Samba File Transfer - HELP!

andfor

Hello.

I'm having a nightmare getting samba to work with Windows 10. I have a music archive on my laptop HDD and all I would like to be able to do is transfer over a copy of new album to Rune when I get one.

I have an external HDD on the RPi3 and I am able to see the network folder and can read he contents of /mnt/MPD/USB/[myhdd] on the laptop. I have updated samba with rern's addons menu.

Sometimes it works flawlessly. I can transfer an album folder with no problem. Other times there are one of many issues happening:

- Transfer starts, but Laptop network connection drops completely.
- Transfer starts but slows to a crawl and just bumps along going nowhere, still connected.
- Windows shows me the transfer dialogue box but progress stays at 0%. Can't cancel. Explorer crashes.
- Unexpected network error 0x8007003B.
- Windows tells me the network path can't be found. Even though I can see the damn folder!

I have attempted many fixes suggested by various internet forums, but problems persist.

The Pi and the laptop are both connected with WiFi dongles. (I don't have a choice in this. Has to be WiFi). Maybe WiFi is the problem, but I don't use it all that often and I'm only transferring one album at a time. And I know it CAN work! Surely WiFi should handle a single album?

I'm not really asking for solutions, although if anyone has any insight I'd gladly accept it. All I want to know is this: does anyone use wifi to successfully transfer album files to a Pi HDD mount without all these problems? And reliably?

If it's possible for others then I'm hopeful to keep trying.

Thanks in advance.....

hondagx35

Hi andfor,

All I want to know is this: does anyone use wifi to successfully transfer album files to a Pi HDD mount without all these problems? And reliably?

I use Wifi to transfer music to one of my Rune boxes and it works without issues, but I do not use samba for this.
I use WinSCP connected via sftp instead.

Frank

- Use sftp to access files on Rune Audio:
Get WinSCP from here and install it.
When it opens setup the following:
- Session
File Protocol: SCP
Host name: The IP address of you Raspberry Pi
User name: root
Password: rune

That's it, connect and you can transfer files just by dragging and dropping.

andfor

Hi Frank,

Yes I have WinSCP, it was the first file transfer method I tried, but had found that it had the same choking behaviour: starting a transfer ok, but then slowing to a crawl. That's why I was messing about with samba in the first place.

Just tried WinSCP now and it worked fine. Whatever I've done since the last time I tried it has made the difference.

I guess I just liked the idea of having a network drive accessible without opening another program. Is samba just not suitable for such file transfers?

Thanks

R101

andfor,

I use Samba to transfer ripped files to a Pi3 without problems, but I use a dongle rather than the integrated wifi. I found the integrated wifi pretty unreliable. I also had problems persuading the Pi to use AES encryption rather than TKIP, which slowed everything down to "g" speed.

If you have neighbours, it might be worth using a scanning utility to check that they are not using the same channel as you are.

andfor

Hi R101,

Thanks for the input. I have an Edimax 7612UAn dongle on my Pi3 (it's the one with a long antenna not the nano size) and the integrated WiFi is disabled. I have a good WiFi signal.

I fiddled with the interface configuration file to get rid of TKIP and use AES (based on internet suggestions). Not sure if this was necessary.

I have scanned my WiFi channels and selected the best ones. I didn't mention that my laptop is on 5ghz and the pi on 2.4ghz, but that shouldn't matter, right? As I say the signal is very strong.

Have you altered anything to get yours working or is it just stock? Would you mind sharing your smb.conf file? Just for comparison. There's a chance I altered something crucial, but lost track of it.

And btw I have had network disconnections using WinSCP now as well, so there's something network-related going on between the laptop, router and the pi. I know this because I can use a mobile phone to access the Rune UI as well as SSH when Windows isn't cooperating.

It's just a mess. I'm a hair's breadth away from re-imaging my sdcard. Don't want to do this as I've got everything else set up just right.

Going to try and re-trace my steps first and undo all the tweaking....maybe I shot myself in the foot somewhere along the way.

R101

My smb.conf is unchanged, but I have attached it anyway.

If you can copy files to other devices on the Samba network without problems, there are a couple of things I would look at on the Pi. First is to check that the wifi power management is turned off. You can check that with

iwconfig

The other thing is to check that the supply voltage at the Pi is not near the lower limit. If it is, the additional load during a file transfer might just cause it to drop out. You do not say whether the HDD is powered from the port.

The main thing is to be sure that you can send files to devices other than the Pi without any problem. If you have a USB port on the router, try sending files to that rather than the Pi, just to prove which link is playing up.

I don't use Windows, so that's all I can suggest, I'm afraid.

andfor

Thanks.

I've checked with a multimeter and I've got a good supply to the Pi. Power management is off (by default I think in 0.4b). The HDD is run off the usb port, but I don't think that's the problem. I have been able to transfer several albums at a go without any issues in the past.

Besides, one of the fail states is that the laptop disconnects itself from the router (no internet, no network connection), which can't be an issue with the Pi. It's baffling.

I'm going to set up a second Pi with a fresh rune install to test like you suggested.

andfor

Hello again.

I thought I'd post a report on this issue for anyone who might be having similar problems.

After trying almost everything short of devil-worship and witchcraft I think I finally found a setup that works. Just to be clear - I have a Windows 10 laptop and am using a USB WiFi dongle on both the laptop and the pi. So this solution is the best I found for a completely wireless setup. I had installed rern's Samba upgrade using the Addons menu (#58653 and this altered the Samba config files. I think rern's setup was optimised for wired networks so maybe this is why I was having problems.

I experimented with numerous options in the samba config file at /etc/samba/smb-dev.conf and settled on the following:

[global]

	#Accounts and Security
	netbios name = RuneAudio
	workgroup = WORKGROUP
	server string = Samba %v on %L
	guest account = root
	map to guest = bad user
	server min protocol = SMB2
	security = user
	
	#Disable Printer Sharing
	load printers = no
	printcap name = /dev/null
        disable spoolss = Yes


	#Performance Tweaks
	server multi channel support = yes
        socket options = IPTOS_THROUGHPUT SO_KEEPALIVE
        deadtime = 30	
	use sendfile = yes
	aio read size = 16384
	aio write size = 16384
	min receivefile size = 16384
	write cache size = 262144
	nt pipe support = no	

#======================= Share Definitions =======================

	directory mask = 0777
	create mask = 0777


[Music]
	comment = browseable, read, write, guess ok, no password
	path = /mnt/MPD/USB/sda1-ata-HGST_HTS545050A7/
	writable = yes
	read only = no
	public = yes
	follow symlinks = yes
	wide links = yes

And it finally works reliably. I'm getting about 7-9 MB/s which isn't blistering speed, but good enough for transferring an album at a time.

Maybe this will help someone else? But for now this is solved. Thanks for the help.