Thecus to Thecus nsync rsync failures... Can anyone offer any insight?

[lsco]

Hi all

As this forum shows up so regularly in searches for Thecus information I figured somebody here might be able to assist me with my problem.

We recently purchased 2 Thecus N7700 devices with 7x1Tb drives. The dream was to have one as the main unit and the other as the backup target.

Currently we have two folders running in backup tasks. One of the folders is 1.5Tb but the other is only 500Gb or so.

Firmware version: 3.02.01
LAN/WAN links running 1Gb via 802.3ad protocol.

No matter whether I run the backups as nsync or rsync they fail after a couple of hours.
The nsync fails with a "OUT OF SPACE" error... Not true!
The rsync fails with a "TARGET SERVER CONNECTION TIMEOUT".

When the drives had very little on them the backups were successful.

Has anybody seen this? Is it worth upgrading firmware? Is anybody on the latest 3.03.00.4??

Thanks for your time.

Elton

[Bugbait]

Currently we have two folders running in backup tasks. One of the folders is 1.5Tb but the other is only 500Gb or so.

No matter whether I run the backups as nsync or rsync they fail after a couple of hours.
The nsync fails with a "OUT OF SPACE" error... Not true!
The rsync fails with a "TARGET SERVER CONNECTION TIMEOUT".

Has anybody seen this? Is it worth upgrading firmware? Is anybody on the latest 3.03.00.4??

Unfortunately I’ve removed all the drives from my N5200 so can’t test this with my N7700. I have been running the latest 3.03 firmware on the N7700 without issue for weeks but not with any of the sync functions.

I manually copy around large folders (usually > 500Gig) via Windows 7 and often encounter an “Out Of Space” error, even when there is plenty spare. Usually solved by attempting it from another level in the tree. This also occurred on my N5200. Not sure if it’s a Windows or Thecus OS “bug” though.

Sorry I couldn’t be more help. I haven’t had the time to fully explore the more advanced features on the NAS yet.

[lsco]

Hi Bugbait

Thanks for your reply.

I am considering trying an upgrade to the latest firmware, will start with the backup targetted N7700 first just in case my raid array vanishes. If all goes well I will see if there is any change in the backup results. Then I'll consider firmware upgrading the primary N7700.

I have emailed support@thecus but so far have had no reply at all from them. Right now I am seriously wishing I'd paid the wee bit extra and gone with a QNAP solution.

I'll come back and post results as I have them... hopefully I can get to the bottom of the problem and save others from this same frustration.

cheers
E

[peterb]

I think rsync builds a catalogue of files to determine which need to be transferred, so it could be running out of disk space while building that catalogue - if the source drive is full. However that is only speculation.

Rsync is a standard *nix application, so entering man rsync as a Google search term will bring up the manual pages for rsync (if they are installed on the Thecus, the man pages may be available anyway) which may give you some clues.

The reason HEXUS shows up in so many Thecus searches is that HEXUS used to host the Thecus support pages, but I think they have therir own at www.thecus.com.

However welcome to HEXUS anyway, and there are (as you have discovered) severa people with Thecus systems, and quite a few withh general *nix experience.

[Splash]

I set this up for 2 N8800s at my previous employer, but instead of using the Thecus nSync tool I just setup an rsync job between the 2 boxes - this had something like 2Tb of storage kept in sync, with the job running every night.

When we had the Thecus support forums here there was a rather handy guide written by a chap called peterfu who springs up on the other Thecus forums quite a lot - he really knows his stuff.


this is his guide - I suspect it may serve your needs better than the Thecus module.

[lsco]

Hey guys

Thanks very much for the extra information. I have found that all my efforts to get ssh access to the N7700 failed which I imagined was something to do with my firmware version. None of the modules seemed to install.

I am finding that an external rsync process seems to have no problem with synching the two N7700s which seems to support the hypothesis that it might be a local space issue for the rsync daemon on the Thecus.

Thanks for the guide.

I am more afraid of these troublesome NAS devices than I am of *nix At least linux and its ilk do what they are told to do.

cheers
E

[Splash]

You have installed the sysuser module as well as sshd haven't you? Without the sysuser you're going to struggle to login over SSH.

[lsco]

The sysuser and sshd modules I have found are named:

N5200_SYSUSER_2.00.02.zip
N5200_SSHD_2.00.00.zip

Neither of these install successfully.

The guide linked above has no modules for the N7700 other than info, twonky and pureftpd??

Am I looking in the wrong place, have the wrong modules?

[caliston]

rsync eats RAM for breakfast. If you have lots and lots of files, it may be running out of RAM and then dying. On a Debian box with 256MB of RAM, rsync would keel over when shown 40GB in a few million files. Given 1.5GB of RAM and it was fine.