Issues with firmware 2.10.302 & 310

I have found the time to do some debugging on the issues with the recent firmware updates (302 & 310) that are causing widespread issues.

I will leave aside the obvious comments that USERS should NOT be having to DEBUG this software, and that WD should allow us to roll-back the firmware as a matter of course.

Using SSH I have been able to monitor behaviour of the unit when various events take place. I have noticed that TWONKY seems to be the main culprit (in my case). When I am not accessing the unit via the GUI, but only via SSH, twonky behaves itself and the unit is mostly idle. However when connected to the GUI via a browser, twonky sparks up and reliably grabs every bit of CPU resource going (with the help of wdnotifier). If I log-off the GUI, twonky goes back into quiet mode. In this state the GUI is very slow, and the unit is thrashing its disks. I would note that the EX4 has a USB drive attached, although this is also set for no media scanning (via the twonky GUI and the EX4 GUI).

I am not actively media sharing, I have turned off all scanning of directories.

When I kill twonky, the EX4 comes back to life, but the GUI no longer allows a logon. I cannot understand why twonky is associated with the GUI.

Anyone have any ideas?

I assigned a different admin user-name and password for Twonky and manage twonky separately. With Tronky settings protected by a password the WD UI can’t communicate with it. I also have a lot more control over what Twonky shares and not just an entire network share. Happy days. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the advice. How do you do this? Through the Twonky INI file?

I would note for those following this thread - after nuking twonky the EX4 has been stellar. Fast responsive and sleeping when not in use.

That’s easy. Let’s assume the name of your NAS is WdEX4. Use:
http://WdEX4:9000/

If you access using an IP address, remembering to substitute 192.168.1.10 with the IP of your NAS:
http://192.168.1.10:9000/

Once at Twonky’s page select setting and in there set a user name and password. Use Twonky’s own options to manage it.

Remember that for any future updates may blank Twonky’s user-name and password so you would just need to manually restore Twonky’s settings and set the user-name and password.

I know for me all I need to do is take a copy of /mnt/HD_a4/twonkymedia/twonkyserver.ini

When I set-up my disk array I opted for RAID5 and enabled the roaming option when the array was created.

Thanks - that helps. The trouble is that it also stops the EX4 GUI logging in - as I noted we seem to now have this dynamic between the 2 which is a puzzle. Does this occur on your system as well?

I don’t have an EX4. I got a DL4100. I’m guessing I’ve not encountered this issue because I always set a username and password on Twonky so in all intent and purpose, Twonky don’t communicate with the formware’s UI and the UI can’t communicate with Twonky. The UI can only stop and start Twonky.

I’ve not experienced this slow-down then crawl.

OK, after some more investigation I’ve realised that the twonky “fix” (setting a username/password) doesn’t work and I have gone back to the original “fix” from a year ago. If I nuke “wdnotifier” the unit allows a USB drive to be attached without pegging the unit and causing twonky to have a spaz. Since killing wdnotifier, I have been able to complete backups to the USB drive.

The other thing I discovered is that I had the “Enable Sharing of new Media Receivers” flag set in twonky. I realised that twonky was sparking up when I have a Finder connection from my Mac to the EX4. It then dawned on me that twonky was trying to catalogue my Mac as it saw it as a media Receiver! So turning this OFF made twonky shut up. I think I have FINALLY found out why it was sparking up.

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