[BB]

I have the SMB file shares working with my BDP-1 but they are VERY slow.   Typically I get around 200 to 500 Kb/sec when uploading files to my attached USB hard drive.   This speed seems very wrong.  What range of speeds are others seeing?

Both my BDP-1 and Windows 7 computer are hard wired to the same ethernet switch.  On both the BDP-1 Linux side and Windows 7 the ethernet interfaces show errors counts of zero.   This leads me to believe it has something to do with how SMB is configured on the BDP-1.

I also tried transferring data using a Windows XP computer that was connected via wifi, and the transfer rates between it and the BDP-1 were equally slow.

[unincognito]

Hi BB,

I get about 5MB per second (to the bdp-1's shared memory) while copying from my Windows 7 computer to my bdp-1 while my bdp-1 is connected to my gigabit switch via a dlink powerline av kit that limits the connection to about 158Mb/s (according to its little signal utility).  While copying to a usb thumb drive i only get about 500 to 1000KB per second, but gradually climes to about 2MB/s.

Chris

[BB]

I just confirmed that the poor transfer speed is between the BDP-1 and my external USB hard drive and has nothing to do with the network.  I logged into the BDP-1 command line using ssh and did this test....

root@bryston-bdp-1:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/HITACHI/test.img bs=8k count=10k
10240+0 records in
10240+0 records out
83886080 bytes (84 MB) copied, 49.4558 s, 1.7 MB/s

When this same Hitachi USB drive is hooked to a Windows system it achieves about 20 MB/s consistently.   So there is some kind of incompatibility between this drive and the BDP-1.

Also I have occasionally experienced skipping while listening to music on the BDP-1.  While a song is playing it will suddenly go silent for about 2 to 3 seconds then jump to a different location in the song when the sound returns.   I am beginning to wonder if this is due to the poor hard drive performance.

[unincognito]

Hi BB

Using the dd command didn't seem to provide very consistent results as I had ranges from 1.6MB/s to 7.2MB/s.  Timing the copy command got me more consistent results.

Code: [Select]

root@bryston-bdp-1:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/FLAC/test.img bs=8k count=10k
10240+0 records in
10240+0 records out
83886080 bytes (84 MB) copied, 53.8707 s, 1.6 MB/s
root@bryston-bdp-1:~# dd if=/live/image/live/filesystem.squashfs of=/media/FLAC/test.img bs=2048
138560+0 records in
138560+0 records out
283770880 bytes (284 MB) copied, 73.1445 s, 3.9 MB/s

root@bryston-bdp-1:~# time cp /live/image/live/filesystem.squashfs /media/FLAC/

real 0m41.508s
user 0m0.032s
sys 0m4.604s
root@bryston-bdp-1:~# ls -lh /live/image/live/filesystem.squashfs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 271M Apr 30  2012 /live/image/live/filesystem.squashfs
root@bryston-bdp-1:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/FLAC/test.img bs=8k count=10k
10240+0 records in
10240+0 records out
83886080 bytes (84 MB) copied, 11.6177 s, 7.2 MB/s
root@bryston-bdp-1:~#
root@bryston-bdp-1:~# time cp /live/image/live/filesystem.squashfs /media/FLAC/

real 0m42.372s
user 0m0.032s
sys 0m4.684s
Also I noticed the process mount.ntfs chew up my cpu resources in top.  So i am going to try a drive that is formatted Fat32.

Chris

[unincognito]

Hi All,

After performing the same tests with a drive formatted as Fat32 instead of NTFS, I found a significant increase in performance as seen here.  In some case almost double the performance.

Code: [Select]

root@bryston-bdp-1:~# time cp /live/image/live/filesystem.squashfs /media/MUSIC/

real 0m22.890s
user 0m0.008s
sys 0m5.156s
root@bryston-bdp-1:~# ls -lh /live/image/live/
total 565M
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5.2K Jun 16  2011 filesystem.manifest
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5.2K Jun 16  2011 filesystem.manifest-desktop
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 271M Apr 30  2012 filesystem.old
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 271M Apr 30  2012 filesystem.squashfs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 9.0M Sep 29  2011 initrd1.img
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 9.0M Sep 18  2011 initrd1.old
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 122K Jun 16  2011 memtest
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  20K Jun 16  2011 packages.txt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2.5K Jun 16  2011 parameters.txt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2.1M Sep 29  2011 vmlinuz1
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2.1M Sep 18  2011 vmlinuz1.old
root@bryston-bdp-1:~# dd if=/live/image/live/filesystem.squashfs of=/media/FLAC/test.img bs=2048
dd: opening `/media/FLAC/test.img': No such file or directory
root@bryston-bdp-1:~# dd if=/live/image/live/filesystem.squashfs of=/media/MUSIC/test.img bs=2048
138718+0 records in
138718+0 records out
284094464 bytes (284 MB) copied, 23.979 s, 11.8 MB/s

Again top indicated the cpu resources to be maxed, so it would appear that the transfer speed appears to be bottle necked by the AMD Geode processor found in the BDP-1.  This does make sense as USB is very software reliant, unlike other I/O like Firewire or thunderbolt that has its own hardware to deal with the data.

Cheers,
Chris

[terrycym]

If uploading more than one album to the BDP-1 drive, I find it so much quicker to plug the drive straight into the PC.
It's a shame that the BDP-1 usability has been nobbled by decisions to cut costs.
Another example is poor ability for the USB connections to provide sufficient power to external drives.
Ah well!

[James Tanner]

If uploading more than one album to the BDP-1 drive, I find it so much quicker to plug the drive straight into the PC.
It's a shame that the BDP-1 usability has been nobbled by decisions to cut costs.
Another example is poor ability for the USB connections to provide sufficient power to external drives.
Ah well!

Hi Terry

Not sure I understand 'cut costs'?

James

[terrycym]

The USB driver chip is shared amongst the various connectors rather than supply a uprated driver per connector that can supply adequate drive?

[James Tanner]

The USB driver chip is shared amongst the various connectors rather than supply a uprated driver per connector that can supply adequate drive?

Thats a function of the mother board chosen which was done for a number of reasons - no fans, no moving parts, industrial design etc.

James

[Marius]

Hi Chris,

Might this bottleneck be the reason for the distortion several forum members, including me, reported? When updating/transferring files to the BDP1 over the network or connecting a HDD, playing more often than not is distorted. Solution is to wait for the updating to be finished, and all goes very well. Unfortunately the updating process seems to take longer and longer with large libraries, thus making the wait for being able to play undistorted a rather missable 'feature'.

Have you got any suggestions to counter this?

Btw, only recently I experienced a minor but maybe related quirk: having paused the BDP1 and only resuming play the other day, it appeared to be unprepared: playing was garbled the same way for about 10 seconds, after which it settled and played fine. Something to do with the same buffers being empty?


Thanks,
Marius

please give some instructions on how to use the Nas settings in  MAx2. I tried to connect to my network fileshares, by entering login name and password, but only empty feedback-windows (error messages maybe) appear. A share is seen (albeit by its hardware name ), but I can not read any files on it through the MAx2 interface .

Would be so very nice to be able to read and play over the network......And being able to do away with the USB-hdd issues

Again top indicated the cpu resources to be maxed, so it would appear that the transfer speed appears to be bottle necked by the AMD Geode processor found in the BDP-1.  This does make sense as USB is very software reliant, unlike other I/O like Firewire or thunderbolt that has its own hardware to deal with the data.

Cheers,
Chris

[unincognito]

Hi Chris,

Might this bottleneck be the reason for the distortion several forum members, including me, reported? When updating/transferring files to the BDP1 over the network or connecting a HDD, playing more often than not is distorted. Solution is to wait for the updating to be finished, and all goes very well. Unfortunately the updating process seems to take longer and longer with large libraries, thus making the wait for being able to play undistorted a rather missable 'feature'.

Hi Marius,

It very well could be, while I develop more features for the BDP-1, I have to be very careful about how my programs and open source programs interact with each other.  I am often rewriting programs in different languages to get the best possible performance.  I mean you can ask James just how many variations of the Max 2 I had gone through, and then there are the versions of it that only exist on my my macbook because the performance was so atrocious.  Just take a look iun the folder "/var/www/dashcode" and you will see the various different versions of the mini interface.  An Interface I might add is going through yet another rewrite to use the same methods as the new Max 2 interface.  We chose the existing mainboard due to its reputation of a solid choice for this application, but its 500Mhz AMD Geode processor and 256MB Ram works well for audio playback.  I would like to add, that i mean no disrespect to the AMD Geode Chip, i think for a microprocessor that doesn't even require a heat sink of any kind to remain cool is incredibly impressive.  Once we start adding to it, it begins to run out of resources very quickly, especially with 176 and 192k material.  Running the top command from a login will show what i mean.

Regarding the NAS feature, it is in very early stages of development and will in all likley hood not be included in the next stable build.  However please see an bash script i have crafted for my own personal use.  If you go into the settings page, the second last item on the left column is "Satartup Script".  This page shows a large text area, copy the code below ( add your user name and password, share name, nas ip) each time your bdp-1 turns on it should mount your network share.

Cheers,
Chris

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash

mkdir /tmp/mnt
sleep 1
mount -t smbfs -o username=<user>,password=<password>,uid=106 \\\\<nas ip>\\<share> /tmp/mnt
sleep 1
ln -s /tmp/mnt/<folder on nas containing music> /media/NAS
sleep 1
mpc update NAS
sleep 1
frontscreen.sh NAS_ENABLED
Cheers,
Chris

[BB]

An update to my original post.....

I've discovered that I only experience the slow 200 KB/sec transfer speeds when I disconnect and re-connect my USB hard drive from the BDP-1.  But if I reboot the BDP-1 with the USB hard drive attached and never disconnect it while the BDP-1 is up, I will consistently see transfer speeds of about 5 MB/sec when accessing the network share.  Additionally, the random disconnects I was experiencing when copying large files to the BDP-1 network shares has vanished.

While not technically fast, 5 MB/sec is good enough for transferring a single album in FLAC format to the BDP-1 without becoming annoyed by the wait time.

And I agree with James's decision to use an industrial mainboard that has no moving parts inside the BDP-1.  I avoided purchasing the Oppo BDP-95 blu-ray player for this very reason.  The Oppo has a fan while the highly similar Cambridge Audio 751 does not.

[Marius]

Hi Chris,

Trying this, but won't work yet. Please help with the details:

I guess it is very specific about spaces and <>'s. No spaces after commas?

Do I replace the < and > or keep them around the login and network share ? Do I keep the uid=106? Share is a hardware name or just the name displayed in the max interface and can be anything as long as the ipaddress is exact?

On my Mac, the share drivename looks like /volumes/data/etc/music.  Should I fill in this whole path? And still keep the /media/nas you write in the script?

Thanks!

  This page shows a large text area, copy the code below ( add your user name and password, share name, nas ip) each time your bdp-1 turns on it should mount your network share.

Cheers,
Chris

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash

mkdir /tmp/mnt
sleep 1
mount -t smbfs -o username=<user>,password=<password>,uid=106 \\\\<nas ip>\\<share> /tmp/mnt
sleep 1
ln -s /tmp/mnt/<folder on nas containing music> /media/NAS
sleep 1
mpc update NAS
sleep 1
frontscreen.sh NAS_ENABLED
Cheers,
Chris

[Marius]

Hi Chris,
Things are happening in the Nas setup. Both my timecapsule folder Data, and the attached hdd are found and displayed grey, meaning they are selected and used, I suppose.

In the max2  home interface the timecapsule is displayed as unknown_CBF9a7 which is part of the Mac-address. No files or folders are selectable though, and nothing happens when I click the drive.

What todo ?

Marius

[unincognito]

Hi Marius,

Correct, you want to remove the pointy brackets '<' and '>' and yes part of the mac address is used to ensure unique names are used.

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash

mkdir /tmp/mnt
sleep 1
mount -t smbfs -o username=chris,password=mypassword,uid=106 \\\\192.168.1.103\\RAID10-4000 /tmp/mnt
sleep 1
ln -s "/tmp/mnt/FOLDER CONTAINING MY MUSIC" /media/NAS
sleep 1
mpc update NAS
sleep 1
frontscreen.sh NAS_ENABLED
btw marius, what is the name of the share? does it contain any spaces or characters not part of the alphabet i.e. (')?

Cheers,
Chris

[Marius]

My share is called Crebucon time capsule and the folder is on /volumes/data/name myname/muziek

Note the spaces in both, do i fill those with an underscore or not? Second question: do I use the 'volumes' or start the path from data/etc/etc.


Marius

Hi Marius,

Correct, you want to remove the pointy brackets '<' and '>' and yes part of the mac address is used to ensure unique names are used.

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash

mkdir /tmp/mnt
sleep 1
mount -t smbfs -o username=chris,password=mypassword,uid=106 \\\\192.168.1.103\\RAID10-4000 /tmp/mnt
sleep 1
ln -s "/tmp/mnt/FOLDER CONTAINING MY MUSIC" /media/NAS
sleep 1
mpc update NAS
sleep 1
frontscreen.sh NAS_ENABLED
btw marius, what is the name of the share? does it contain any spaces or characters not part of the alphabet i.e. (')?

Cheers,
Chris

[unincognito]

Hi Marius,

try forward slashes ie

 /volumes/data/name\ myname/muziek

chris

[Marius]

Hi Chris,
Thanks, I will.
Three questions:
do I have to fill in the blanks in my share name to make it crebucon_time_machine or not?

On my time machine I want to read a folder with my music files, but also the attached hdd. Both are recognized in the Nas setup page, but they are not mentioned separately in the startup script. Is that necessary/possible ?

In max2 only the unknown_cbf9a7 is shown, still no name given or the hdd attached to it, the one shown in the Nas setup. I that expected behavior?

Thanks, Marius

Hi Marius,

try forward slashes ie

 /volumes/data/name\ myname/muziek

chris

[Marius]

Well, tried it all, to no avail....
Maybe the Timecapsule is a server and because of that not usable as a Nas for the Bdp-1?
Too bad really. Hope you'll be able to make it happen .
Thanks,
Marius

[unincognito]

Hi Marius,

Sorry for not being more clear, no underscores but you do have to place a forward slash (\) in front of each space ie (/volumes/data/name\ myname/muziek).  Also is the time capsule sharing your audio files via Apples AFP protocol or SMB (aka samba aka windows share)?  I don't believe i have installed the packages needed for afp as of yet, as when i started this project i wanted to concentrate on one protocol at a time.  Because smb was available on both windows and mac's i thought i would start with it.  Also i am going to ask James about getting a time capsule in as i'm sure many of our users have one and we do want to test with an assorted number of devices.

Cheers,
Chris