[svlug] help transfering data over 1394 cable

[Scott Hess]

If you're only getting 700kbps over your subnet, you're probably doing
something very wrong in the first place.  You don't indicate what kind
of network you have, but if it's 100mbit Ethernet, you should be
getting ~10 megabytes/second.  If you can saturate that, it would take
perhaps a day and a half to transfer the full 1.5T.  While that's a
long time, it's probably faster than getting a firewire network
working if you're starting from scratch!  Maybe you're somehow going
through a wireless node or something?

I'd just run rsync between them and leave it alone for awhile,
monitoring by running df or du periodically on the target.  Later,
check in and run rsync again - this time it should be much faster.
You might want to tweak things to use rsyncd rather than ssh, or to
use blowfish or some other more efficient encryption - but if the
boxes are 6 months old, their CPUs might be fast enough to saturate
the network with no tweaking at all.

You might try plugging a crossover Ethernet cable directly between the
boxes to make sure nothing else is screwing your networking up.  If
you're lucky, you'll find that both boxes can do gigabit Ethernet, and
everything will go faster.  Don't know if you can snag a crossover
cable at Fry's or not.

Having a 16T box implies that it's perhaps got 1T drives?  You might
be better off just pulling one of those drives and using a sneakernet
to copy things over.

-scott



On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 2:14 PM, Christian Einfeldt <einfeldt at gmail.com> wrote:
> hi,
>
> I need to transfer massive amounts of video from one Ubuntu box to another,
> and I wanted to get some advice before messing with anything.  So I would
> appreciate any tips you might have, particularly as to traps for the unwary,
> because I have a knack for falling into such traps.  heh.
>
> I am moving data from a Gutsy 32 bit install to a Hardy 32 bit install.
> More details on the specs below.
>
> I guess it is probably obvious (not sure) that ssh and fish is probably not
> going to cut it, as it seems I am only getting 700 kbs or so over my subnet,
> and I really should be using 1394 (firewire) anyway.  The link below is an
> old article from 2004 which says that I might need to recompile my kernel,
> if my distro does not support 1394, but that is a really old article and
> Ubuntu has come a long way since then.  Most important, I would prefer to
> avoid messing with low-level stuff like the kernel, because I tend to goof
> things up whenever and wherever possible when technical matters are
> involved.
>
> http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/articles/Jeremys_Magazine_Articles/Playing_with_Firewire
>
> Both of the boxes are less than 6 months old.  They were both built by a
> friend.  One box has 1.5 TB of storage, and the other has 16 TB of storage.
> I want to move data from the 1.5 TB beast (affectionately known as the
> renderbeast, or rb for short) to the 16 TB machine (affectionately known as
> the TeraByte Beast or tbb for short).  Below are the specs for these two
> machines:
>
> rb's firewire specs:
> *-firewire
>                 description: FireWire (IEEE 1394)
>                 product: TSB12LV26 IEEE-1394 Controller (Link)
>                 vendor: Texas Instruments
>                 physical id: 6
>                  bus info: pci at 0000:02:06.0
>                 version: 00
>                 width: 32 bits
>                 clock: 33MHz
>                 capabilities: pm ohci bus_master cap_list
>                 configuration: driver=ohci1394 latency=32 maxlatency=4
> mingnt=3 module=ohci1394
>
> tbb's specs:
> *-firewire
>                 description: FireWire (IEEE 1394)
>                 product: TSB43AB23 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
>                 vendor: Texas Instruments
>                 physical id: e
>                  bus info: pci at 0000:06:0e.0
>                 version: 00
>                 width: 32 bits
>                 clock: 33MHz
>                 capabilities: pm ohci bus_master cap_list
>                 configuration: driver=ohci1394 latency=128 maxlatency=4
> mingnt=2 module=ohci1394
>
> Thanks in advance for any tips!
>
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