XigmaNAS

I just purchased a few gigabit ethernet cards to upload the remaining boxes on my network. I have 2 nas4free boxes running, one with an older set of hardware and anther with newer 64 bit processor. I started with the newer box before attempting to upgrade the nic on the older box. Here is my issue. Regardless of the advice from the other similar threads, nothing will allow the gige nic to run any faster than 10Mbit.


9.1.0.1 - Sandstorm (revision 531)
MB is a ASRock G31M-S with 2GB of ram
x64-full on Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5300 @ 2.60GHz
Realtek PCIE x1 LAN 8103EL / 8102EL - Speed: 10/100 Ethernet onboard lan
new addon lan is Encore ENLGA-1320 that uses a Realtek RLT8169SC chip
drives 3 x 2TB raidz1

The raid is running fine. I can connect and transfer both large and small files using the onboard lan at 100Mbit speed. I added the new nic and it was found without issue and was able to do a proper setup. I disabled the onboard nic in bios and was able to log into the interface after using the console to configure the new nic. My issue is only the speeds. My existing gige network sees the nic as a fellow gige connection. The same lan cable and port will transfer files between computers around 22MB/when using my HP laptop with the built in gige lan port. The normal speed for transfer across computers with 100MBit is about 9MB/s and I am getting using the onboard nic transfer speeds of 9MB/s as well to and from the raidz1 drives. The new 1000Mbit nic will do less than 1MB/s.

I have ruled out it being a network cable or switch issue. That leads me to think it is a driver issue. How do I go about upgrading the lan drives for this card?

Hi, a few thoughts
- you say you bought 'a few' nics - do they all behave the same? Have you tried another PCI-slot?

Ithink that perhaps you don't buy best NIC card for BSD.

I don't see RLT8169SC in BSD only RLT8169SB <- Notice the "B" , and found a lot of post of people with problems:

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/dow ... loads=true

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=22701
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=30537
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=26467

Are you at time to change?.

If yes try this time Intel based card like: http://www.alternate.es/html/product/In ... =7&lk=4244

I'm using a nic that is RTL8169SC-based(a tp-link tg-3269) with n4f.531, works ok, but I'd prefer an Intel nic aswell.

sorry, I edit my previous post

Thanks for the tips guys. Looking at a Intel nic now.

Here is my real problem. It appears that freebsd is pretty picky about hardware and does not have good support for the lastest current production hardware. I do want to have a stable rig, and it does make more sense to pay a extra for hardware that is more stable than spend hours fussing with almost compatible hardware. The problem is it doesnt take very long and it would make some sense to pay a little extra and buy a dedicate NAS rig since the cheap part is gone. I need a specific family of both nic and sata card to get good support for with nas4free. That means it will cost me about $200 for just a few addons for my 2 nas boxes to get sata2 and 1000Mbit.

Meanwhile I am looking at a little different idea. I love the raidz aspect over traditional software raid. I see that there is a port of zfs for linux (and in particular Ubuntu) that I think I will give a shot. I have not loaded the drives on the newest box where I cant move files back off and try a different software package. What I would miss is the dedicated interface for setup.

for SATA this post is very usefull: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10

Thanks for all the links and help. Here is what I ended up doing.

I backed up the data on the 3x2TB raidz1 and installed ubuntu 12.04 server. I followed with zfs for linux and compiled the proper kernel modules for the install. I was then able to import my zfs raid without issue after a crash course of zpool commands. I then installed samba a few extras and have the current setup running without issue. I did some large file transfers using the same Realtek nic that nas4free was having issues with at 40Mb/s.

While I commend the effort and the whole nas4free project I have some real issues with FreeBSD. It really makes no sense for me to purchase high dollar cards when the goal is a cheap simple low cost nas for media storage. I can use the more common nic and sata adapters because Ubuntu has full stable support for all the cards that I already own. While some of the feature that nas4free will be missed, I can install and manually configure all the tools needed using the ssh terminal. If I wish, I can also install a very basic remote desktop. I have just installed and testing Ajaxplorer now and it looks promising for a remote file manager.

If I were looking for a very stable small office nas no doubt I would use nas4free and purchase the proven hardware to make it work. For a cheap-ass home nas it makes no sense because FreeBSD simply does not have the drive support for the hardware in my world.

try / have a look a OpenMediaVault, is based on Debian, and perhaps is what you need.
http://www.openmediavault.org/