeah, I will give that a go next Glider.

Quick question in which case, I'll be eventually installing the chosen distro to a CF card on an IDE -> CF adaptor.
Will any distro be ok or is there any specific you recommend for this task?
I'm leaning towards gentoo because its stupidly small on the minimal but I've always been a fan of Debian.

 

Gentoo installed isn't small not at all... Compared to binary based distros Gentoo is huge. I put Debian on 95% of my servers, and I've also put it on my NAS.

You can also look into DSL, it's Damn Small

 

Ok, I assumed Gentoo was small because its CD was 130MB

Downloaded and installing Deb 4.0 now, hopefully I can get it to do what I want. I'm sure its all possible, just a case of figuring out how (and yes, im reading your guide on setting up samba that was part of the bit article).

The only thing I think that'll be really missing is a web interface, I know I know, I can SSH and it's not a problem however a web interface would also make it easy for the other half to sort out should she need to.
I guess these are more of a custom thing and that there arent any such projects that I can just dump to a debian machine?

If not it's no bother, just would be nice to have

 

Is he looking for ease of setup though? I agree with you saying just use a normal distro and build what you want but if he wants a easy setup then no.

 

Maybe webmin?

 

Webmin looks like it could be just the ticket for the simple tasks that may need to be performed by the other half or in fact myself.

I'm actually starting to regain hope that this project may yet be finished

 

I know im posting to my own reply however it doesn't directly relate to my previous post so I'm posting a fresh post (if that makes sense)
Anyway..

I have debian installed and Samba configured but its STILL really slow to upload files, not as slow as freenas but at least 10 seconds or more to upload a 1.4MB file, once again however pulling data is just fine.
large (100MB) files want to take 6 mins+

Even FTP is slow when trying to transfer files to the exact same machine, its REALLY weird and kinda getting on my nerves now.

 

Is there something wrong with the IDE controller or the HD?

 

I think Glider, that it's the IDE controller, I've just stuck the same hard drive on a different mainboard, installed Debian, setup samba and it works 100% first time.
I have also changed the IDE cable which I guess could have even been it, I keep forgetting to check the simple things these days but I guess I can let myself off what with being full of colds and man flu (which as we all know is about 1000x worse than regular colds and flu)

FreeNas doesn't work on it at all, it just makes the system reboot after a short period of time (generally about 10 seconds after I have pressed a key on the keyboard) so I cant even access a TTY to check what's shutting it down which is seriously odd.

I still feel debian may be eating a bit too much space though (528MB) and I really do have a lot to learn about setting up samba properly but right now, I'm just so chuffed that for once I have it working

 

I know Debian isn't the smallest around. You could trim it down a bit, up to 350MB, but that's about it (try cleaning out /var/cache/apt/*)

A real small disto is Damn Small Linux, it takes about 50MB IIRC

 

It's ok, I'm just shooting for less than 1GB with space to spare should I decide I fancy to add any services in the future.
I'm sure if I tried hard enough I could get it down a bit.. I also seem to remember there being a version of the distro which allowed manual selection of each component but I'm not 100% sure I'm right there.

 

It's called a buisnesscard or netinstall, and they are quite good (install 4 or 5 unneeded things )

 

Just FYI, ebox is Debian-based, and you can SSH in if need be and mess with apt-geting some other stuff if basic samba doesn't cut it. I've only briefly played with it but like it on the whole (I was honestly more concerned with causing myself as much pain as possible by trying to get my fileserver to connect to the samba box as a primary domain controller, not realizing that hosting your PDC in a virtual machine hosted on a Mac over a wireless connection might not be the best idea). I too found that FreeNAS performance absolutely sucked, and tbh the most consistent decent performance I get is, unfortunately, XP Pro's network shares (which have their own set of problems).

I still want to know how to get AFP sharing on ANY distro. I'm really not in the mood to try installing OS X server by means of OSx86 to an AMD box and can't afford a proper Mac server, no matter how perfectly it would do everything I want. If those overpriced and generally poor-performance dedicated NAS boxes can do it, why can't I find anything useful on the matter?