binhex

hmm interesting, i am able to start a blu-ray mkv rip but it seems to consistently cut out part way through but only when a parity check or pre-clear are in operation. im beginning to wonder if this is nic related too, we shall see as i have a new nic on order, if this cures this issue as well i will be a happy bunny, thanks again for the feedback dgaschk

ok talking to myself again, man i gotta stop this :-). well i did a quick search around and see other people are having success with this nic so i might take the plunge and go for the EXPI9301CTBLK, either that or i might save the pci-e x1 slot and instead got for the intel PWLA8391GT which is a pci slot card, hmm decisions decisions.

quick question, i dont know if anybody has this card and if so can verify whether drivers are included in unraid (ver 5.0 rc8a) as im thinking of switching from onboard nic to expansion card due to slow writes (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=23268.msg206633#msg206633), the card in question is this one:- Intel EXPI9301CTBLK Gigabit Ethernet Card many thanks.

Thanks that's good to know one other question for you, slightly off topic, can you watch hd movies whilst a parity check is in progress? I've found this isn't possible, im assuming due to processor not being powerful enough.

ok still talking to myself here, what do they say about people who do that?? tried setting one of my user shares to use the cache drive, still seeing slow write speeds, so i guess this rules out slow parity drive and/or cpu parity calculations causing a bottleneck. so my next attack is nic replacement, can anybody recommend a decent (relatively cheap) supported nic that def can handle full gigbit speeds, was thinking about a pci-e intel nic dont know which ones are fully supported by unraid though couple of questions for anybody reading this, is anybody using a amd sempron 145 2.8Ghz process and seeing decent write speeds?, or using my motherboard ( Asus M5A78L-M LX v2) and seeing decent write speeds?. thanks.

hi, i am trying to diagnose slow write speeds to my unraid box, here is what im running hardware wise:- proc AMD sempron 145 2.8Ghz ram 4GB DDR3 mobo Asus M5A78L-M LX v2 switch TP-LINK 8-port Gigabit Unmanaged Desktop Switch (TL-SG1008D) im using the onboard gigabit nic, which looking at unraid syslog is detected as follows:- eth0: Identified chip type is 'RTL8168E-VL/8111E-VL' software wise im running unraid 5.0 rc8a licenced with a pro licence, i do have a parity drive and i do have a cache drive, but i dont have the cache drive assigned to any of the shares as i want to use this solely for plugins only, no caching, so writes are ALWAYS directly to the protected array. im basically having write speeds that top out at 21MB/s read speeds are perfect and return around 75MB/s to 85MB/s which is great. one other thing to add is that im writing to the disk share not the user share, the destination drive im writing to is just over 50% full so i dont think its a problem with fragmentation/slow inner write speeds. ive noticed that im getting dropped packets on RX (less than 1% of total packets), which makes sense in that its writes that are slow, things i have tried so far with no result:- copying from source pc (windows 7) to another linux device on same switch result - can write at full speed, thus ruling out source as issue and also switch changed cat6 cable for another cable (cat5e this time) result - same write speed, cannot seem to achieve write speeds above 21MB/s checked source disk can achieve speeds higher than 21MB/s (sata drive) achieved write speeds to another linux device (openelec) of around 56MB/s thus ruling out source drive made sure issue is not related to SMB copied using NFS from another linux device as source, same performance issue, this also strengthens argument that it ISNT related to source pc added the noacpi flag as per suggestion in other threads no change in write speeds updated bios for unraid mobo no change in write speeds at this point my gut feeling is this is either unraid nic driver related or my mobo nic is faulty, my money is on the driver, any other suggestions as to how to solve this VERY welcome as im coming to the end of my dagnosis with no fix at present. link to syslog just incase you guys want to take a look through:- http://pastebin.com/KpJ3Tpwb thanks.

Thanks Joe that confirms what I thought

quick question, ive just installed the unmenu smtp package (as well the pre-req compiler) i see now on my flash drive in the following directory i have the source files for the smtp package, im assuming i can now safely delete these? location of folder containing what look like source code:- \\tower\flash\packages\ssmtp\ im fairly sure i can delete the folder ssmtp, but just want confirmation from the pro's :-).

Hi you have a very similar build to mine, you might want to look at the v2 version of that mobo it's supposed to be better and is what I went for also check out the antec 300 case as an alternative. Let me know how you get on n :-)

smart report attached, another question for you, sorry if im bugging you, is there any way i can identify which file(s) were unreadable based on the information in the syslog, i.e. the number after the "handle_stripe read error:" which im assuming is the block number perhaps?, if can you detail the command, im just trying to identify what i may of lost. thanks once more. smart_report.txt

hi thanks for your swift response, one question why would i run a preclear on disk 2 again?, would a replacement drive not be a better solution?, unless running a preclear marks the bad sectors and thus the drive can then be reused, is this the idea?. thanks again.

hi i have recently just introduced a parity drive after copying all my data to data drives, i decided to run a parity check with "Correct any Parity-Check errors by writing the Parity disk with corrected parity." option ticked, i now think this was a bad move, more on this in a moment. basically at the start of the parity check i noticed 65 disk errors showing on disk2 and a "sync errors corrected" count of 1. i had a look at the syslog and it looks like disk2 maybe the culprite, so i may possibly have a dodgy disk, my worry is that because parity is now calculated from the disk i will of lost any data that was in the 65 errors logged (block??). its now finished parity check with no more sync errors or disk errors. attached is my syslog, oh btw im running 5.0 rc8a, if you need any more info then please let me know. many thanks. syslog.txt

Looks like it was running out of memory, used the command flags you suggested and it looks good so far, 10 mins and still going ok, was a little surprised by this to be honest as i have 4GB of ram installed, does preclear really use that much memory?, i did notice the memory usage was bouncing around a lot, im confident the memory is good as i did a soak test using memcheck for 24 hours. so i got a working solution, superb! cheers joe.

Fantastic stuff Joe I will have a go with these command, I did run top to check cpu and ram, it didn't look like pre clear was taxing my system too much, but it's def possible as I'm using a cheap sempron processor. Thanks Joe

Ok fair enough, shame it's not possible to keep the system accessible whilst a pre clear is running but hey I guess I can work around it

Yeah I guess but seeing pre clear lasts about 30 hours that's tricky in my house are you seeing the same issue?

Hi I'm running unraid 5.0 rc5 with pre clear 1.13 and have noticed issues playing any movie using xbmc whilst a pre clear is in operation, the movie just stops, if I hit play again it plays for a bit longer then stops again.has anybody else seen this issue? any suggestion on fixing this other than to run pre clear on another system?

I don't know about advanced format but I believe all you need to do is pre clear using the pre clear script for the drive and then add to array and hit the format button, job done.

Just to throw in a more specific example of a device you would connect to your tv, have a look at zotac ID41 boxes, these will run a completely stripped down linux os with xbmc running, this is done by installing openelec, then simply connect to your unraid server and voila! :-)