Question from a Linux newbie: Why is my NAS so slow

Finally got fed up in Win 10 and decided it's time to learn Linux Mint. This time I mean it, didn't even dualboot this time

Anyhow, I'm connecting my NAS (WD Mycloud - I know, it sucks) using Samba using a bookmark through Nemo for now (smb://nasip/). The big problem is the transfer speeds are stoopid slow. Transferring a large file (the Mint ISO) over wifi only runs at 2-4MB/s. (est. time 10 min for the ISO). Under Windows I was typically getting 20-40MB/s. Using a wired connection will get me 40MB/s. which is better, but still probably slower than what's possible. IIRC using the Nemo default AFS connection is just as slow. I don't think the NAS supports NFS without some serious screwing around in SSH, which I'm totally not smart enough for.
Back the last I tried Mint I went for an automount through fstab (I think that's how I did it) managed to confirm that it was using SMB3 but the speed was still this slow - which ultimately was why I gave up and went back to Windows.
Any idea what gives?? What is the best way to automount at boot these days? (most of the Googled results I get are ~5 years old)
Cheers

Probably going to turn this into a general "rants and questions" thread

Before I go too much further, the first thing I'm wondering is if I should keep using UEFI or go back to legacy BIOS? With this machine it does take a fair bit of screwing around just to get Mint to boot in UEFI mode. Secure boot on or off, it doesn't matter. Grub installs fine, but doesn't show up. I need to go back into BIOS, manually select grubx64 as safe, and make damn sure it's the very first entry in boot selection.

Second thing I've run into is Nvidia drivers just don't want to work. First time around (I'm on my 3rd install) the install would just fail with something like code 1 error. Tried a few installs until eventually it got froze boot and that lead to install #2. This time I could get the drivers installed, but on reboot, just before the login screen I'd get a flash of 2 lines of text (too quick to actually read) and black screen. I'd need to reboot into recovery mode and uninstall the drivers. I tried three different driver versions both OOTB and the PPA from this site: https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa. Eventually, I screwed something else up and here I am on 3rd install
(maybe this is a sign I'm just too stupid for Linux and deserve whatever crap MS says I should use)

 

Is it a wireless driver issue? How is your wifi connection looking? Could you post more details about the hardware in your system?

 

Not sure what the deal is. I fstab-ed my NAS into being and it seems to be getting decent-ish speeds now. Nothing else changed, same network, same settings, literally within touching distance of the router. The only "problem" is that the copy progress bar isn't real-time (jumps ~15%, stops for a bit. Jumps ~25%, stops. repeat until done)

That said, I think I might be done with this experiment again. There just seems to be way too many things in the way of getting basic functionality (granted my idea of basic functionality could be pretty far from yours). Under 2hrs. battery life, there are too many Windows program that I need/want that are just way too gimped in Wine and it's starting to reek of effort trying to sort things out (yes, I'm old, lazy and impatient - and Ultramale's clean install guide does make Windows suck less, I'll just need to make sure to use an older version and threaten my laptop with fire if it ever "upgrades")

 

Network transfers are much slower than local disk access. Especially when using NVME, even SATA @ 550MB/sec can be way faster depending on your network LAN speed, and when introducing RAID - higher speed combined throughput, forget it, you are better off with a storage connection over a network connection.

IDK which progress bar you are looking at, but if it is being displayed from the NAS the data throughput is filling the pipe and the updates to the web page / GUI app will lag while the transfer is going on. If you are monitoring the transfer via a local GUI to the PC Linux / Windows progress bar, it might be storage lag slowing down screen updates.

To really get high speed throughput to a NAS comparable to a local NVME or RAID, or even SATA going at 550MB/sec, you would need a 10Gbit or faster link between NAS and clients:

"Theoretical throughput of Gigabit Ethernet with jumbo frames, and using TCP:

997Mbps – .886 – 1.33 – 1.55 – .443 – 2.21 – 2.21 – 1.33 = 987Mbps or 123MB/s."

https://www.cablefree.net/wireless-technology/maximum-throughput-gigabit-ethernet/

123MB/sec is well below 550MB/sec of SATA III, and 1/10th of a single NVME.

Scaling up to 2.5gbit, 5gbit, 10gbit, and 100gbit accordingly.

You can find multiple 100gbit interfaces on large NAS, along with dedicated protocol fiber channel links between NAS devices.

Pretty much consumer NAS aren't worth the trouble, it's better to have good local storage and make a copy.

I remember the first time I helped a large team of developers figure out why their $25k+ workstations and $500k servers + storage wouldn't let them all compile their huge code sets over the 10mbit ethernet hub network at the same time - or even 1 at a time.

A large order for large local HD's followed, with a source code management system hosted on the server(s) that was initially sync'd to each new disk by bringing the HD to the server, 1 at a time, then they only needed differential updates, which worked fine over the now upgraded 100mbit ethernet + switch - until the next version branching.

Even the smartest of us don't have clue if we don't know the technical details. And those guys were smart as heck. I really had to let them down easy.

 

Even with a fast enough network link, remote filesystem access (particularly for writing) will normally be slower than local due to synchronization latency. NFSv3 is particularly bad in this regard; it's all UDP. NFSv4 is better, over TCP.

I would not use SMB to serve to Linux systems if I could avoid it. The semantics of SMB are designed to match Windows filesystem semantics, not Linux, so some things will behave quite differently (case sensitivity being one such; Linux filesystems are case sensitive while Windows filesystems aren't).

 

Yeah have to factor in several "layers" of latency from the read speed on the nas > then the latency of the nas nic > then your network > then your nic...etc. A lot to factor in with network iops. As for the difference in windows vs Linux have you tried doing an update or possibly upgrade? Not familiar with mint and it's defaults, but try sudo apt-get update and possibly even sudo apt-get upgrade and see if there might be something missing. From there you could check out what driver you're using.

 

You can't connect local storage wirelessly nowadays (was possible with 802.11ad but it went the way of dodo). )'= The only reason I use NAS instead of DAS.

 

I've used Windows and Linux (Ubuntu and Fedora) on a nas, i never noticed a performance drop. Could it be something specific to the routing of the WD nas?

As far as the Nvidia drivers, they've been a pain for me as well. I was lucky that I found a detailed walk through when attempting the install on Fedora. Just make sure you have the correct drivers for your hardware and follow the install instructions to the letter for your version of linux.

 

Might also be what you're doing; if it's all bandwidth you might not notice that much of a dropoff (particularly if you're comparing against spinning drives); if it's a lot of small files or such you're going to have a big dropoff over just about any network filesystem (NFSv4 may be a little better, but still won't be great).

 

If you can get 40MB/s over wired, that seems to me like a problem with your wireless connection. IIRC Linux didn't work all that well with Atheros and Broadcom. Check your Wifi speeds/settings, maybe use a newer/proprietary driver if possible.

This is one of the reasons I can't go native Linux, nothing ever works properly. And nVidia with Linux? Fuggedaboutit *sigh*

 

I normally get full rated line speed (111 MB/sec or so on a 1Gb ethernet), and plenty of routers etc. have Linux as their baseline. So it very definitely can be done.

Wireless, you're so dependent on outside factors (like other neighborhood traffic), it's hard to make a definitive statement.

NVidia is a pain. Wishfully, one of these days they'll see the light.

But "nothing ever works properly" is most definitely not the case for a lot of people.

 

Yeah, those are wildly inaccurate statements by @jotm. It's understandable to get frustrated with setting up your particular hardware but saying nothing ever works in Linux is flamebait. Some of us here only use Linux, so obviously it works.

Atheros support is great, broadcom is spotty but sometimes good -- it used to be terrible 10 years ago.

 

Well, I apologize. I really, really want to use it as a main/host OS, and I try it now and then, but I'm stuck with Win10 (mostly because of the software available). On the bright side, Linux runs extremely well in a VM