QNAP TS-877 Truenas Journal

couldn’t figure it out. stuck at the authorization part.

so i went a different route. my 2nd backup is truenas. so i managed to create a SSH keypair using the truenas semi automatic to assist me

when doing this there a few things to be mindful of

  • create a user first e.g. i named mine rsync for simplicity
  • create home directory for the user
  • enable ssh login (maybe not needed but i did just in case)
  • make sure this user has access to the shares for read/write
  • make sure this user has a ssh key setup

go to truenas credentials and setup a keypair to connect the 2 truenas together using it. you know if you did it right if it added it without complaint

so anyway i then created a rsync job and ran it, but i did not see the push work. i checked logs it simply said the job completed, but i see the directory was skipped. which is not what i wanted. no idea.

finally i did it.

what eventually worked was going to user on the ts-877 and enable ssh to root. not ideal but it’s what worked.

i will later see if i can get a working similar setup but is more sane at a later date.

Some useful links that helped me troubleshoot

https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/14p54c5/rsync_deprecated/

so yeah managed to test the rsync using HBS on 253D to one way sync (push) to the TS-877 (truenas) works.

so 1 share done, few more to go.

This whole experience reminded me why i very much appreciate HBS. There may be better alternatives but this works very well for me in terms of ease of use.

Truenas does have data protection > rsync. Some parts are easy, others requires know how to populate e.g. auxiliary parameters. A newbie like me wouldn’t know what to do with that. But in HBS they got a bunch of options you can toggle on/off easily. Whereas in truenas you need to know what those options are and type them out in the correct format…

the ssh pairing, can’t really complain here, since from a security stand point it’s highly recommended. truenas even tried to make it easier with their truenas ssh key pairing using their truenas auto assist mode (only works with other truenas). This helped me.

But without it, just look at raidowl’s video. You would have to go to commandline and do a bunch of stuff to get ssh setup, then go back to truenas and paste the public key there. QNAP has their own particular method for setting up SSH, which i successfully did last time through hacking away at it, but forgot.

x-x; just saying with hbs it’s more or less immediate. you go enable SSH, then you can use ssh. Heck you can run HBS with it disabled and it still works (better without the performance penalty) then connect to another qnap without all this back and forth.

more guides would be helpful like step1…step2… Or a wizard to set it up. just don’t expect newbies like me to know all the steps cause most likely we don’t we will stumble x-x;

So i imagine if someone was trying to move to qnap, they had better know how they are going to recover their data. If it’s just an external usb storage, just plug it in then copy the data easy. But for another NAS different brand, rsync is usually the common option afaik.

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some screenies i couldn’t add to old posts.

Spam F7 then select your usb stick to then be able to install truenas

i tried installing to these 2 m.2 ssd sata drives didn’t work (well it did, but it couldn’t be booted from). so i added to the external usb m.2 nvme ssd. You don’t see it in these screenshots but it does get listed and can be selected from here without issue

Spam F2 to get into the bios

managed to get HBS to restore from my TS-253D (with the TL-D400S connected to it where the backup is stored), to the TS-877 (running truenas).

checklist of other things on the to do list

  • complete the restoration of my backup (i have at least 3 backup sources. yes i am paranoid :rofl: than most people, 1 is more than enough. 3-2-1 is the golden standard if you are able to do that, do it)

  • fine tune truenas settings (double check permissions, tightening insecure settings, etc… just checking anything i overlooked)

  • restore my docker containers (long term project. won’t be done anytime soon. bit swamped already with doing a lot of work lately on this project xd)

  • do a speed test for local file transfers between desktop pc and NAS over 10g SFP+ fiber optic (multimode om3 LC to LC) cable. Tools i normally use are iperf, openspteedtest. Or just use windows explorer for a basic test.

  • setup a backup jobs from TS-877 to TL-253D (TL-D400S) and other backup destinations (i will do this at the very last once i am fully setup. so won’t be done anytime soon)

setting up email notifications for truenas seemed easy. you can either manually input email smtp settings or do the gmail oauth.

done in a few clicks. Then browse to user and add emails for them to receive the notifications. Done.

compared to qnap qts, setting in qnap is also easy, but it’s a bit more nested deeper into settings. They also have something like notification center where you can further fine tune notifications in one single place. not sure about truenas. either way i like the truenas notifications.

hm i see hbs i am maxing 95 MB/s. In the server connection test earlier it said i got like 120-250 or something i forgot. Probably the later because the 253D is 2.5gbe so that is the bottleneck.

As for why its transfering at half of that not sure but it’s fast enough for me.

The real test will be done later. This will be between the TS-877 and desktop pc, both connected to the same switch using SFP+ 10g fiber optic. so i expected this to have the best result.

Back when i was using QNAP QTS for the TS-877, i noticed an issue in smb file explorer when transfering from desktop to NAS, it would be very slow. It throttles down to 50-80 (doesn’t max at 250 MB/s). But when i transfer from NAS to desktop it does 250 MB/s.

So i switched to fiber optic 10g, and noticed the same issue.

Now i’m testing if moving from QTS to truenas makes a difference or not, because i had my suspicions QTS was the culprit but i had no proof. So i’m going to find out soon.

Or the culprit could be windows 11 themselves

they claim it’s been fixed, but some users reported it hasn’t which i too sus might be the case.

The first bug i noticed for R1 Dragonfish

doesn’t seem too critical will just ignore it.

hm 1gbe for hbs :thinking:

maybe after it completes this share recover, i will shutdown and move the sfp+ pcie to the proper slot and see if anything changes?

But i want to test the windows 11 smb file explorer transfer speed first before i consider doing that.

Another possible bug i’m experiencing.

truenas UI lag/slowdown to the point it’s very noticeable

before it was fine didn’t notice this. but don’t know why this is now happening. I can’t even restart because i have an active backup job running.

Just how slow is the UI?

Well when trying to login, the login page took 5-10 minutes to properly get to the login page before i could login (after time out for inactivity log out).

Then when i wanted to create a test dataset, it got stuck and wouldn’t let me save. had to wait another 5 minutes or so before i could.

That kind of slow down yikes.

Seems like a temporary fix of sorts

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i found this
https://www.reddit.com/r/unRAID/comments/uuk3u1/will_hba_card_with_pcie_20_x8_in_a_pcie_30_x4/

:thinking:

This is the M.2 nvme usb enclosure i am using

and the m.2 nvme sata i used with it

Well the 10gtek Dac arrived. But… the sfp+ om3 lc to lc fiber optic works… so don’t really need it at this point. I’ll still keep it for future projects (DAC is still handy to have around).

Maybe if we hit 100 likes for the thread i will test it out for you guys if i see there is demand for this :sweat_smile:

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For some reason, I haven’t experienced this issue for the last couple days. I’m not sure what triggered the issue to start, or what caused it to go away.

At the time I was experiencing the problems, I was moving 170TB of small files between pools with rsync. Millions of files and directories. Around 2-3 days ago, I started another rsync job of the same amount of data, but it’s very large files so significantly fewer files and folders.

I noticed you said that you were doing a backup – does it also have a lot of small files? Some of the errors I got were related to iwatch/inotify, and I wonder if it’s just getting exhausted?

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most of it is video files ranging from 200-600mb. some occasionally 1-3gb each.

now that you mention that… :thinking:

Also noticed the slow down went away. what changed? i didn’t even reboot yet and the backup is still ongoing at 74% still

speeds 92 MB/s

The share i am currently restoring via rsync mostly videos.

The other i am going to restore later is the one with many smaller files like pictures, music, documents etc, as well as videos.

Hm, when you’re back to the smaller files, maybe it’ll return to slow-mode?

The past couple days I’ve been moving videos ranging from 25-75GB each on average. The UI has been snappy. Prior to that I was moving millions of files, all under 1GB or so, with millions of folders. Maybe exhausted the iwatch and whatever else that middlewared needs to function.

Would be curious to hear if your smaller file restore later causes the issue again. Good luck!

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noticed my backup got interupted midway


heard a beep then later noticed this in log. I see it’s transfering again. Not sure what happened there.

There is a possibility that the pcie for the sff card is coming loose. But i checked in QTS UI it still detects tl-d400s so i think that’s fine, will keep an eye for now.

saw an explanation here

When connecting to a remote system via SSH, you might encounter the error Client_loop: send disconnect: Broken pipe.

In this tutorial, we will see why this happens and address the error.

Client_loop: send disconnect: Broken pipe Error

The error is simply a disconnection message that notifies you that your SSH connection timeout has been exceeded.

This is a period of inactivity during which no Linux command is executed or issued from the client side. When this happens, the SSH session is terminated, effectively disconnecting you from the remote server.

Most users will usually press ‘ENTER’ or a key on the keyboard to avoid having an idle SSH session which will cause the disconnection to the host. However, this can tedious and time-wasting.

Thankfully, SSH default configuration settings provide a few parameters that you can configure to keep your SSH connections active for longer periods of time.

Fix Client_loop: send disconnect: Broken pipe Error

To resolve this issue, you need to increase the SSH connection timeout on the client. To do so, modify the default SSH configuration file which is usually at /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

$ sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Be sure to locate these two parameters: ClientAliveInterval and ClientAliveCountMax. Let’s check out what they do.

  • ClientAliveInterval – This is the period of inactivity after which the SSH server sends an alive message to the remote client that is connected to it.
  • ClientAliveCountMax – This is the number of attempts that the server will make to send the alive message from the server to the client.

We will set the two values as follows:

ClientAliveInterval 300 ClientAliveCountMax 3

qnap website
/en-in/how-to/faq/article/hbs3-backup-job-to-hbs2-rtrr-server-fails-with-error-broken-pipe

yeah i will be sure to let you know.

when doing this i will be moving the sfp+ to the other slot to see if there is any difference in performance or not

already answered the m.2 satas how that was installed, via the QWA wireless addon card (maybe this is what is causing issue with booting it)

This TS-877 is limited to 2.5’’ sata which it has 2 slots. This is most likely to work (since it’s a direct connection to the board without any sort of intermediaries), and i may pursue this in the future. Is there perhaps a way to clone truenas off the usb m.2 nvme onto a pair of 2.5’''sata ssds ? :thinking: or do i have to do everything again from scratch…

not sure what you mean sata dom. The dom i didn’t see where it’s located because i didn’t plan to remove it physically to begin with. Unlike the TS-253D it would be a bit much to dismantle that :sweat_smile: