plugout.net

I have spend some time with trials of the latest Linux kernel 4.2.5

I Have it running now on lacie boxes nwsp and 5big2, the other kirkwoods will be straight forward to add.

This new kernel seems to improve download speed significant, I reach 100 MB/s on a 5big2 (and 50 MB/s on a nwsp2) this a factor 2 faster then with kernel 3.14.2 :shock:

However upload speed seems to be unchanged compared to current kernel (30 MB/s on 5big2 and 20 on nwsp2). Need to look if there are possibilities in this kernel that we can also boost the upload speed.

Great news !
That would make the NAS a sports car instead of a Fiat 500 :)

Any news about this wonderful development? I'd love 4.2.5 :) Also, I wonder if we could use OpenZFS for storage pools? Could be cool. I might attempt it.

I'd appreciate & reward the fast kernel, too. :))

I could release a package that you could test the new kernel, I am running it ow for a few moths and don't see issues. So safe to release for beta testing by others
I will make a package tomorrow

I woud like to test too:)

ok here it is, the zip archive contains the 4.2.5 kirkwood kernel, the tar archive the modules

To install:
Put the the tar archive with the modules in the system root (/) and extract the tar archive
Now you should have a directory /lib/modules/4.2.5 containing the modules


For the kernel you have two options (of course first extract the zip archive):

(1) use the fvdw-sl console to load an external kernel
(2) write it directly to /dev/sda6 (

Code: Select all

dd if=uImage-4.2.5-kirkwood-11 of=/dev/sda6

)

The advantage of option 1 is that in case the kernel will not run then you simple reboot the nas and it will come up with the old kernel.
The disadvantage of option 1 that you will need to do step 2 anyhow if you wan that your nas after reboot automatically uses this new kernel. If you don't do this then you will need to load the kernel via the console at every boot
Option 2 should be save the kernel runs on my system, and with the fvdw-sl console you can always restore the old kernel.

Please post speed tests !!

remember this is beta test.

--edit, kernel removed, seems unstable when transferring many files

Kernel Speeds 3.14.2 (FW 16.1)


Reading


Writing


This is the read/write speed unter Win7 Pro, Gigabit network, file copy from PC with SSD to NWS2 with 16.1. FW
The tranfered file was an image file with a size of 1,4GB

Testing ....

So ... testing done. Quite a simple job to replace the kernel.

Kernel Speeds 4.2.5

Reading (significant improvement! Up to 50MB/s )


Writing (same speed)



Question: in /lib/modules I see old module versions like 2.6.39.4, 3.13.6, 3.14.2, 3.9.5
can i delete theses folders and files ?

thanks for testing, yes that is what I got also a much better reading speed, unfortunate writing is not improved, I tried many options but up to now no success to improve write speed. Please use the kenel for a while and report problems encountered.

Question: in /lib/modules I see old module versions like 2.6.39.4, 3.13.6, 3.14.2, 3.9.5
can i delete theses folders and files ?

directories 2.6.39.4, 3.13..6 and 3.9.5 are empty, you can remove them if you wish.
They are there to make my life easy when making firmware upgrade packages for all devices, some use the 2.6.39.4 kernel and some were still using 3.9.5