D-Link Forums
The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => D-Link Storage => DNS-321 => Topic started by: nrf on January 04, 2009, 08:13:30 AM
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In the hopes that some firmware update will be happening someday, I think we should have a thread with a concise list of issues. I'm going to dump some of them here.
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1) If you change the info for a file, resulting in a rename and new tags, the server still tries to present the file with the old tags and uses the old file name, resulting in silence when you try to play it from a client itunes, and itunes putting a ! for that file (visible once you move the selection off that song.)
2) a manual refresh of itunes does not pick up the change filename nor the changed tags, but resetting the box does result in the correct tags being presented by the server and playing the file then works. It is possible that this server will eventually notice the change but if it doesn't during a manual update, something is still wrong! If there is a time delay after which the server might notice the change, please publish that constraint in the documentation.
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It would be helpful if the documentation included a list of the file formats that are handled by the itunes server feature.
I get that .wav files are not "self describing" and will deal with that, but please document those formats that are supported.
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the admin page for ntp says to provide a server to keep the clock up to date at all times. in reality, many 321's lose time on the order of minutes per day. The promise of keeping the clock always up to date could be better served if the update interval were tunable, even if it is limited to a minimum of 2 hours, for example. I use 'pool.ntp.org' so don't worry about being tossed off the server for too frequent requests.
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I use pool.ntp.org for all of my windows and linux boxes. none of them time out or have trouble reaching the server. The DNS-321, on the other hand, seems to have a 50/50 chance of failing to update. It also happens with the dlink ntp server so you can't blame pool.ntp.org. I think there is some timing or other issue that needs to be addressed in the 321.
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Again, documention for this feature should list the file formats and constraints of this capability.
on the plus side, this server did notice retag/file renames without having to do a manual refresh or reboot of the box.
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the gpl source code on the site does not seem to have been updated to go with the 1.01 firmware update.
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Mail options have no configurable ports
Adding a second drive goofs up shares and they have to be recreated.
Fan running when not needed.
Users can belong only to one group, making groups nearly useless.
UPNP often reports wrong IP
Just off the top of my head.
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M4V file extension videos do not show up on XBOX 360, must be renamed to MP4. Conversely, TVersity and Twonky use M4V extensions, MP4 extensions do not show up.
Must change third octet in DNS-321 IP to anything other than 0 ( zero ) so UPNP works properly.
The All Accounts check box disappears on web page when setting up share permissions.
Setup shares and their permissions disappear on reboot.
Anonymous email alerts ( no username / password required ) do not have anything in the FROM: line of the sent email. The email doesn't show up in GMAIL RSS feed.
Authenticated email alerts sent through ISPs mail server fail, GMail does not.
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incomplete page output, refresh hangs loading itunes admin page. have a huge database and media server turned on ok, now can't turn on itunes server!
(actually, server must be rebooting as local itunes skips to the next song shortly after!)
I noticed a 'web gui crash' issue supposedly fixed by firmware 1.01, does this need to be revisited? My test case would be:
* turn on the itunes server with a good chunk of music, not all of which is of a form recognized by the server
* maintain that set of music by editing, adding more, etc.
* turn off the itunes server
* even more maintenance/addition/editing, etc
* now go back and try to turn the server back on!
that is my scenario in a nutshell - last step results in crash/incomplete page dished out by the gui and reboot of at least one process if not more.
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given that the box seems to be resetting, it would be good to have access to the time that a last reboot took place for troubleshooting purposes. as long as some visibility is there, why not the same data on a per-process basis in case the web server process is dying but not the whole box etc...
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when accessing as an album, the tracks of the album are presented in alpha order not track# order! ???
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I added/maintained a number of tracks but the media server did not notice them all, I had to do a manual refresh. It may just notice small numbers of changes as sometimes it appears to work.
???
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wow, things just keep getting better! several times now some of my files on a private share got greyed-out in my vista explorer view, and if I tried to open them I was told this computer could not access them. the only way to clear the situation is to reboot both the DNS321 and the pc.
fwiw, no other computer had been accessing the files, only the one that got the message, and it had not even accessed those particular files so there is no reason to lock them.
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One feature I'd really like to see is the ability to copy files from one HD to the other internal to the DNS-321 bus.
I don't want to run RAID1, but I do want to backup certain files to both drives and have the ability to move things from one drive to the other without having to drag it across the LAN.
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actually, I think this can be done! if you get into the file transfer page, you can schedule a copy of a folder or file locally to local, this may not be very feature-rich but it does represent a local copy that can be scheduled. something like this:
logon for Downloads
choose either file or folder from pulldown
on the URL line hit the 'local' button and choose the source
on the Save To line, hit the 'browse' button and choose the destination
choose the 'when'
choose recurrence
choose whether incremental or not
then press 'save settings' button.
(wish granted?)
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@nrf,
Thanks man! Yeah, I guess I've never logged into the "Downloads" part of the GUI before.
Cheers.
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after playing around with my own linux system, it appears that the read performance of this box could be improved by some tuning of buffer sizes and tcp options. right now, a 4k jumbo packet 'read' operation on this box is no faster than a normal 1500 mtu operation.
perhaps the ibm redbook on linux performance tuning could be mentioned to your slaves who are doing the firmware work.
<update>
at this point it seems the transfer rates are on par with similar and even more expensive units, so I am moderating my stand on this. however, one must ask if jumbo packet size is a true feature as it provides no benefits. if this is a hardware horsepower limitation, why bother 'supporting' jumbo packets? or if you are going to support jumbo packets, why not at least find out the true limiting factor? is it the processor speed? lack of dma? not enough buffers? tcp tuning?
it seems even a 'atom' based tiny pc can provide transfer rates in the area of 2-3x that these cute little boxes can...
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changing the hard set, 2000 file listing FTP truncate limitation as outlined here:
http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=3922.msg22086#msg22086
hardcode changing the setting in the PureFTP shell file would work on a normal Linux server (and obviously hacking the PureFTP on the DNS could be done).
So it'd be nice to have either a simple tick box expanding the truncate to something really high, or a field input to set the truncate number specifically.