Promise SMARTSTOR NS4300N - Page 9

Actually... someone gave me the MediaTomb plugin to use on another forum. I uninstalled the Promise one, restarted the NAS, installed the MediaTomb plugin, set it to enable in the SmartNavi, restarted the NAS again and I was away laughing.

No scripting, no telnet.... nothing... no different that the Promise plugin... except the obvious configuration of MediaTomb, by using a browser and going too - http://:49152

This is the link I was given - the plugin that I used:

http://www.tt.em-net.ne.jp/~sandhill...02_promise.ppg

Thanks, I'll check out the differences between this one and mine and see where I went wrong.

None of the root hacks worked on the Japanese firmware. they've fixed it.

I managed to log in with engmode. This is what happened. Am I doing something wrong???

nsc4500_247093 login: engmode
Password:
Starting CLI (Command Line Interface)...
CG-NSC4500GT ##> ls
Command not found!
CG-NSC4500GT ##> busybox ls
Command not found!
CG-NSC4500GT ##> pwd
Command not found!
CG-NSC4500GT ##> quit
Connection closed by foreign host.

I mounted a volume on a mac and did an ls -l. Can see user numbers. So I guess with some tests we can deduce who owns the files

I have been looking for a NAS for my home network. 2 computers 1 laptop and PS3. I would love to know if the media steaming functionality of this NAS has been fixed or is working well with the PS3. One of the main reasons I would like this NAS is to steam music/video the PS3.

I dunno about the PS3 but photos, music, and videos work great streaming to my Xbox 360 using the DLNA plugin. Of course there is no transcoding so the media has to be in a format that the Xbox 360 (or PS3 in your case) will decode and understand.

Laters,
Jeff

I've been having all sorts of drama with the Promise DLNA plugin for my NS2300N. The full saga can be found here:

http://community.eu.playstation.com/...thread.id=1552

However, I can confirm that a PC will pick it up, no worries and all and if you do have issues, using the MediaTomb plugin instead, works well.

Can't speek for others but at least me and mdv had serious problems with stuttering due to latency while playing back HD material form that box.

grubi,.

Real basic question: how to install plugin in Windows or Mac?

Sonny,

The plugin we are referring to is "loaded into" the NAS box itself. It isn't Windows or Mac per se.

Below is a pic of the section in SmartNavi, where you load up plugins into the Promise NAS devices:



Hope this answers your query.

Cheers,
BuckoNZ

Thanks Bucko, I did figure it out.

But on my PC with Vista, I do not see the NAS list after right-clicking on the SmartNavi icon in the app tray, to get started. But I do see the NS4300 in the Network grp.
I have a Mac with OS 10.5, I get the NAS list when I launch SmartNavi. So I prefer to use the Mac.

It took 2 days and many hours for me to find a method to log in to a full shell that worked on the SR5 firmware.

The post on Page 7 of this thread which describes how to modify the Itunes plugin to change the shell of engmode from the CLI to ASH is the method that finally worked.

But I really, really wish I didn't have to do this.

The only reason I needed to go poking around for this hack is because of the lack of robust (or even basic) file system management tools to manipulate the data that is alread stored on the device. It is completely ridiculous that I have to pull data across the network to move it from one folder to another or to a connected USB drive.

It's also ridiculous that I opened a support ticket with Promise in October for an issue with the DLNA plugin (after an upgrade) failing to index all of my video files. I updated the ticket 3 weeks later, updated it again a month after that and the ticket was never updated by Promise even to say that they were working on the issue. A phone call in December had the representative tell me that he was escalating it to the developer and he would call me back later that day.

SR5 completely messed me up as it took away visibility to the PLUGINAPP folder in which all of my media was stored. Apparently it was supposed to move the music, video and picture files from PLUGINAPP to the separate MUSIC, VIDEO and PICTURE folders but that hadn't happened, so with SR5 I completely lost all access to the files I had copied there. After a month of waiting, I made another call to Promise and they sent me a new upg file which restored partial visibility to the PLUGINAPP folder so that I could once again map a drive to access my media, however their instructions were to copy all of the media off to another computer and then remove the DLNA plugin, reinstall the plugin, and then copy the media back to the VIDEO, MUSIC and PICTURE folders on the NAS. I have 1TB of media and coincidentally, I also have an empty 1TB USB drive - perfect right? Not! In order to populate the USB disk by plugging it into the back of the NAS, I'd have to pull the data across the wire twice...and then across the network two more times to put it back. That made no sense, so I plugged the USB drive into another computer on the network so that it only crossed the wire once.

Anyhow...the file copy had been running for 24 hours and I had got about 25% of the media pulled off of it, when I finally found the telnet hack that worked. I logged in and with a handful of 'mv' commands, I was able to move all 1TB of data to a different folder in less than 10 minutes. Following the instructions of Promise, the same task would have taken 8-16 days over my gigabit network.

I'm posting my frustrations here since it seems there are some staff members of Promise that read the posts on this site even if there are none that read the support tickets that were entered via the proper channels.

In any case...I'll be throwing away the fuppes DLNA plug in and giving the Mediatomb plugin a try.

Many thanks to those of you smart enough to figure out how to enable full Telnet access and for taking the time to write up and share the method!!!

My NS4300N is plugged directly into a GIGABIT switch.
I have a Win2k3 server plugged directly into the same GIGABIT switch.

Pulling files off of the NAS to the Win2k3 server with a mapped drive, I am only able to utilize 3% sustained or 6% peak of the Gigabit link (according to Task Manager). Surprisingly, using command-line FTP is even slower.

I've tried enabling TCP Window Scaling and adjusting the TCP receive window on the Win2k3 server with little noticeable change (currently set to 262,140). Latency is <1ms.

What transfer speeds have the rest of you been able to obtain? Does anyone know what is the maximum transfer speed the NS4300N should be able to obtain?

Any advice on how to increase my throughput?

Thanks in advance to any who reply...

Tenly,

I hate to say it, but I thought it was just me. I opened an e-Support ticket with Promise re: the DLNA plugin, back in November. Same thing... no update... at all.

I have posted all my woes on this issue, on the Australia/New Zealand PS3 forums, as this is the device I mainly want the DLNA functionality for:
http://community.eu.playstation.com/...thread.id=1552

I ended up RMA'ing my unit and getting a replacement. I found that by backing up my data, "blowing the unit away" (killing the RAID array and going back to factory defaults), then reinstalling the latest firmware, creating the RAID array, migrating data back, etc... I managed to get "more" of the DLNA plugin working correctly.

Still, I have the same issue... I can only see 1 out of 5 of my 'Video' subfolders.

Cheers,
BuckoNZ

I 2nd this question. I'm just about fed up with these NAS devices that claim Gigabit and Jumbo frame support but only put out 16MB/sec at best. I'm not a network engineer, but I could explain the TCP/IP or OSI model to most anyone and I've managed to setup my LAN to sustain transfers between two Windows hosts (CIFS I believe) that use 65% a Gigabit link. Vista generally tells me that ~50MB/sec which is on the conservative side.

I haven't been able to run hdparm on this unit (the 2300) because I get "could not lock sharedmem buf: Cannot allocate memory", but recently I was seeing the exact same behavior on a Buffalo Pro Duo and hdparm reported 45MB/sec so I don't see the HDD being the bottleneck.

I DO see (using top) that CPU maxes out with smbd or proftpd when using those respective protocols. Did they just use too weak a CPU in these units? If so, I'm back to my first point. WHY include Gigabit, and WHY mention Jumbo frame support?

BTW, anyone notice that the "Jumbo Frame" tab provides options to change MTU and NOT frames (or am I complete confused as to which layers in the stack each affect)?

16 MB/s is much more than what I was able to get out. 10 MB/s is the max I get with SMB. I even tried different NICs but no way.

grubi.

I have been living with the same problem as some others for over a year now.

I originally installed v1 of the DLNA plugin and it mostly worked. My music and picture files were completely indexed, and my 1TB of video files in a deeply nested directory tree structure were also completely indexed and visible to my IOData LinkPlayer2 Media player. In fact, the only issue I had with the initial version of the plugin was that when I added NEW videos (or deleted or moved existing ones) into my folders it would often take 24+ hours before it was reflected on the menus. The only thing I wanted them to add was a 'rescan' option so that I wouldn't have to wait so long to view the new content.

Several versions of the plugin later did not improve the rescan/refresh issue, and added a new issue - it would only index about 10% of my Video files. I have 8 top level folders under \\PLUGINAPP\\DLNA\\video and each of them have a hierarchy at least 3 levels deep. It indexd the first 3 top level folders (and all of the subfolders and files) but no amount of hard-resets or removing and reinstalling the plugin brought back the rest. I opened several support tickets and waited for new firmware or new plugins that would correct the problem but the ones that were released did nothing to change that behavior. I worked around the issue by installing the Avel Linkserver software on a PC and mapping a drive to the NAS PLUGINAPP folder. This at least gave me access to ALL of my video content although I had to leave a PC running all the time.

Then came the SR5 firmware release which completely removed access/visiblity to the PLUGINAPP structure and therefore removed my access to ALL of my media. I was no longer able to map a drive to get to my media.

Anyhow...that is the background. My previous posts talk about my frustrations with trying to get support from Promise and how I was able to finally, eventually regain access to my media - so I won't rehash that here.

This is just an update to say that I have now installed the MediaTomb plugin which has successfully and completely indexed ALL of my Media files. I don't like the way that it lumps all of my music files into a single directory, but the tree view is still there - just a little more difficult to get at...but in general the MediaTomb plug-in is working like a champ and I doubt that I will ever go back to fuppes (given the level of support I received while using it).

If you're confused so am I. I'm not a linux expert, nor a TCP/IP expert, but I understand that TCP Receive Window size (and latency) are the 2 factors that most impact throughput and I expected that there would be somewhere in the advanced network configuration of the NAS to tweak this setting.

I admit that I'm not completely clear how Jumbo Frames and MTU fit into the equation with relation to TCP Receive Window and overall throughput.

Review of the New Revision B:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30563/75/

I have sent this post to the importer for Promise products to New Zealand to "prove" I'm not the only one experiencing this problem.... it's basically identical to yours - I have a PS3 and it only finds 1 of 4 subfolders under 'Video' - save I have the smaller NS2300N.

I have received updates from Promise, only through the importer (as like you I got no updates via their e-Support) and they were able to replicate this issue.

Their fix? Simply tell the PS3 to seach for a new media server, which forces it to obtain the latest indexing info from the NAS device.

Did it work? No!

On telling the importer this, they told me that I could get a full refund. My reply:
- I still like the NS2300N, it's just this ******* DLNA thing... so no, I don't want to return it.
- Would they consider upgrading me to the NS4300N, which apparently, isn't as likely to suffer from these issues.
- That I am still happy to help them (Promise) solve this issue as countless others are experiencing it (I;ve been "working" with the importer om this for a while).
- Would the importer allow me to run the MediaTomb plugin, without voiding my warranty.
- Provided them a copy of your post, to pass on to Promise.


Cheers,
BuckoNZ

I, like many other posters, have been expericing issues with the Promise DLNA plugin.

As detailed, a few posts above, my main issue was that, while the 'Pictures' and 'Music' shares on the NAS device pretty much seem to behave as expected, the 'Video' share would only partially show it's contents on my PS3.

I have been working with the New Zealand distributor for the Promise SmartStor devices and Promise Support in Asia, on this issue... well, as far as I can tell, I've done all the work and just reported to them both, often twice a day.

The tests that we have performed over the past week, have focused on Promise's belief that there must be a corrupt/damaged file, somewhere in my first sub-folder in the 'Video' share - this was based on:
1) Only this first sub-folder under 'Video' ever appeared. The other three never showed up.
2) Often not all of the files and folders, inside this first sub-folder, would be present.

Here is what I have discovered... if the Promise DLNA plugin, while indexing, comes across a file that it doesn't "like", it either halts the indexing process or causes it to display inaccurate information.

This was "proven" (and I use this term loosely), with two specific tests:

a) Relocate first 'Video' sub-folder into 'Pictures':
The result of this test, was that only the 'Picture' share displayed on my PS3... neither 'Music' or 'Video' showed up at all!?

b) Relocate first 'Video' sub-folder - which was in 'Picture' - to another share on that NAS, not scanned by DLNA plugin:
The resullt of this test was that all of my media (expect obviously for this first folder) was visable... including my other sub-folders under 'Video' which NEVER appeared in the past!

Note: Between the tests, the only way to completely remove the DLNA indexing data from the SmartStor, is to disbale the plugin, remove it, restart the NAS, reinstall it and then enable the plugin - then wait for approx. 5 hrs.

Now, I don't believe that I have a "corrupt/damaged file" - in the traditional sense of the word - on my NAS device. So, the next stage is to find the "offending file" and more importantly, why the DLNA plugin doesn't like it.

I will keep you posted...

Hello, this seems to be one of only two places where people talk about the Promise NS4300n. Mine seems to have crashed and I wonder if anyone has any hope for me:

SmartStor NS4300N running as RAID 5 (Striping with parity) (x4) with 4 Seagate 7200.11 1TB drives. The firmware is at 01.04.0000.11

Last night the drive in slot 2 had a BSL and Task timeout error resulting in the array status going critical, with a red light on the front panel by the drive and the lower status light red. The RAID status in the web interface was critical.

I pulled the drive out and replaced it with a new 1TB drive.

Now the array status has changed to Off Line, and the Action Status is Rebuilding, Background Activity is Running, and Progress is 100%. In fact, the progress went to 100% almost instantly. The front panel LED is amber by the drive slot, and the status light is red.

Looks like something else went wrong because even though this is a RAID 5 x4 setup, The Raid Status in the web interface shows my RAID volume as consisting of Disk 1, Disk 2, and Disk 4, and it is now listing Disk 3 as a Free Disk and not part of the array.

Disk 3 was never a Free Disk, and always part of the array. It did not fail, reports no errors, and its status light remains green

Also, the RAID volume reports File System Errors, and says to check the file system. From the manual, it looks like my RAID is completely hosed if it has that type of error.

I think the problem with the file system is obviously that Disk 3 somehow got marked as not part of the array, and so now I'm missing 25% of my recovery system, and that's why the Action Status of Rebuilding never changes.

I can't imagine how Disk 3 got this status. I've had to replace a drive (the same Disk 2 as a matter of fact) once before, and all that happened was the array went into Rebuild status overnight, but remained On Line and functional.

Is there any hope to recover the data on here? Some way to force Disk 3 and its data back into the array? I've got about 2TB of non-backed up data on there (DVD files to back up and serve as a media center), plus some back up volumes from other computers. The data won't kill me to lose, but it will certainly be considerably difficult and time consuming to re-rip all those DVDs.

Are there any diagnostic checks to take that I can try? I've rebooted the array a couple of times with no change.

Really disappointed with the NS4300n right now, it has failed to do exactly what I purchased it for: protect me from catastrophic data loss in the event of a single drive failure.

Any help or suggestions appreciated.

DSA444, wow what a first post! Excellent detail about your situation on the NS4300, I hope that one of the guru's jump in to help...

I have the NS4300 and I expect it to do the same thing you expect it to do, protect the data in the event of a disk (single) failure, since it is listing disk 3 as a free disk lets hope that it has not failed and taken all chance of recovery away!

Please keep us posted and good luck.

DSA444,

I have read a review somewhere of the NS4300N and in the review it mentions how the SmartStor isn't very "informative" during this situation, however it was most impressed with how the NS4300N coped in these situations!?

I'll see of I can find the article, which explained in detail, the disk replacement test they carried out.

Cheers,
BuckoNZ

I think this is the article here... I think the disk replacement test starts from pg 3 of the review:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30273/75/

While reading the article about the 'replacement' revision 'B' boxes I was wondering, how do I tell what version I have?

thanks!

Thanks for the article link. That had actually been my experience once before, as described in my original post. As in the test, when a single drive was pulled and placed back in the RAID, it rebuilt in the background no problems.

For me, with a new drive placed back in the array, which would be the normal scenario (after all, why pull a good drive to see if it rebuilds other than for testing), the array for some reason dumped a second drive, effectively trashing the whole array.

I still haven't heard back from Promise Tech support, other than an email within the first hour of my posting the issue on Saturday morning. They wanted to know what firmware level my NS4330n was at. I responded, but they've not got back to me.

It's a moot point now anyways. I found out that I actually had backups of 90% of the data on the NS4300n, and I can replace the remaining data fairly inexpensively, so I decided to try a few things from the telnet command line to see if they might help.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME, LOL, IT WILL KILL YOUR DATA.

I ran recover from the console. Logged back in to the Smartstor via the webgui, to see that the SmartStor was joyfully formatting my drives. Oh well, that's what I get for playing around in the linux cli without fully understanding the command.

I've re-set up the array now as RAID5 (x3+hot spare), in hopes that future drive failures will just seamlessly recover. Of course this means losing .75 terabytes of data storage. A little annoying, but I don't want to go through this again.

Again, disappointed in the product in that it didn't save me from a single drive failure, but I can't say with 100% certainty that there wasn't some sort of user error in there even before I ended up playing with the telnet commands.

I've got some other questions about using the plugins on the SmartStor, but a new post is more appropriate for that.

To PromiseNASDude,

I'm curious if there are any updates on:

1. the revision B units
2. the DLNA plugin's

Thanks ahead of time,

Joey

Ok - this might be of interest to you 'Joey1234'....

After a considerable amount of additional testing and proving that Promise's assumption that "if the Promise DLNA plugin, while indexing, comes across a file that it doesn't 'like', it either halts the indexing process or causes it to display inaccurate information" was not 100% correct, the R&D deptartment have supplied me with a new BETA plugin to try.

The current BETA plugin currently publically available is v1.01.0000.05 and the version that the Promise R&D department have supplied me is v1.01.0000.06.

So... what happened... I installed the new BETA DLNA plugin, as per normal. About 10:00pm last night, I:
- Disabled current plugin and uninstalled.
- Restarted NAS device
- Installed new BETA plugin (vv1.01.0000.06) and enabled.
- Started my PS3 and disabled the Media Server functionality and shutdown.

I noticed after installing this new plugin, that the NAS had quite high disk activity. Obviously it was DLNA indexing, however it seemed to be doing so more aggressively, than previous DLNA plugins.

This morning, I have just started my PS3, enabled Media Server functionality, searched for a Media Server and can report as follows:
- Under ‘Photos’ on the PS3, all of my sub-folders and the one file in the root of the PICTURE share on the NAS, appear to display.
- Under ‘Music’ on the PS3, all of my sub-folders in the MUSIC share on the NAS, appear to display.
- Under ‘Video’ on the PS3, I’m pleased to advise that all of my sub-folders in the VIDEO share on the NAS appear to display!

I mentioned in a previous post that my initial sub-folder in the VIDEO share seemed to be causing issues. Well:
- There is one sub-folder inside this "initial sub-folder" and all of its contents seem to now display.
- Out of the 15 media files in the root of this folder, 14 display on the PS3. However, this 15th file is kind of "dodgy" so I am not surprised that it didn't appear. Occasionally when I try to play it on my PC, Windows Media Player "complains" about it.

This is looking very promising and it is obvious to me that Promise have done some "serious work" on their DLNA plugin. Let's hope this continues and they release something to the public soon!

Regards,
BuckoNZ