NETGEAR ReadyNAS

RAIDiator 4.01b1-p1-T68 Release Notes

January 31, 2008


RAIDiator 4.01b1-p1-T68 is a beta test build of our upcoming RAIDiator 4.01 firmware for the ReadyNAS. It will work with any of the past and present ReadyNAS systems. Please keep in mind that this is still a beta, and if you are uncomfortable with using a non-released product, please hold off until the final release is available. As always, if you will be trying out this beta, we appreciate any feedback that you may have with this build.


CHANGES SINCE 4.00c1-p2
1. Fixed occasional dropped connections with the NETGEAR EVA 8000 media player. The same fix may also address slow wireless access and general network access slowness due to unrecovered TCP retransmits. We would appreciate any feedback if you have been experiencing this.
2. Support Samsung 1TB drives. We would appreciate any feedback if you have are using these drives.
3. Support Seagate drives with SN04 firmware with broken Security Erase support.
4. Include initial standalone Add-on management support.
5. Include BitTorrent support. You’ll need to enable this in the Services/Installed Addons page. Saving BitTorrent folder location currently does not work and will be fixed in the next beta.
6. Fixed fan speed control to handle fan variations better.
7. Changed maximum length of HTTP SSL host key to 64 characters.
8. Prevent inactive Frontview windows and UPS status from spinning up disks.
9. Add Shares tab now has an option to enable/disable public access for new shares. By default CIFS and AFP shares will be created with guest access in User and Domain security modes.
10. If USB flash device was used in a camera, set flash auto-copy to flatten out the folder tree structure. Also blink backup LED during the auto-copy.
11. UPnP-A/V service should recognize .m2t and .divx files.


LIMITATIONS
1. The current released Opera browser will not work with FrontView. Folks have reported that the latest beta version of the browser will work however.
2. Network wireless PCI and USB devices are not supported in this release. We will come out with an update that will support this at a later time. If you need this support, please do not update to the RAIDiator 4 release. Keep in mind that if you need wireless support, you can connect the ReadyNAS to a wireless router or a wireless bridge.


DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS
Download RAIDiator-4.01b1-p1-T68 and perform a local update from the FrontView System/Update/Local tab.

Well, went ahead and plunged in. So far seems OK. I *really* like that it didn't disrupt my ssh-based installations, apart from having to re-add a single line to inetd.conf.

Seeing as bittorrent is in the house, I decided to fire it up and try a few streams. Right off the bat, the UI seems to have some headaches. It defaulted to "media" share and "BitTorrents" for directory. Changing this to an existing path (and user) resulted in "directory doesn't exist" (oh really?). I shut down the service, found the config file and set the values I knew would work. Fired the service up and it didn't complain (even showed the values I set in the UI).

Great, super. So I go and add a few torrents to test it out. Things are spiffy... for about 5-10 minutes. Then, out of the blue, the NAS stops responding on the network... not even ping. Activity light suggests not even BT is busy. Did a power button shutdown and started back up. Things look good again... except that I notice now that when I click the button the launch the BT UI, it just sits blank. Rest seems OK... until about 2 minutes later no ethernet again.



So next round I restart and try to stop BT in the UI... and then hit "Remove". Now the NAS seems quite happy.

So.... I might try re-adding the BT add-on (is it available separate or would I have to re-apply this build?) and see what happens, but dead ethernet is not a fun thing.

Not gonna take the plunge until the official release, but just wanted to say that this brings some desired features and keep up the great work!

Now if we can just get PHP with GDI support added in

Any chance we can fix the SNMP issues 4.00 has in this release?

http://www.infrant.com/forum/viewtopic. ... light=snmp (amongst others)

SNMP is returning the exact same values for two months straight.

wow!

this is a serious bit of kit.

torrent client rocks.

good work guys,

I upgraded and it seems ok.

Regardning fan speed, it had not been an issue here, but anyway, here is my fan/temp data:



PS Please consider adding MRTG-style graphs in the GUI for this stuff.

Yeah, I noticed that my fan ran a little faster immediately post-upgrade. But once I ran a calibrate it settled back down to the 2000-2100 range.

so still in the 2000+ range... seems only the rampup has been addressed then
bah humbug

gonna wait till the final release to test it out

I'm with you on that one 'pho'! Thanks for the info, I'll wait then too.

I'm hoping the jedi are listening to the grumbles and let the fan run at a *much* more pleasant 1800 RPM for systems like mine: 2080RPM, system temp 27C, all four disks are at 28-30C (those Western Digital WD10EACS, run super cool and quiet, THANK YOU FOR ADDING THEM TO THE HCL!!!).

When the temperature is monitored I can’t see any problem to reduce RPM or completely stop the fan. The recalibration did not reduce fan speed and the temperature is still unnecessary low (30.0C/86F). When disks are STOPPED the measured power consumption is only 23W and I expect that the fan can be stopped without any risk (the temperature is still monitored). An idle power loss of 23W will definitely not melt anything if the loss is distributed reasonably but if the loss is concentrated to a few small spots then it could be a problem. It is no meaning to speculate it is better that Infrant HW designer gives us the correct answer. If fan noise could be reduced it is a dramatic improvement for 24 hours use in home and office.

I've got to chime in here about the fan noise. I recently purchased a WD MyBook WE to bridge the v4 troubles and the fan noise on that unit is often less than the NV+.
I know my unit needs to be cleaned, but I feel the air coming out of it and I really think the thermostat code might need a clean up.

My fan got back to the usual RPM (2083) after some more time.

With both this beta release and the prior stable, I'm experiencing problems with my ReadyNAS 600B losing the USB connection to my UPS. The UPS is an APC Back-UPS ES 750 that's known working. On reboot, the NAS will report the presence of the UPS correctly, but sometimes after a few hours, the UPS disappears, as if it is not plugged in at all.

Curious about why this was the case, I enabled SSH on the NAS, and found that restarting the hotplug service solves the problem...at least temporarily. The UPS is recognized anew for a few more hours.

Can anyone offer any help? Thanks -- I'd really like to have the UPS back up for this box for obvious reasons

This morning I re-applied T68 to bring back the BT add-on. But, again, within about 5-10 minutes of activating a few torrents -- it was only doing maybe 14KB/sec DL and no UL -- all network activity ceased. And within moments of restarting the NAS the same would recur. I did catch the bt service using 80%+ of the cpu during one of these restarts... curious.

This time, to recover, I did something slightly different. I disconnected LAN during restart, letting the NAS come fully up before reconnecting the cable. My supposition was that the bt service would fail to connect and just flop over... which does happily seem to be the case. So I went back in and disabled/removed the service again.

Not sure what's going on here, but whatever it is it's bad enough to stop all network activity to the device. And that kind of sucks for a NAS.