I'd like to know what the 'ethtool -k eth0' output is on one of these things using a newer kernel.

The ethernet controller is the VIA Velocity VT6122, as per hardware, and confirmed via dmesg on the unit.

Running 'ethtool -k' shows the following:

 ethtool -k eth0 Offload parameters for eth0: Cannot get device rx csum settings: Operation not supported Cannot get device tx csum settings: Operation not supported Cannot get device scatter-gather settings: Operation not supported Cannot get device tcp segmentation offload settings: Operation not supported no offload info available 

Basically, the kernel cannot enable any of the TCP offload options within the chip.

Now, the chip definitely supports TCP TCP/UDP/IP checksum and TCP segment offloading, as per here.

Documentation provided within the Linux Kernel source for the VIA Velocity drivers (linux-source-2.6.26/drivers/net/via-velocity.c) states:

 /* txcsum_offload[] is used for setting the checksum offload ability of NIC. (We only support RX checksum offload now) 0: disable csum_offload[checksum offload 1: enable checksum offload. (Default) */ 

so we should at least be able to enable RX checksum offload using this code, and if this code were used it would be enabled by default.

The kernel version provided with the 2.00.18 is 2.6.17.14, so it's entirely possible the above was added between 2.6.17.14 and 2.6.26, after WD standardised the build environment.

Next step would be to build a replacement kernel and drivers to run on the MBWE.

Anyone interested in giving me pointers on how this may be done?

I've found some further comments on opening the case: http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/forum/t-100053/wd-myworld-ii-1tb#post-292109

Regards,
JpgOrganizer

MBWE II, 2x 500 GB
Firmware 01.01.18
Raid 1
Hacks: SSH, spindown

 MemTotal: 62520 kB MemFree: 1648 kB Buffers: 1312 kB Cached: 50984 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 26028 kB Inactive: 29832 kB HighTotal: 0 kB HighFree: 0 kB LowTotal: 62520 kB LowFree: 1648 kB SwapTotal: 104312 kB SwapFree: 104312 kB Dirty: 8 kB Writeback: 0 kB Mapped: 8348 kB Slab: 3580 kB CommitLimit: 135572 kB Committed_AS: 9284 kB PageTables: 252 kB VmallocTotal: 450560 kB VmallocUsed: 64 kB VmallocChunk: 450496 kB 

Yup…. 64MB………
Maybe a new hardware revision…..but the speeds are the same :(

My WBII as 64MB of ram, and the speed's are the same as the rest of the people….

AFAIK, bottlenecks are RAM and CPU.

1. Currently installed RAM Hynix HY5DU561622E has following parameters:
DDR SDRAM 256Mb (or 32MB)
166MHz 16Mx16 FBGA (60ball) 4bank, 2.5V, CL2.5
another memory chip HY5DU121622C(L)FP-J(I) also have 166MHz FBGA (60ball) 4bank, 2.5V, CL2.5
but give us 512Mb (or 64MB). OXE810DSE memory controller support up to 64MB of 16bit RAM (according to datasheet).
It's hard to find but probably could be desoldered from some notebook SDRAM.
If you could do this then no problem with oversoldering of PCB.

2. ARM926 processor integrated in Oxford OXE810DSE chip operate at 200MHz.
OXE810DSE is obsolete. New OXE810DSE chip operate the same processor at 367MHz but with 32 Kbyte caches & MMU,
support TSO (TCP/IP segmentation offload), have 128 Kbyte on-chip SRAM, memory controller support DDR 1/2 SDRAM 16bit memory up to 256MB!
Probably old OXE chip could be also resoldier with new one, but I cannot find datasheet.

I've sniffed some flows of TCP session during write activity and discover lot of TCP retransmit.
I think network parameters of MBWE could be tuned.

Notice VIA vt6122 Gigabit Ethernet Controller support:
Jumbo frame up to 16kilobyte
DMA
Flow control
Wake on LAN
802.1p, 802.1q (VLAN)
CRC offload (IPv4)

You can't replace the CPU. It's integrated into the main controller. But as I said you can overclock it from software. WD has tested it. You can see that from the source codes. You need to modify bootloader and get it into the MyBook.

RAM can be switched. The chip is FBGA encased.
I think the HY5DU561622C datasheet shows the correct pin layout. So there is 60 small solder ball connections under the chip.
I think the chip can be pried off from the PCB. There is of course high risk of ripping some of the PCB along with the chip. Chip will most likely be in pieces after this.
The more problematic part is how to put in the new memory chip? And how to do that at home. One can't just solder it in place as there is no pins to solder.
After the memory chip has been changed successfully I suspect there is a need for SW modifications to get all of the memory in use.

I most likely will try the memory upgrade eventually. I do want to have some idea about how to get the new one in before taking the old one out. I would really like if someone could give some ideas. I think there is a need to find some connector or adapter for it. It needs to be something that can be soldered to the chip and to the PCB. Yet it should be quite small since there is no room to build towers.

IF ther's anyone that have the soldering skills for replacing the CPU and the ram i would gladly give it to He/she. (not sombody i don't know ofc)

-Stark

The controller is OXE800DSE. hmmm… I have the one disk version. Any pictures of the two disk version PCB anywhere?? What is the difference? Could another drive be installed into one disk version?

darn… I feel the speed is crap and it's been well protected that it stays crap. Overclocking might help… or not. I'm hoping I get the time to try it at some point. If anyone wants to go first then please do.
More memory wouldn't hurt. If someone has a totally busted MBWE or they have no use for their MBWE it would be nice if they could try getting that memory chip out without damaging anything else.

So, any ideas? Or will everyone just be happy with this crappy speed?
Or just wait for the new MyBook with the new controller that can actually handle the speeds it is sold for.

The onboard memory chip is 16Mx16 = 32MB chip.
The controller can handle 64MB of memory.
So it could be changed to 32Mx16 = 64MB chip. I'm I right??

Looking at the picture of the memory chip I cant figure out how to remove it without destroying the PCB at the proses. I can't see the pins on the side. Are they under the chip?

So what does that mean??
Has WD disabled the internal 10/100 LAN and is using the 1G VIA chip through PCI?
Or are the internal LAN and VIA chip connected and the internal stuff is blocking the data?

Oxford Semiconductor has the new and improved 10/100/1000 controllers, 810 series.
What I can gather from the specifications they have the same CPU core.
800 @ 200MHz and 810 @ 367 MHz. I would be very interested to know about overclocking the MBWE.

When I opened my MyBook, I've plugged the sata drive directly to the pc (due to bad boot-configurazion setting).
I also used fsck.ext3 to repair some inode error-flagged.
Drive speed is not bad. It could be compared to internal SATA drives that reach 70Mb/s (my motherboard is pretty old).

I tried to copy a 100Mb file from /share/internal/PUBLIC/abc to /tmp/
Due to transfer time (doubled to sum read one and write one. I know it's only an aproximation), i think samba is not the bottleneck

So? I'm afraid the MBWE has not enougth memory to enable DMA access to disk(s).
Someone knows how to test this? I hope we not need to rebuild the kernel….

This tells me that the memory chip can be"just" swapped to a bigger one.
This of course opens up some more questions like:
How much is needed to make a difference? I know we all want GB:s of memory. :)
How much memory can the controller handle? Datasheet would be nice.
Which memory chip would be right and where to get them?
Is software modifications needed? I suppose this can be found out after the swap.

edit:
More closer to MBWE:
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/FattenYourSlug
Good info about memory upgrades to NSLU2. Also about the software side.

VIA vt6122 Gigabit Ethernet Controller
http://people.freebsd.org/~wpaul/VIA/DS6122R160.pdf

Has anyone found the datasheet for OXE800SE/OXE800DSE?
Also does anyone know any other device using these? Any change of it's sources being available and that the device has better/worse performance than MyBook?

Edit:
http://www.softconnex.com/products/storage/OXE800SE.html
From the product brief pdf.
Features:
"Network coprocessor for TCP/IP acceleration"

ummm… did they forget to turn it on?!?

I downloaded the WD sources and took a quick look what is in there.
In directory /WD-GPL-v1.18/vendor/u-boot/board/oxnas there is a file platform.S.
In this file there is: #ifdef OXNAS_OVERCLOCK
There is a comment saying: /* Set m,p and s for PLL at 400MHz */

So has anyone ever tried to smoke their MyBook by overclocking it? Or is MyBook by default overclocked and is still this crappy?

On the memory issue. The chip seems to be on the back side of the PCB. http://martin.hinner.info/mybook/bot.jpg
It's Hynix HY5DU561622E 256Mb DDR SDRAM
I'm no electronics expert so I don't know how to increase the memory. Can those chips be stacked up or changed to larger. Hynix has chips like HY5DU121622C 512Mb DDR SDRAM but I doubt that one can just rip of the old one and solder in the new.
If changing the chip would help and if I had instructions on what to do I would be happy to do it.

At the current speeds MyBook is useless as a data storage for large amount of data. I haven't measured but I have a feeling my old NetCenter beats the crap out of MyBook in transfer rates. It's just one more toy to mess with.

anyone, suggestions?

Another thingy I noticed: if you use Sugate personal firewall, it slows transfer speed. Ehn I tranfer stuff with SPF on, I get 23% on network utilization, SPF on it increases to 39% ! And 39% is about ~5 MB/s

What do others think of this usb-stick as RAM drive idea? Or freeing as much memory as possible to increase tranfer speed idea?

I plan some improvements like … disable samba, lighthttp (increase free memory) and set up ramdisk (minimize disk usage by system)

Rickie

CPU usage almost never top 50% with these settings, memory however is always only around 1000 Kb free when checking with top. Not sure if top show memory usage correctly though. Only using a crappy 100 Mb/s router to connect through though, should get a real 1Gb/s switch to try with.

koola, I don't think that "it's not a computer, deal with it" post really helps at all. It is in fact a mini linux pc and I'm sure it is correctable, especially if it's been hacked.

It's helps a lot as it's not a PC as such… it's an embedded device that is no where near capable of reaching normal "PC" speeds on a LAN.

The problem is a hardware limitation within the device its self. If you want to offload memory and try boost performance a little, make a RamDisk.

I killed mionet and the web admin which freed up about 10 megs. That allowed me to get a record 5.9 MB/sec transfer via SAMBA, but that memory was quickly sucked up and appears to still be the cap. I can't seem to find what's using the other 20 megs of ram. Guess it might be the OS itself. Maybe if I can free up a few more megs I can get 7-8 MB/sec.

Has anyone cracked one of these things open to see if there's any way to add more ram?

I know max on 100 mb would be about 12 MB/sec, but that's still 4 times faster than what it's going now. I'd upgrade it to gigabit but right now and kind of thinking what's the point if I can't even max out the 100mb.

Reading around everyone else seems to be in the same boat. You're the first I've heard of getting 9-10 MB. Maybe I will upgrade to gigabit just so I can get 8% of it's capacity instead of 25% of the 100mb. (sadly I'm serious)

koola, I don't think that "it's not a computer, deal with it" post really helps at all. It is in fact a mini linux pc and I'm sure it is correctable, especially if it's been hacked.

I really suspected SAMBA was the source of the problem so after spending several hours trying to tweek samba last night with no success I decided to test the transfer rate of the FTP service across the local network. It also was right around 4MB, so I think we can rule out samba.

So what's been rules out as sources of the bottleneck are:
network (should allow around 11-12 MB)
cpu (utilization is below 20%)
samba (same result through ftp)
drive speed? (that would be a sad, sad world)

What's left?

3-4 mbps (megabits per second) is 3,000,000 - 4,000,000 bits per second
3-4 MBps (megabytes per second) is: 25,165,824 to 33,554,432 bits per second - which is easily 1/4 - 1/3 the max capacity of a 100mbps link.

Technically the max capacity of a 100mbps link is 11.9 MBps (megabytes per second)

The Max speed of the mybooks 1Gbps network connection should be: 119 MBps. I've only ever hit 8 or 9 MBps on my Giga-Lan through Samba (which might be part of the bottleneck)

So if the network isn't the bottleneck, and the cpu isn't the bottleneck, what is? The hard drive? Surely not… Is there anything that can be done to speed this thing up??