USB3 hdd on ac86u with Merlin FW

[RMerlin]

FYI....After some measurements on my fork a while back, I doubled the buffer sizes to 131072

That's the problem - everyone's environment will be different. Every time I spent some time testing different settings, I generally end up sticking with what I already had from my previous tests.

 

[Zentachi]

I have spent the entire evening yesterday again testing and playing around with different settings with no success.

Windows 10 Pro 64x (different computers with different users) wired connection to ac86u.

Enabled/disabled SMB1/SMB2 in windows and in router settings as well as turning on/off the various other settings.

Reset user permissions, created the same user account I am using on windows and the network drive is being mapped without asking for credentials (as it uses the windows account).

I am still getting the same error. As soon as I try to create a New folder on the disk I receive the error message:
Error 0x8007010B: The directory name is invalid.

Even though, the folder is indeed created!

When using EXT4 partition no error message!

Anyone any ideas why NTFS behaves like that? Anything else I can do?

@RMerlin
As your NTFS drive is working, could you please let me know your setup?
OS version, SMB version, settings on the router, same user accounts between them?

Thanks

EDIT: Maybe I should have mentioned that googling the error and reading around, it seems that people with a Synology NAS had a similar problem and it was fixed when Synology released a firmware update.

EDIT2: I enabled log level =2 on smb.conf.
I cannot see anything failing apart from

[2018/01/31 13:01:08.306127,  2] ../lib/util/util_file.c:227(map_file)
  Failed to load /usr/share/samba/codepages/upcase.dat - No such file or directory
[2018/01/31 13:01:08.306209,  2] ../lib/util/util_file.c:227(map_file)
  Failed to load /usr/share/samba/codepages/lowcase.dat - No such file or directory
[2018/01/31 13:01:08.306252,  1] ../lib/util/charset/codepoints.c:60(load_case_tables_library)
  Failed to load upcase.dat, will use lame ASCII-only case sensitivity rules
[2018/01/31 13:01:08.306286,  1] ../lib/util/charset/codepoints.c:64(load_case_tables_library)
  Failed to load lowcase.dat, will use lame ASCII-only case sensitivity rules

 

[Lotta Cox]

Works fine here. WD My Passport NTFS connected to USB 3 port on 86U. Fresh windows 10 install.
You using a dock or a hub?
I use allow guest login. That is the only thing I change. Reduce interference is off.

 

[ColinTaylor]

EDIT2: I enabled log level =2 on smb.conf.
I cannot see anything failing apart from

Is it possible that the problem is that your PC is not using a Western/USA type codepage, something like Chinese, Arabic, etc.?

 

[Zentachi]

You using a dock or a hub?

Dock with two hard drives or just a single external hdd doesn't make a difference in my case. Tried them both.

Is it possible that the problem is that your PC is not using a Western/USA type codepage, something like Chinese, Arabic, etc.?

Nope, PC region is UK as well as the unicode setting.

I have tried everything I can think of. Different cables, different hard drives, 3 different windows 10 machines, formatting hdd from inside the route GUI.
It doesn't matter. When I click create new folder I receive the same error.

I don't like giving up, but it seems that it just doesn't want to work in my case

 

[Odkrys]

@Zentachi

Change the samba configuration like this and try again.

store dos attributes = yes => store dos attributes = no

pc_replace "store dos attributes = yes" "store dos attributes = no" $CONFIG

This changing has a little risk, so considering it.

 

[Lotta Cox]

If it is a dual dock like this
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KILQTS8/?tag=snbforums-20
it won't work properly on the USB 3 port.
Is that what you are using?

 

[Zentachi]

@Zentachi

Change the samba configuration like this and try again.

store dos attributes = yes => store dos attributes = no

pc_replace "store dos attributes = yes" "store dos attributes = no" $CONFIG

This changing has a little risk, so considering it.

You are AWESOME!
Added the line and no more error!

 

[Ki8l]

https://support.microsoft.com/da-dk...ed-windows-10-and-windows-server-version-1709
I suppose that's why my USB3 hard drive at ASUS RT n66u with latest Merlin firmware no longer can be used for back up? Is the Samba protocol to old ?

 

[Lotta Cox]

https://support.microsoft.com/da-dk...ed-windows-10-and-windows-server-version-1709
I suppose that's why my USB3 hard drive at ASUS RT n66u with latest Merlin firmware no longer can be used for back up? Is the Samba protocol to old ?

Set "Enable SMB2 protocol (default: No)" to Yes in http://192.168.1.1/Advanced_AiDisk_samba.asp

 

[Ki8l]

Thank you Lotta, I had to do this to:
Verify SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support is installed from Programs and Features --> Turn Windows features on or off.
Then it works.

 

[ChrisM]

I had the same problem msg when copying data on or off a USB flash drive from the PC via a mapped net drive. Also the download manager would not see the drive. After lots of testing I found just Formatting the Drive NTFS in the Router cured everything

 

[Cornel]

You are AWESOME!
Added the line and no more error!

I have the same error on my RT-AC86U samba on NTFS partitions but not on EXT4, although I have to say it worked fine until today. Could you please detail where you add the line and how you make it persistent after reboot. I tried /jffs/configs/smb.conf.add and added permissions but I don't have enough knowledge to make it work, I suppose it starts too early and it gets overwriten.

 

[Cornel]

I made it work after I found out what I needed from https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/Custom-config-files and added the line

pc_replace "store dos attributes = yes" "store dos attributes = no" $CONFIG

in smb.postconf. However, I can't explain what happend since can't recall changing anything to my router.
On this occasion I also removed the buffers from IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY SO_KEEPALIVE and I noticed a significant improvement to my WiFi transfer speeds. I used to download files from my USB3 attached hdd to PC at about 35 MB/s via samba and 50 MB/s via ftp, whereas now I reached 70-80 MB/s on samba alone.

 

[Zentachi]

I made it work after I found out what I needed from https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/Custom-config-files and added the line

pc_replace "store dos attributes = yes" "store dos attributes = no" $CONFIG

in smb.postconf. However, I can't explain what happend since can't recall changing anything to my router.
On this occasion I also removed the buffers from IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY SO_KEEPALIVE and I noticed a significant improvement to my WiFi transfer speeds. I used to download files from my USB3 attached hdd to PC at about 35 MB/s via samba and 50 MB/s via ftp, whereas now I reached 70-80 MB/s on samba alone.

Great I was going to just reply to you that you need to add smb.postconf in jffs/scripts/
with the line you already mentioned. I have also removed those duffers.

#!/bin/sh
CONFIG=$1
source /usr/sbin/helper.sh

pc_replace "store dos attributes = yes" "store dos attributes = no" $CONFIG
pc_replace "socket options = IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY SO_KEEPALIVE SO_RCVBUF=65536 SO_SNDBUF=65536" "socket options = IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY SO_KEEPALIVE" $CONFIG

exit

 

[Frank Lo]

Great I was going to just reply to you that you need to add smb.postconf in jffs/scripts/
with the line you already mentioned. I have also removed those duffers.

Thank you - this is exactly the solution I was looking for...but it's not working for me. I'm not normally uploading config files to my router so it's probably user error.

Here's what I did
- Installed Notepad++
- Pasted your code
- Did: Edit-->EOL Conversion-->Unix
- Saved as a text file with the filename "smb.postconf"
- Used WinSCP to copy file to /jffs/scripts
- Rebooted router

I still have the same slow (6-8mbs) performance. With SMB1, I'm more like high 20s.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

 

[richardeid]

Thank you - this is exactly the solution I was looking for...but it's not working for me. I'm not normally uploading config files to my router so it's probably user error.

Here's what I did
- Installed Notepad++
- Pasted your code
- Did: Edit-->EOL Conversion-->Unix
- Saved as a text file with the filename "smb.postconf"
- Used WinSCP to copy file to /jffs/scripts
- Rebooted router

I still have the same slow (6-8mbs) performance. With SMB1, I'm more like high 20s.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

I think you need to make the file executable. So you'd do:

chmod 755 /jffs/scripts/smb.postconf

And yeah, I know this is six months old. But I recently had this same issue. Like a couple others have mentioned, I don't recall changing anything and I don't believe this was related to a recent Windows update because my system uptime is around a month now. Or was, rather, when the problem started.

I've been through lots of troubleshooting, at first thinking the external drive was somehow the problem. I needed to reboot the router for some reason (I can't remember for what), but the reboot failed. It failed in a way that the UI was still accessible, but the reboot button didn't work and I couldn't SSH in to reboot through the command line because I'm assuming during the failed reboot SSH was shut down. Anyway I had to just kill power, which of course made my USB disks dirty and running a health scan on them turned up tons of errors. Some that couldn't be fixed. So I hooked the drive up to a PC and ran chkdsk there...long story less long...I thought something was hosed up so bad that I ended up copying all the data off, removing the partitions and starting over. But the problem persisted until I found this solution here.

Just curious though if anyone has any explanation why this could have happened. I'm glad it's fixed now but I'm not entirely satisfied with the solution. It seems more of a band-aid than a real solution.