LS-XHL Webaccess slow Thumbnail creation for JPEG

[Filou01]

Hello!

I´ve copied my Pictures to my new LS-XHL 2TB in a shared folder.

Webaccess works for most file types, but if there are many Pictures in a folder (>10) the Thumbnail Creation often takes hours.

The JPEG´s are normal 12Megapixel images with no special Filename.

Firmware Version is 1.34 and it´s also slow if i access the WebAccess Site via GB-LAN (no WAN Problem).

 

Is this normal that Thumbnail Creation takes so long, or is it a bug?

 

Many Thanks and kind regards,

Christoph

[daoswald]

I noticed the same issue just yesterday.  I dumped 225 Jpeg images into a photos folder.  I had reduced the image size to 2MP, which is really nothing nowadays.  It took so long for the thumbnails to generate that I gave up, restarted the LS-XHL, and then separated the images into three subfolders of 75.  Even that quantity seemed to overwhelm the LS.  It didn't matter whether I was accessing the devices webaccess from outside my network or from within the LAN.  Thumbnail creation starts out fasst, and quickly slows to a snail's pace.  In the end, there were a few "broken" too, though I confirmed nothing to be wrong with the files themselves.

 

Same firmware as OP.

[Filou01]

Thanks for your quick answer! I can agree to your statements, especially the fast start in Thumbnail creation and the slow down after the first pictures. In the end there also some  broken images.

I´ve tried with original Camera Quality (12MP) and with another folder with the same Images in a much smaller picture size (1024px max). But in the end there are the same issues, independent of the Image Size.

 

It would be interesting if the Issue is new in 1.34 or inherited from older versions.

[daoswald]

I suspect either a memory leak, or inefficient use of memory in the thumbnail creation process.  An efficient application would create each thumbnail one by one, output it, and then release its memory to the creation of the next thumbnail.  An inefficient application would hold each thumbnail in memory until all are done (regardless of whether or not they're rendered to the browser immediately).  If the latter is what's happening, then with each additional thumbnail, more memory is consumed.  These NAS's have limited memory; maybe 512MB total, plus some limited swapfile space.  It doesn't take much inefficiency to bog down the memory and even the swapfile.

 

Either the thumbnails are being cached in memory/swap, or there is a failure to reclaim the unused memory.  As more are created, the situation becomes more and more congested.  Eventually it grinds to such a slowdown that each additional iteration takes seemingly forever.

 

Of course I don't have access to looking at the scripts that comprise the webaccess system, but with my limited knowlege of programming fundamentals, I'd be willing to bet my old unused Linkstation Live320 on a memory leak or inefficient memory use being the culprit.  Hopefully a future firmware revision will address this issue..

[Filou01]

This was the answer from the Helpdesk:

 

Dear Christoph,

Thank you for contacting the Buffalo Helpdesk regarding your WebAccess.

I have been checking these on our Helpdesk and everything seems to be working fine on our end.

Nevertheless we are running a test on firmware 1.37 therefore it might be related to the firmware.

What I would advise you to do is to go for the root folder where your pictures are stored. Enable Windows’ option to allow viewing Hidden Files and you will find a folder called .webacc. Delete this folder, restart the unit and check if you have again the same speeds.

If it is the case, firmware 1.37 should be released in the coming weeks, therefore please be patient and check with this new firmware.

If you require any further support please let us know.

Regards,

Christian

Buffalo Technology Helpdesk

 

 

Deleting the webacc folder doesn´t change anything.

[daoswald]

I wonder why tech support and the product firmware development teams seem to be from planets so far from one another as to prevent any form of communication that could result in an informed diagnosis.

[buffaloman]

Hi

Can anyone advise if this 'slow jpg thumbnail' problem has been solved with Firmware 1.37.

I have just purchased a Linkstation which has Firmware 1.34 intalled and I am getting this problem when using Web Access.

 

Thanks

buffaloman