Trouble with iTunes shared servers on NAS drives

The problem is when itunes 10 have a file on a server, the bandwith speed is very slow!!
Damnation!!

Hi Roy,

thanks for your reply and comitment of taking a look to this issue. Seems to me that a property that was previously ignored or not enforced has now become critical for the iTunes 10 implementation in order to be able to display shared libraries and playlist.

On this thread you may find valuable information form the mt-daapd developers on how to solve the issue, may be useful information for your team. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2564925&start=60&tstart=45

An later, developers expect some kind of official documentation (as we are used to) about how to fix our applications and keep our users (for both sides) happy.

Thanks for your time and words of hope.

Very interesting read da_pulpo.

After reading it, it almost makes some sense that the change that broke most NAS based iTunes servers was probably (at least partly) necessary to move forward. Probably has something to do with the changes from AirTunes to AirPlay and the new version of Apple TV and Apple wanting "iTunes servers" to be able to stream more than just music.

(i.e. the discussion indicates that iTunes 10 requires the iTunes server to specify the "mediakind" where a value of 1 indicates mediakind = music)

"It seems that iTunes 10 requires aeMK/com.apple.itunes.mediakind included in the response to a "GET /databases/1/items"

I think that the problem is much bigger than just looking at how itunes translates daap. I disabled the media server on my Buffalo Terastation and tried to use the the NAS as a simple smb mounted fs. Started iTunes 10 and pointed to the library on the NAS. It was a disaster. Opening iTunes 10 took me a pathetic 35 min. To sync my iPhone4 took hours, with no new content to be synced.

To update my iPhone iOS4 to 4.1 so far takes probably about 45 min just to extract the file (download took 2 min).

For comparison on my wife's iTunes 9.2.1, with remote Library on the same NAS, to open iTunes takes about a few seconds. And she updated her iPhone to 4.1 in less than 5 minutes.

So for all of you blasting the 3rd party NAS providers, I am not using anything that is suppose to be 3rd party software ie Twonky, etc. I am simply mapping the same remote library that I used to map in 9.2.1....only now it is ridiculously slow.

What has changed? I updated to iTunes 10. So Apple, get your act together and get it fix, because it is broken.

Hi Peter,

so basically you are launching iTunes with a different iTunes Library that is located on an external SMB net share? Please try the following, if possible, connect the external NAS via USB (if available) and open your library again. Do your standard tests and compare. Probably we can get more information to report back. Obviously nothing has changed on your terastation, neither your network and so on.

Thanks.

There seems to be two potential problems.

1) an iTunes server based on a NAS does not work in iTunes 10. This is easy to explain. iTunes became more picky about what it will accept as proper server behaviour.

2) iTunes might have a problem accessing files from a remote server (perhaps only smb, but maybe others). This is difficult to explain unless there is an underlying OSX issue. I assume iTunes uses the underlying OSX procedures for mounting and using a remote disk. So changing iTunes should make no difference.

I'm actually interested in case 2. I have no interest in using a non-mac itunes server. But I am interested in perhaps moving my library (just the media) to a NAS type device. In this role the NAS should just be a file server. Are there particular things I should look for in a NAS? AFP seems to be going the way of
the dodo bird, so, I was thinking a simple NFS share. But I could be wrong.
Thoughts and comments welcome.

This is exactly what I have been doing all along. I have an SMB share mounted on my Mac pointing to my HP MediaSmart Server (It runs Windows, but acts similar to a NAS in this way). I point iTunes to this mounted Volume (mounted as /Volumes/Music).

However in my particular experience, iTunes 10 is much faster now than iTunes 9 ever was.

I agree. That's why I asked Peter to do the USB test to rule out SMB issues. Another important variable may be the MacOS version, things may have change enough to become a potential issue.

OK guys. Here it is. USB works great. No problem.

Yes. I connect to my SMB share directly. This is where my library is located and no media servers. I did another test. I disconnected my SMB and mounted the remote NAS using NFS. Still the same problem.

Absolutely nothing else changed. The moment I applied itunes 10 and started it, it took ages to startup. Literally half an hour before the update to iTunes 10 I was playing kids songs for my daughter pretty nice with iTunes 9.2.1 and it has been running pretty nice for quite some time.

When I start iTunes 10 I see a lot of network traffic, but it seems VERY VERY slow (120KB/s). When I start 9.2.1 I don't see so much network traffic. I tested my NAS connectivity (wireless G and WAP2) and I get about 14 MB/s download speed and about 8 MB/s upload. So on that front nothing changed. It is the same as before.

I have been running 10.6.4 for quite some time.

Just to clarify. My NAS doesn't have USB. So I used another external USB drive.

Hi again Peter,

I think this is great information. Below are some ideas that crossed my mind at 1am 😉 just hope they are coherent...

I did some testing on my side and I have noticed that DAAP is a much more efficient way of streaming, it consumes less resources on the shared side, smb on the other hand requires more processing (on both sides). I can imagine that in order to fulfill the quality expectations of AirPlay devices they need to enforce somehow preference of daap over the others.

I created a new library over SMB just for testing and it works fine, it opens almost instantaneously and plays as soon as I select a song; it is 2GB big. How big is your library? Maybe the "iTunes Library.xml" is too big or probably has to be rebuild for iTunes10, mine is 300Kb for the 2GB library.

Will be interesting to play with the new generation of iTunes 10 compatible NAS devices (if they ever appear on the market).

I have no idea how the iTunes deals with the protocol stack, I guess (as somebody previously mention) it relies on the OS stack (smb, nfs) and the usb_fs, but since that has not changed for the most of us that are having this problem seems to me that is just the way iTunes does it stuff internally.

If you access your library over smb as a file system will be heavier that stream the content using daap. Probably some delays have being "introduced" with the new code on the current implementation or something like that.

Thanks for your time and to the Apple guys we hope this info helps.

Regards.

Just some more info (I think everyone knows something is amiss):

Same behavior with LG NAS N2R1DD1, firmware 2450 (latest I could find). iTunes starts with an "untitled playlist" share that changes name to "iTunes server on NAS" when clicked with a "Playlists" folder under that and a "Non-DRMed Music" node under that. All are empty even though lots of files are in the right spot on the LG NAS (/service/iTunes -- it is still useful to have my files over there as a backup, anyway).

I just got this NAS two days ago and had no idea it could be an iTunes 10 incompatibility (so I've no idea if it would have worked on iTunes 9). Very relieved to see the issue is bigger, and will be looking for iTunes updates and/or firmware updates from LG.

Additional FYI, the LG NAS also has a DLNA service, and that works fine. I put a folder of MP3s in /service/DLNA and my PS3 saw that music immediately. Probably not that interesting since that is a totally different standard/protocol, I imagine, but is another way of saying every other aspect of the LG NAS has been working fine (some poor documentation aside...)

Time to head over to LG's forums (if they even have any) and try a push from that side, too.

Thanks,
JoeK

Well, now I've got a new tech at LaCie telling me to roll back my software to a previous version. So, who is responsible for making the software work as advertised? That's who this is going to end up being directed at...

Hello! I´ve got an answer from Qnap about iTunes 10 not working:

quote: "It will be supported with the next update."

/ Jan

I got it working with the Netgear ReadyNas DUO! Netgear has released a new Beta of the firmware(4.1.7 T49). This sorted things out for me.

Link: http://readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=39470