Archive for the ‘Western Digital’ Category

Tip: Optimizing WD My Cloud NAS drive Part2

Monday, September 1st, 2014

Hi Folks,

let’s continue possible optimization for the WD MyCloud NAS drive. In the last part we killed not really needed  services which consumes a bunch of CPU resources but there are still some other services that could be skipped.

First of all i don’t have any Apple devices in my environment and already disabled the itunes server and Time Machine Mac-Backups  in the MyCloud configuration but still there is a netatalk (Apple network communication) service running.. Why can i not configure this in the WD GUI?

So we need putty again…

Like in Part 1 you have to open a SSH connection to the MyCloud, proceed with Step 1 to 3 from Part 1.

1) To stop the “netatalk” Apple network service enter the following command: service netatalk stop

2) If you want to “stop” it after a reboot enter: crontab -e

3) Scroll down in the shown editor and add as last “new” line the command: @reboot /bin/sh /etc/rc2.d/S50netatalk stop

4) Press ctrl-x -> y -> enter to save the changes

 

Next point… WD has enabled IPv6 in the used Debian distribution, what a nonsense! You can’t configure it, you can’t use it but still it’s enabled and consumes network resources (doesn’t matter if used or not, it creates IPV6 related traffic at anytime if enabled). Yes, this is no joke! So let’s remove it.

To disable IPV6 follow the steps below:

1) Connect thru the SSH console

2) Enter the following command (use copy and paste to enter the command in putty, it’s one line of code!), this disables ipv6 on demand:
echo '/sbin/ifconfig eth0 inet6 del `ifconfig | /bin/grep "Scope:Link" | /bin/sed -e "s/^.*addr: //" -e "s/ .*//"` '> /bin/disableipv6

3) Enter the following command, this modifies the permanent ipv6 configuration (it’s one line of code):
echo "echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/disable_ipv6" >> /bin/disableipv6

4) Enter the following command: chmod a+x /bin/disableipv6

5) Verify the script, enter ifconfig and verify the ipv6 address shown for the eth0 adapter. Now execute the disableipv6 command and verify with ifconfig that the ipv6 address is gone for eth0. If the ipv6 address is not gone or you received an error check the script with nano /bin/disableipv6

6) If the ipv6 address was gone after executing the disableipv6 command execute crontab -e

7) Scroll down in the shown editor and add as last “new” line the command: @reboot /bin/sh /bin/disableipv6

8) Press ctrl-x -> y -> enter to save the changes

9) Reboot the device by using the reboot command

 

Please note, other options to disable IPV6 will be overwritten by the WD configuration tools so you have to use this way. Step 3 is required to modify the default configuration which will be overwritten during bootime by WD configuration tools, it’s required regarding the fact that some services/configurations might restart the network services and in this case the previous on demand deactivation will not work anymore. So we need two ways to prevent ipv6. 🙂 Also if you are using ifconfig you will see that the dropped RX frames will increase, this is by design and counts ipv6 frames from other devices in the network which can not be handled anymore and it’s not critical.

Reboot the device to take over the network configuration, after the reboot connect via SSH and enter the command ifconfig to verify the result but wait some time, it maybe take a while until all cron commands are executed.

These two steps will also increase the performance again and should be used with the configuration done in Part 1 of the WD MyCloud optimization article.

Results so far:

With my two 3TB WD MyCloud drives i was able to increase the performance for writing a large file from max. 2-6 mb/s up to max. 70-90 mb/s. This could be reproduced with both drives, both drives currently host more than 30.000 files for tests, mostly images coming from misc clipart collection DVD’s and own pictures. Important: Before you copy a large amount of files make sure that the DLNA Database update service is not running, this can be checked quite simple in the WebGui -> Settings -> Media -> Last refresh. If last refresh shows “running” wait until it finished. As already written i will look out for an alternative DLNA solution but this will be a future step. Tip for the WD Support and R&D Team: If you try to reproduce customer issues try to fill up the HDD with 30.000 or more files hosted in the public default shares, otherwise you will not see any issues and it’s quite easy to blame customers for there network without any real reproducing. Iam quite sure that the weakness of the software is known at WD and it doesn’t make sense to have a 2,3 or 4TB NAS to only save a few large files… Nobody will do this and use the device in this way.

Cheers

Michael

P.S.: Like everytime no warranty from my side, iam not responsible for any damage or the loss of warranty related to the provided tweaks.

Tip (Updated 2): Optimizing WD My Cloud NAS drive Part1

Thursday, August 28th, 2014

Hi,

are you using a WD My Cloud NAS drive with a couple of files on it, like pictures or what ever? Did you get a “ultra” poor performance if you transfer new files to it or a “worse” performance in the online GUI? You got connections drops thru FTP, SMB or cloud access?

Of course the WD Support will tell you it’s a bad network cable, a bad LAN/WiFi or worse router configuration but mostly it’s poor development on the highest level done by WD! To much features, bad development and a weak hardware is a really bad combination; the result is called: WD MyCloud.

Want to check it out? Ok.. Try this (iam using Firmware v04.00.00-607 at the moment):

1) Open the WD My Cloud Web Interface and enable in the Network configuration settings the SSH console, this can take some time regarding the increddible bad performance that could be possible.. Reason later.

2) Download and install putty from www.putty.org or use any other SSH client/terminal.

3) Connect to the WD My Cloud with putty, username is by default “root” with the password “welc0me” (o = zero in welcome).

4) The next step can have a impact on the warranty.. Two ultra poor developed services are running at the WD MyCloud to create thumbs of the files on the NAS if possible. These services seams to be very very very slow depending on the amount of files on the my cloud and causing mostly all effects like slow communication/gui or network drops. It doesn’t matter if you have the “public” WD Cloud feature enabled or not.. These services are running all the time and consume all the CPU resources without any sense. So enter the following commands to stop this madness:

/bin/sh /etc/rc2.d/S86wdphotodbmergerd stop
/bin/sh /etc/rc2.d/S85wdmcserverd stop

Don’t log off from the SSH console now!

These services are not really important. If you are using the WD online cloud service, you will not get thumbprints for your pictures anymore but this is still better than can’t access anything at anytime and have a NAS performance like using a old 14400 bps analog modem or sometimes 300 bps thru a bad wire… 🙁

Now try to copy some files to the MyCloud.. It should be much faster and also the web front end should not show any big performance issues anymore. If you can verify the result you can disable the services until the next firmware update arrives with the next step.

5) Disable the crap… This should work until you update the MyCloud to a new firmware version. Enter the commands exactly like written below incl. the #:

# update-rc.d S86wdphotodbmergerd disable
# update-rc.d S85wdmcserverd disable

Update 2: It seams to be that some other script enable the services again.. So here is an alternative solution.

a) In the SSH session enter: crontab -e
b) In the editor scoll down (arrow keys) a little bit and enter the following lines exactly as written as new lines:
@reboot /bin/sh /etc/rc2.d/S86wdphotodbmergerd stop
@reboot /bin/sh /etc/rc2.d/S85wdmcserverd stop
c) Press ctrl+x -> Y -> ENTER

6) Done, you can reboot the device now to verify the results.

Also you can open the twonky server running at the MyCloud (http://*wdip*:9000) and set the rescan intervall for multimedia files in the twonky server advanced settings to 12 hours = 720 minutes (of course it could be less, depends how fast you need a refresh for the streaming service).

Do also not believe that the final result will be now a “ultra fast” NAS, the hardware still is weak in general and there might be much more “crap” code running at the MyCloud but it will be much more better than before.

I really like WD products but i have no clue how WD could sale/release some crap like this or to not offer an option to disable these or maybe other bad services by the regular web gui. Most people don’t need it.. So why not start to develop a good NAS and not the most worse NAS i ever got.

Want more optimizations for the MyCloud NAS? Look here

 

Cheers

Michael

P.S.: Of course iam not responsible for any damage or the loss of warranty by using SSH commands together with the WD MyCloud!!!