Lock ups, crashing, transferring files using TrueCrypt with iSCSI

Posted by Anthony on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Anthony
Published on 2012-09-19T12:36:11Z Indexed on 2012/09/25 9:39 UTC
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I have looked into this error and it seems that it hasn't been discussed yet - or at least I can't find any information relating.

I'm having issues transferring files, usually larger files over a couple of hundred MB.

Here is the setup:

  • QNAP 410 as iSCSI Target with multiple LUNs. (CRC is turned on (Data Digest and Header Digest)
  • Server 2003 with iSCSI Initiator version 2.08 - build 3825

(I'm copying files from anothe machine to shares on Server 2003 => into TrueCrypt volume ergo onto the NAS)

I have mounted the LUN and formatted it with TrueCrypt using NTFS (Full format, not a quick one).

What happens is some files, mainly RAR/Compressed files, appear as if they copy but fail. I've tested this in a number of ways and can repeat the process every time.

So I thought to check transfer over iSCSI without TrueCrypt in between, a plain NTFS format - no problem at all.

So it would seem TrueCrypt is at least part of the problem here.

I haven't tried copying directly from the server yet, I will try that. I also haven't tried it without CRC but fail to see how that would affect this. I will update with my findings later.

In the meantime does anyone have any ideas as to what could be wrong?

Thanks for your time.

Update:

I copied a set of files, the ones I was having issues with, to the server then from there I copied those into two places within the TrueCrypt volume (Mounted on the NAS).

  1. A seperate directory create in the root of the volume
  2. The same initial directory I was using in the first instance

Both worked fine. So it now seems clear that this is a link between TrueCrypt, iSCSI and Windows Shares.

I say this because I originally setup the whole system using TrueCrypt volume files, not iSCSI. I changed it as it didn't suit my requirements - day wasted as well. While I had this setup though I copied my entire file set to the volume files and all files copied without error - over the network, from a pc, to the server where TrueCrypt had the volume files mounted from the NAS.

I didn't bother turning off CRC on the iSCSI system as I highly doubt that is the cause in light of this finding.

So any ideas?

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