Howdy!
You most likely got here by looking for the “iSCSI Target Support for ReadyNAS“. Unfortunately, your quest isn’t over yet, since the downloads have moved to a new location. This way it’s easier for me to release updates and, to be frank, it’s easier for you to find them.
I will still update this page whenever there’s a new release available.
Current iSCSI Releases for ReadyNAS:
- 1.4.20.2-readynas-1.0.5
This is the current release built from the “stable” branch of the iSCSI Enterprise Target Project
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Thanks a lot Stefan — I have iSCSItarget_0.4.17-readynas-1.0.1 running on RAIDiator 4.1.5 and nothing got bricked. ;-)
One small thing: the docs say, in step #7, to shut down the iscsi target after the line “… Rebooting”. I believe that should be after the closing fi of the if block.
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You’re right of course. Netgear changed the
script with RAIDiator 4.1.4 and I completely forgot to update the docs. Thanks for the heads-up. The documentation in the Wiki is fixed now.
I’m really lost, i know nothing about ssh i’ve installed everything but the part about configuring the device or the file i cant. Please advise step by step for dummies…
Actually I was under the impression that the information given here for the .bin version was as close to a step by step guide than you can get.
I revised the documentation a bit now to make it clearer. Or at least I hope so. If that’s still not good enough I’d need more information about the specific problems you encounter.
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I’ve got the service installed, LUN file created, config file in place, and service running seemingly happily. However when I attempt to connect to the target from an initatior there are no LUNs presented. I’ve capture the iscsi traffic in Wireshark and confirm good a successful login and the the initiator asks for all targets, but the response packet doesn’t list any targets. I’m guessing I’ve goofed somewhere, but I’m just not seeing it. Are there any logs anywhere that I could view to see what I’ve screwed up? :)
Have tried both 1.4.20.1 and 1.4.18 (when the more recent showed this problem). Current test lun file is 10GB.
There may be a problem with the location of the config files. Please check whether you have a working copy of ietd.conf in /etc/iet/ which is the new location where the daemon looks for it’s config.
The installer *should have* taken care of that but it seems that it doesn’t in all cases.
Logs should be available in the syslog or the kernel log, depending on the type of error the iSCSI daemon reports – if any.
I need to be able to have the same files visible on the readynas as on the iSCSI target.
So using a file container would not be an option (unless I locally mount the iSCSI virtual disk using an initiator on the NAS).
If instead of using a file container I use an LVM target, would this allow simultanious access to the filesystem from the NAS device and a remote initiator, without bricking the entire thing?
Firstly, awesome addon for the ReadyNAS, thanks heaps.
Just testing transfer speeds over the LAN to the ReadyNAS, CIFS vs iSCSI, and CIFS is beating the iSCSI target nearly two fold. :(
Does anyone know of any configuration options that can improve the performance of iSCSI?
Also, I second Jason’s question, can you target a device (I’m assuming by doing Lun *blah* Type=blockio)?
Well, yes, you can target a device – but you’d have to create that in the first place and I wouldn’t want to mess with the ReadyNAS that much. Also I would like to discourage the parallel use of the device used for the iSCSI target unless you add another file system layer like GFS or OCFS2 since iSCSI was never meant to handle that kind of abuse ;)
As for the tuning issue: you can try to play with the settings in ietd.conf. In addition tuning the TCP/IP stack on the ReadyNAS can be helpful. There’s not general rule what will help and what will make matters worse but there’s a lot of hints out the on Google.
I have been using iscsi 1.4.18 that i have had install and has worked fine for about 8 months now. about a week ago the iscsi volume started reporting disk errors in windows and therefor disabled VSS. The readyNas RND4000 reports all disks are fine. Any ideas as my iscsi volume is 2tb in size and would take a week to run a full scandisk
That the RND4000 reports all drives as fine unfortunately doesn’t say anything about the state of the iSCSI volume. Since the iSCSI volume essentially is just a file to the RND4000, chances are that the overall structure of the file itself is ok. However, the filesystem structure contained within that file may well be damaged without the RND4000 having any chance to detect that.
Such errors can only be detected by the machine connecting to and using the iSCSI target. So my advice would be to trust your Windows error message and at least run a simple check on the iSCSI volume from your Windows host.
Is it possible to use the iSCSI drive from the NAS (Duo) itself? Can the various pre-installed services under the standard web-admin see the disc and use it for streaming media? How about access control?
Thanks.
/Jørn
No, they can’t, at least not with this add-on. Wouldn’t make much sense anyway since an iSCSI device on the NAS itself is just a mere file on the main storage of the NAS itself. If you’re looking for a way to make the NAS use an external iSCSI disk, you might want to have a look at the open-iscsi add-on. Using this you can connect external iSCSI drives to the NAS and you should then be able to use them. I have to admit I haven’t tested this yet, so you’re on your own there.
Okay. I am asking because I want to backup my NAS using Mozy … but Mozy does not support network drives. I friend told me that a drive on my PC mounting an iSCSI drive would be backup-able by Mozy from my own PC. But that doesn’t help much if I can only backup stuff that the NAS cannot use.
Thanks for the reply.
/Jørn
Downloaded and installed 1.4.20.2. After following the instructions verbatim, I realized my target was not being created and spent a lot of time searching the net for the cause of this message:
iscsi_trgt: iscsi_target_create(131) The length of the target name is zero
I finally came back here and read all the comments. The problem the whole time was ietd.conf needs to be /etc/ietd, not /etc like the instructions say. :-( Hopefully google will find this comment for the next guy who comes along.
Two other quirks:
1. If you don’t specify –adress=IP on the command line, you get the following error message:
medianas:/etc/iet# ietd -d2 -f
1284248763.537724: created target iqn.2001-04.com.mpsharp:readynasnv.iscsi
1284248763.556602: unable to create server socket (Address family not supported by protocol) 10 1 6!
That said, it doesn’t seem to effect the functionality, so I suspect it’s an effect of the ANY/ANY in targets.allow.
2. The start/stop scripts aren’t managing the pid file correctly:
medianas:/etc/iet# /etc/init.d/rfw-iscsi-target start
Starting iSCSI Target: ietd.
medianas:/etc/iet# /etc/init.d/rfw-iscsi-target stop
Stopping iSCSI Target: ietdNo /usr/sbin/ietd found running; none killed.
.
medianas:/etc/iet# ps -ef | grep ietd
root 5196 1 0 16:46 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/ietd
root 5221 4026 0 16:48 pts/1 00:00:00 grep ietd
I haven’t bothered trying to debug this yet.
That said, great software! It’s the only solution to make my Media Center machine diskless (aside from the SSD).
Finally, I’m seeing an almost 6x improvement in my iSCSI writes vs SMB from Windows 7 to the ReadyNAS, but a 2x slow down on the read:
No noticable difference with IOmode=wb.
As to the bugs: I’ll see what I can do about the stopping not working as expected. The other thing is that the ReadyNAS is simply missing IPv6 support, that’s what the “unable to create server socket” is all about. The read slowdown as shown in your tests may be due to the fact that the iSCSI target acts just like a disc. So it will profit from not checking any permissions and also it doesn’t have to bother with all the compatibility issues introduced with Windows 7 and Samba. This may explain why writes are faster. That reads are slower on the iSCSI target is most likely attributed to the fact that the iSCSI target doesn’t do any caching whereas the SMB daemon does. So if the test is going to re-read the same file over and over, SMB is likely to be faster than the iSCSI target.
Thanks! That all makes sense. It looks like the performance is perfectly adequate to record 2 HD streams and playback 1 simultaneously. That’s all I really need though it’s always fun to try to squeeze out a little more.
Well, you may want to play with the WThreads settings in ietd.conf …
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Hi, great addition for the readynas duo if only i could get it to work. I have installed the latest version and created a test LUN of 40Gb. The service is running but I cannot get the globalSan initiator to see the LUN. I am using Mark Wilson’s instructions I don’t get the configure targets option only one to donate (which I have done). Any help would be great.
I have an update when rebooting the readynas I do get connected then disconnected from the iSCSI target so I presuming this will be a permissions issue I have not altered the ietd.conf file apart from changing the LUN to blockio and setting the alias as ReadyNas
Hello,
somehow I can’t get your iscsi addon running on my ReadyNAs NV+! I have radiator 4.1.7 installed. Furthermore I installed the ssh- enabled Addon and the Toggle Addon. After all I installed the latest iscsi Addon. I use PUTTY to get a ssh connection to my ReadyNAS. SO far so good. I read your instructions and copied the command with the config file in Putty command line. That worked also. But the I tried to copy the command “Lun 0 Path=/c/iscsi_0,Type=fileio” into the command line in PUTTY and after Enter it says “bash: Lun: command not found“ ! Then I created a 40 GB file with the command “dd if=/dev/zero of=/c/iscsi_0 bs=10485760 count=4096“ as you said in the instructions. I waited till the command line appeared again. But when I want to find the Target with the windows iscsi initiator Windows /), I cannot find any target.
I have now tried to get this working for three days and almost near to give it up. I also tried it on another ReadyNAS NV with Windows XP (I got seven ReadyNAS NV integrated into my two Networks at Home and at Work) but without any success. I will give you a donation for your effort, but first of all I have to get this ADD-on to work. Does anybody have an idea?
Sie haben Mail ;)
Now, at this point I have to say: Great Support and a very nice Contact. Couldn’t have been better. Thanks a lot and have a nice vacation!!!
Welf
Hi Stefan.
I have installed the new readyNAS 4.1.8 firmware (to get time machine backups working again). After this I installed iSCSItarget_1.4.20.2-readynas-1.0.5. I followed all install instructions successfully with no errors reported / iscsi_0 created etc.
However either windows nor Mac can see the iscsi on the ReadyNAS when scanning for a target/portal etc.
When I ssh into the readynas and run stop() on rfw-iscsi-target (even after manually running start()), I get the following:
ReadyNAS:~# /etc/init.d/rfw-iscsi-target stop
Stopping iSCSI Target: ietdNo /usr/sbin/ietd found running; none killed.
I have a feeling that the daemon is not actually running properly etc.
Can you please let us know if the current iSCSItarget_1.4.20.2-readynas-1.0.5.bin is compatible with firmware 4.1.8?
Thanks in advance,
Misterhee
(sorry for the double post – please delete the message I posted in the contact section)
Hello there,
Firstly, thank you for taking the time and effort to develop an add-on which provides iSCSI access – it’s surprising this isn’t built in (it is in other ReadyNAS models, but not the NV+ as I’m using).
I have installed it and after playing with the command prompt for a couple of days I have had no luck at getting a target mounted in Windows 7.
dd completes without issue (although, note: I tried to make a +2TB volume without realising that there was a limitation in dd – of course there is but I just didn’t think) – has anyone found how to make a 2TB+ LUN? gpart doesn’t seem to exist on this build.
The target name appears in the initiator and I can connect to it, but it then doesn’t appear in the disk management console for me to mount to a drive letter – I’ve tested a different iSCSI target and it works fine – is it perhaps that I’m using the minimal config? Do I need a proper target name to mount it?:
Target iqn.2001-04.com.example:readyduo.iscsi.target0
Lun 0 Path=/c/iscsi_0,Type=fileio
Unrelated – there is a slight bug as highlighted previously in that the “stop” command does in fact not stop the daemon – a “ps” still shows the daemon running – from what I can tell this is because the PIDFILE is wrong, despite you specifying /var/run/iscsi_target.pid the output is actually /var/run/ietd.pid – I changed the service script to match and it now starts and stops correctly.
Update: I fixed my main problem (target advertised but couldn’t connect): a typo difference between the file name and the config file (one was _0 (zero) and the other was _o (the letter O)).
Okay, final post today: I’ve got this working fine now, the only issue is that (running 4.1.8) the throughput speed is just awful – I can’t find any reference to what you think the throughput for your iSCSI driver vs. the normal CIFS share should be, but in my tests today it’s running at about 50% (11MB/s with iSCSI, 23MB/s without).
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