SMB speed and guest user

[dinkmike]

Just installed amahi on virtualbox to test it before buying new hardware. Install went fine, and the users guide was quite clear.
However i get really low transfer speeds to the VM, with smb around 300k per second. Running vail on virtualbox i get around 60mbytes per second, or 180 times faster.

Is this something related to a virtualbox install, and can i expect a much higher speed with real hardware ? If it is below 40-50mbyte writing and 80mbyte read, it is no use for me to set up a amahi box.

Second question : can i create a guest account without a password, so that i can use the shares without any login prompt from windows ? I cannot find such an option in the amahi console.

Thx !

[dinkmike]

Replying to myself: it's a shame that amahi has such a small user community that even basic answers to beginner questions cannot be found. Also adding disks is a complex task under fedora and greyhole is way too slow to pump over 4tb of data.

It's another one of the list for me : Whs is too old and too unstable, Amahi is complex and slow, so it's of to Vail and drivebender for me once it hits retail.

Do hope that amahi becomes a fast, stable and easy solution, at the moment it's too complex (thanks mostly to the incomprehensible linux world), slow and Fedora ? Come on use something more friendly and supported like ubuntu.

Everything with a

[moredruid]

dinkmike,

most people never had a performance issue with SMB, and those that had have been given a fix which should now be standard in Amahi.

Adding a disk is as easy as putting it in and running a script. Greyhole I don't know. I manage my own storage on another level so I don't need it.

Amahi is plenty fast, I've never had a bottleneck yet, maybe it's limited by your VM settings?

As for incomprehensible linux world: Microsoft is copying feature set after feature set from unix because it apparently makes sense. A good shell? WinServer2003 (Powershell). Mountpoints? available from WinServer2008 R2. Headless install? I think since WinServer2008. Bonding/trunking network interfaces? Winserver2003. All things that Unix is able to do for decades, probably even before win98 came out.
The only point is that you as the user need to take time to understand what you're doing, which I think is a good thing. There's enough proof out there that not knowing what you're doing on your computer can be harmful (you're more susceptible to botnets, spyware, viruses, etc).

As for the distribution choice: Fedora is a great project (it's the test pen for RedHat linux), and while Ubuntu is supported (if you pay for a support contract that is) Amahi would be built on top of Ubuntu server, and I'm not sure you would consider a base Ubuntu server install user friendly (try it in a VM some time, you'll see what I mean).

I would rather have seen it on a long term support distro (like CentOS, but that's currenltly lacking the latest release), but that's my opinion.

[dinkmike]

Thanks for your reply. For me the only reason to use something like Amahi is the "inbuilt" support for a storage pool such as greyhole. Without it, it would be a lot easier just to use W7 with folder shares. I am sure Amahi itself is probably fast enough, it's greyhole that keeps it back. Also the lack of a guest user, (maybe i am overlooking something but i could not find the option) is a problem as i don't want type passwords and login everytime, let alone configure several media players with passwords and logins.

As for linux / unix : Windows has a nice way not bothering you with command line troubles, let alone scripts, and compiling your own kernel just to include some NIC driver. I am sure for a lot of people linux is a nice hobby, but an even bigger group, including myself, don't want to be bothered with loads of command line stuff with vague instructions. I myself took 30 minutes just to be able to edit fsub, as fedora does not accept sudo but it has to be su - ....

Amahi can only get large scale acceptance if it runs fully in a GUI, including adding / removing disks.

Linux / unix has a way too steep learning curve to be a basis for a user friendly system like amahi wants to be. It can only succeed if the underlying linux stuff is mostly hidden like in Freenas for example.

For me the waiting is for Drive bender, a storage pool plug in for whs 2011.

Not a rant just frustrated every time i get into contact with anything linux. And that from a former IDMS dba and Cobol programmer....

Groetjes uit duitsland overigens, zie dat je nederlander bent

[bigfoot65]

I have never had problems with Amahi in respect to speed either. As for guest user access to shares, it is possible. See the wiki for more guidance.

http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Share_Extra_Parameters

Amahi is still evolving, but it can only get better. We are well aware of the fact things such as the disk mounting need to be GUI driven for users. It is being worked, but like anything else, it takes time. We have so many features and tasks to incorporate and not enough hours in the day to do them

There is a lot of guidance in the wiki to help customize Amahi. While having this drive via the front-end is best, we document steps such as these to provide users with a work around until implemented. Our small team of volunteers can only do so much, so we rely heavily on the user community to assist.

I have never noticed a problem with Greyhole. I use it with 4 drives and seems to work fine for me. Maybe there is a hardware conflict/issue on your machine degrading performance. Of course I probably don't move around as much data as you do.

Hope this helps.

[dinkmike]

Thanks for your reply Bigfoot65, now i can setup a guest account, which was requirement number 1 for me. i do see all the work going into such a product as Amahi. I'll try and run a real hardware configuration somewhere next week, as the VM could be the culprit in the speed department. Other VM's with WHS1, Vail, Ubuntu have good throughput. But could well be a Fedora driver problem with the VM virtual NIC. I will testdrive the moving of large amounts of data to Amahi to see if the landing zone is not a problem.

Alternatively I'll just make a intel raid5 box with Vail to get away from the storage pool concepts.

I'll report back

[dinkmike]

Just to report back, for me the solution is Flexraid. I stopped trying to use amahi, not so much due to amahi itself but due to fedora or linux in general.
Thanks for the support !

[sjeuf12]

Hi,
I am new to Fedora and Amahi, but I do experience the same sluggish behavior in a real hardware machine.
File transfer from a WHS is extremly slow 300-600kb/sec vs 4-8Mb/sec standard on the WHS.
Also when opening the fedora machine everything is real slow; the amahi dashboard takes for ever to open and all respons is slow.
Not what could be expected of a brand new machine (Intell I5, Asus MB, 2Gb, 350Mb system disc and 2Tb data disc in Greyhole, network is 1Gb)
When looking at system monitor I see that the first CPU get's completly max-ed while the others remain at below 10%
If I do check the processes, I see that Samba takes about 80% of CPU time.
If I do open a dashboard with the system monitor, the system virtually stalls.

Could it be that this Fedora version (14) can not handle this type of system config and that I am looking at massive driver issues?

Hope you do have answers, because this does not look very promising.
I will of course check the forum for any solutions.
br
Ser

[devnet]

Replying to myself: it's a shame that amahi has such a small user community that even basic answers to beginner questions cannot be found. Also adding disks is a complex task under fedora and greyhole is way too slow to pump over 4tb of data.

It's another one of the list for me : Whs is too old and too unstable, Amahi is complex and slow, so it's of to Vail and drivebender for me once it hits retail.

Do hope that amahi becomes a fast, stable and easy solution, at the moment it's too complex (thanks mostly to the incomprehensible linux world), slow and Fedora ? Come on use something more friendly and supported like ubuntu.

Everything with a

Fedora isn't user friendly? I wanted to punch you in the face for that comment....Ubuntu is not the swiss army knife of Linux...it isn't all things to everyone. Fedora has EVERY SINGLE BIT of documentation that Ubuntu does...perhaps even more. It also has similar community size as Ubuntu.

So, you're WAAAAAY off with that comment.

[bigfoot65]

There is potentially a hardware or network issue here. Shouldn't be so quick to point the finger. I get good transfer speed on my HDA.

This requires more in depth analysis to determine the root cause. Check logs, client segue, etc. We would be glad to help if you can elaborate on your setup.

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