electron286

This is normal for this machine... not desired of course... During parity checks, the server (4.5.3 - PRO license) is not accessible on the network, via Samba, the unRAID web interface, or via the unMENU web interface. After the parity checks complete, the server always looks normal again on all 3 listed network access methods. I am not sure at the moment how much memory is in this one, or which processor for sure. But it does have 9 data drives, with parity enabled. Multiple 2 TB drives, and some smaller. (It is currently in the monthly parity check process...) I believe this is a Pentium D, somewhere near 2.8 GHz, if I remember right... It should also have 1GB of RAM or less... Since I have usually tried to push to the limits, older hardware with unRAID for testing failure modes, I am just wondering if anyone has the best way to determine via the unRAID Linux console, where the bottleneck is. I assume the processor is at or very near 100% utilization during the parity checks. I also can imagine it might be a condition of low memory resources, but I do not think it is as likely. In the past, nothing has looked unusual in the log after the parity checks have completed. This is the first time I have had a chance to look into the condition while the monthly parity check is running, and I thought about it... What command(s) would be best to attempt at the console interface to see CPU utilization, and memory utilization? I only have done enough with Linux to do what I want when needed. I am mostly looking for a good command, or set of commands, that do not in themselves use LOTS of CPU/memory, so I do not crash an already overloaded server during a parity check. Is top a good command to use under this situation? I can not seem to find a list of what resources it may use when invoked... Any other good commands? Should I expect that the command q will still be able to stop the top process even under overloaded conditions? Also... Is there a way to lower the priority of the parity check process, to allow the system to be accessable during parity checks on an over-worked unRAID system? I just wanted to get a couple ideas, since I do not want to crash it during a parity check, and it is also the only time to test what I am seeing... This is my MAIN unRAID server...

Thanks for the info! Great price for a decent case, I doubt the price will last after the 4th of July, possibly it will end even sooner...

This is the next case on my shopping list! The Lian Li PC-343B, it has LOTS of FRONT accessible 5 1/4 drive bays, 18 in fact! :-) I was thinking of using 4in3 drive bays with it! http://www.frozencpu.com/products/5244/cst-472/Lian_Li_PC-343B_Modular_Aluminum_Cube_Case.html http://www.xoxide.com/lian-li-pc-343b-case.html

Even if you were able to use the P410 in unRAID, it looks like it would NOT be the best choice. From various forums, the following seem to be accurate... based on the latest available firmware, and by using the latest off-line configuration CD for the card... According to multiple forums, this card dose not have a JBOD mode, so multiple RAID 0 arrays would need to be created, one for each logical drive. Then, each single disk raid array could be used in a software RAID (or in this case an unRAID) array. The problem is that SMART and other disk diagnostics does not seem to be made available to the OS and disk failures are likely not going to be reported to the OS until a reboot is performed... This card is a very nice RAID controller, but a hardware RAID controller, not in JBOD (pass-through) mode, defeats the advantages that unRAID offers, and may put DATA at risk in the case of a failure. Some of the forum posts I found helpful in coming to this conclusion: http://forums.freenas.org/threads/best-solution-to-install-on-hp-dl180-g6-with-p410-raid-controller.7311/ http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/ProLiant-Servers-ML-DL-SL/P410i-amp-JBOD/td-p/5210876#.UcPKq-e-rXA http://communities.vmware.com/thread/291210?start=0&tstart=0

That reminds me of a recent power supply failure I had... I had recently replaced an old 350 watt power supply that had been in service for many years, because the fan was going bad. I replaced it with a 450 watt power supply, and did not think more about it, till it died a week later! Then I looked at the ratings, and found it was 1/2 as capable as my old 350 watt power supply was on the 5 volt rail! It is an old mother board, and has lots of older IDE hard drives in it, and the load was way too much for the newer power supply, since the loading has shifted from the 5-volt rail to the 12-volt rail for newer computers and power supplies in general. I have now since replaced it with a 650 watt power supply, as that was where I needed to go to match my 5-volt power rail needs! Just a reminder that yes, wattage is not the only thing to look at, we also need to make sure of the power distribution between voltage rails. :-(... at least I did not loose anything more than a power supply in my haste of not thinking about what I actually already knew...

Looks to me like it should be good to go with your selections. As far as your RAM, as long as you are not going to use LOTS of plug-ins, you should do well with 4GB. All of my unRAID machines, (but one of them), are on 1GB or LESS! I have never had any memory issues on them. The only add-ons I use are the monthly parity check script, and unMENU. I think that your listed selection of add-ons will be fine with 4GB of RAM, but I do not run transcoding software, I have tried it and just was never really happy with the results... so I do video compression before I place my files on my unRAID arrays, or store uncompressed image files. If you plan to do LOTS of transcoding of LARGE video files, you may want to add more RAM later. Either way 4GB should be plenty to get things running, to see if you might have a use for more RAM or not. Another item may be that if you are running LOTS of active torrents, you may want some more RAM for that also. If it is just a few (less than about 50...) it should not be a concern there either.

I was running mine with NO CPU fan till I got a replacement for my bad one. I was watching the temperatures closely at first. I was doing 3 pre-clears when I noticed the fan was not working... With the nice air flow in the case, the CPU never got warm. I think that was before I set the fan speed down to workstation mode, not sure. I did more tests after slowing down the fans, and even after unplugging the rear fans also, the CPU still had plenty of cooling. I have since put a fan on the CPU again, I just feel safer, even though I never got it warm, even to the touch, without it. That was with the supplied CPU, not sure what it would be like with an upgraded CPU.

It all depends of course on what you want to ultimately do with the server build... It is always nice to re-use old hardware. Also if you look around in your area and ask people you know and look at local listings in adds, you probably can get some older hardware for free, or close to it... That would either work with what you have, or be a full usable computer to add drives to. Also before getting rid of anything... look here - http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?board=40.0 - and see if anyone needs what you have! There may even be things there that will help you out! :-)

Staggered spin-up... I have wished for that for years... :-) It has also been discussed MANY times in the forums. I would also like to see the timer delay you mentioned, be a USER configurable parameter! :-) It would also probably make sense to use it in conjunction with the spin-up groups in some manner... so a user could selectively spin-up groups in priority, or by drive/directory access priorities... while still having staggered spin-ups. possibly a choice of 1, 2, or 3 drives at a time spin-up options... (I would think 4 drive MAX simultaneous spin up would be a good limit, if it was user configurable.)

... sorry about the marginal power supply thread invasion I seem to have created... :-) Please skip over reading the rest of this post... if not interested in my thoughts on marginal component testing... :-) I have played around a bit with old and what I would definitely call marginal components with unRAID for fault failure mode testing and worst case data loss and recovery scenarios... One of my fonder test machines has a power supply that works great with an array of 6 older 400GB SATA data drives and 1 500GB parity drive. It never has any problems with monthly parity checks, or anything OTHER than if you want to shut down the server... if you attempt to stop the array when all the drives are spun down... the server reboots because of the loading on the +12V line when all the drives spin up together... This was NOT a one time fluke, but was very repeatable, and I never was able to manually spin up all drives at the same time without forcing a re-boot. (I always wondered why the monthly parity check process NEVER seemed to cause the same condition however...) Adding a 1000uf capacitor to the +12 volt rail externally on one of the 4-pin molex power cables coming from the power supply, was enough to make it work properly. I have not had any conditions of the system re-booting for any reason since. I also was not meaning that these cool little power cables, which I am mostly attracted to for cable management purposes also, should be considered a fix for a marginal power supply, or to make a bad power supply better. I was actually more thinking that if a person were to use these, that it is quite conceivable that as a power supply degrades normally from aging, that the added capacitors in the cables could mask, for a time, the failing power supply. Making in at least some situations, the power supply usable for a longer life span. Years ago... back in the older AT (pre ATX) days. It was not all that uncommon to add external capacitors to power supplies to increase stability. Of course switching power supply designs themselves have made major leaps forward in how they are designed, and the components that are now used in such power supplies have seen similar improvements. On another more recent test machine, one with very bloated CPU and support chip capacitors on the motherboard, (old P4 machine), I had to test 3 different power supplies before finding one that had a stable enough output to allow the machine to post... it would then operate with no problems under various endurance test benchmarks. A 4th tested power supply would allow the machine to post, but would not allow full operations, without an eventual blue screen in Windows. Adding an external 2200 uf Capacitor to the 12 volt line again made this test configuration stable. Note that all 4 of these power supplies work fine on all other GOOD systems I have used them on. This has allowed me to rank these test power supplies for testing for marginal motherboards in the future... Just because a new power supply works on an old computer, it does not mean that there may not also be a problem with aged components on a motherboard...

ok, I will admit I probably got too excited there... The manufactures web site does say that there are 2 2200µF capacitors though... if correct, it should help a bit... Yes there are caps rated that high that would fit in the seemingly too small connector. There are two types of specialized caps, that are often used for memory back-up purposes in low power memory applications. I have a LOT of 1 FARAD caps, that are only rated at 5.5 volts. And they are very small indeed! They are also lots of fun to play with! :-)

Cool! I think I will order some of those! I often need additional drive power connectors, and this looks like the best and possibly the easiest and least cluttered way to do it! :-) The capacitors should also help a bit with a small/marginally sized power supply when all drives are spun up at the same time, like when shutting down an array before a server power down. Although not intended to do so... I would think... The capacitors also could have the effect of masking a marginal power supply... making it very usable... or as it is failing make it seem like it is ok...

If these cards are also going to be used with Tvheadend, and you are unable to get answers here in the unRAID forums, you can also try the Tvheadend forums. https://tvheadend.org/projects/tvheadend/boards

If you are unable to get answers here to your Tvheadend questions, you can also try the forums over there. Multiple users there are using it with unRAID... https://tvheadend.org/projects/tvheadend/boards

like your post about tuner cards... To use such devices on a computer server that is running unRAID, you would also need to run other software, that is where the compatibility list and questions would need to be asked and sought after. Such software would either be run as an additional package run under the Linux environment of unRAID, or in a virtual environment, such as under ESXi. For a better chance of answers to your questions, look at these other forums; http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?board=15.0 http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?board=6.0 Sorry, but even though it is a Hardware question, it is more properly asked under either one of those two specialized forums due to reasons stated above. Hope that will help you find the answers you are looking for! :-) Sounds very interesting! best wishes!

umm... It may be nice to have such cards in a multi-function server. unRAID is a file server though, and yes it is used by many (if not most) of us for media server purposes... but... Though what you ask for may seem nice to have in a WIKI, etc. It does not actually have anything to do unRAID. As a result, there actually would not be any compatibility lists or incompatibility concerns. The cards just do not work with unRAID... unRAID does not have any support for such devices. To use such devices on a computer server that is running unRAID, you would also need to run other software, that is where the compatibility list and questions would need to be asked and sought after. Such software would either be run as an additional package run under the Linux environment of unRAID, or in a virtual environment, such as under ESXi. For a better chance of answers to your questions, look at these other forums; http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?board=15.0 http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?board=6.0 Sorry, but even though it is a Hardware question, it is more properly asked under either one of those two specialized forums due to reasons stated above. Hope that will help you find the answers you are looking for! :-) Sounds very interesting! best wishes!

Good to hear the temperatures are lower again! While I would like to see still lower temperatures, I would not complain either with what you now are getting.

Thanks for the link! I never bothered to look into apcupsd yet, but by looking at the information at the link you provided, it does seem to answer everything! Looks like I need to play around myself when I get a chance... :-)

I guess Antec changed things... My Antec 1200 cases get power directly from the power supply with the old large 4-pin molex connectors, then have little switches on them to set the speed at low, medium, or high... Little fan power adapters are readily available to power a three pin fan from the power supply, but the fans would then scream at full speed! I would suggest a basic fan controller, (antec may have the old switch option available still - but now as an add-on instead of standard, but I can't seem to find it...) Here is one option, though not really adjustable, it can 4-fans! 2 at full speed, two at low speed! It may work as you would like, PLUS it is cheap! :-) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812311003 This second one runs the fan (ONE ONLY) at full speed only, but also will send the fan speed signal back to the mother board. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812189119 Any other more costly options may be nice, but also eat up space where a drive could go typically...

hmmm... I had started a project a few years ago to make my own fan controller, since I did not like what was on the market for my wants... Perhaps I need to pick it up again... :-) Originally I was going to use a Basic Stamp... now I am thinking about using the cool little Raspberry Pi... Either way, it could be made to do EXACTLY what the user wants it to do...

49C is still a bit warm, and I would not like to leave it there for long. The big thing is not only enough air-flow, as you have already come to think about, but PROPER air flow direction! I would check with a small piece of paper, and or feather... what the air flow is actually doing. The places you NEED the air to go in is of course at the front, over the drives. Air going IN the case at any other point will reduce the important drive cooling air flow. My other concern is that if you just block the rear vents, you might reduce power supply air flow. Sadly the other NEEDED air intake is on the power supply. One issue I have with the small (for what it does) case with limited air-flow options of the Norco series cases, is the internal airflow gets complicated by adding a "standard" power supply which also has air flow from the outside, over the power supply components and into the computer case... This increases air intake can, and often does reduce the needed cooling over the drives. The total air from all other locations on the case are the only exhaust options possible. So ALL other places need to be EXHAUSTING air from the case. If not, the drives, and possibly the power supply are being starved of needed cooling. One thing that CAN help also, is to REVERSE the fan on the power supply... This may or may not be good to do, and should only be done after fully understanding what your air-flow is currently doing. The goal here, if this path is chosen, is to remove the power supply as a source of starving drive cooling air flow. The ambient temperature will NEED to remain lower, than would otherwise be allowed in this situation to prevent power supply over heating. But I am much more concerned with the temperature your drives are already running at. If you choose to reverse the power supply air flow, it will also pull air OUT of the case and exhaust out the back, as your rear case fans already do. You will then also need to test blocking the other spots in your case that do not actively blow air out, to further assess if you need to block or not for overall best case cooling. (but I would think with the extra exhaust from the reverses power supply fan, that it may work out well to leave the other spots open.) You may also want to look at temperature changes from ambient, rather than just the drive temperatures. If you room and server area temperatures are increasing also during parity checks, this may be a bigger issue than the actual air-flow of the case! Also, you may want to look also at the internal case temperatures, CPU temperatures, and power supply temperatures... Some of these possibly just by feel, like touching the case top, bottom, power supply back, etc. Just to get an idea if things are over-all warm, cool, hot... not just what the drives are doing. Sorry no definitive answer here, it does sound like things are getting better though. I am just not comfortable running even in the 40 C range for extended periods of time, let alone 50 C or close...

Multiple questions, and answers... some leading to additional questions... :-( Note that these are OPINIONS, and your needs may not match up with what I use a UPS for... :-) 1st, for my applications, I try to ride out power outages as long as possible before making a decision to shut down the computers. so I go for long run-time on battery and usually buy larger UPSes for that purpose. It also means that I can easily connect 2 or more computers to a single UPS. :-) A higher rated (VA / WATTS) UPS not only will often come with larger batteries for additional run-time, but also is of course able to run a larger load, or multiple loads. PLUS gives a larger safety load factor for de-rating purposes since the stable load capability will also typically drop as temperature rises. If the UPS is old and dusty, or does not have adequate ventilation, a small UPS will more likely over-heat and shut down on power outages before the battery is low enough to cause a shut down event... [i]So my answer here is, buy BIG - higher VA / watt ratings - and look for the extended run-time models... [/i] 2nd, for an APC UPS, I would highly suggest looking at the more expensive SMART-UPS line instead of the lower BACK-UPS product line. The SMART-UPS line has in the past had better features, and more communications and expansion options that the BACK-UPS line which is targeted at consumers and single computer use as a basic back-up-power supply option. The biggest feature that was lacking in the BACK-UPS line was a feature sometimes known as LINE REACTIVE, meaning that the UPS has the ability to adjust output voltage to normal with power dips (brownouts), and spikes (excessive input voltage), WITHOUT switching to battery operation! This is important, so that when the power DOES go off, the battery is still fully charged and ready to power things, instead of already being run-down by repeatedly switching to battery when the input line voltage was 'out of normal operating range'. This feature is also now included in at least some of the 'NEWER' BACK-UPS models. So, here I would say look for higher end models, and features. Avoid lower end models if they DO NOT have the features you need/may want to use in the future. Specifically 3. Yes there are ways to shutdown multiple computers from a UPS power loss/battery low alarm... but many options, may not work for you... a combination of preference and cost will come into play here... so, following are some things to read about, to help you learn and decide what may be best for you. As well as more questions you will need answers to before making a final decision for multiple computer use... For APC UPSes and the ability to shutdown multiple computers on power outage... there are a few options, not sure of the best use and shutdown options via UPS communication in unRAID though... sorry. You could use scripting on a main computer, that then would in turn shutdown the unRAID computer... Here are some links about the topic, not sure what would be the best again using multiple computers on a single UPS for shutdown in unRAID, or multiple unRAID boxes for that matter. And there are always multiple ways to solve the problem. http://forums.apc.com/thread/4152?start=0&tstart=0 http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/106944-ups-to-shutdown-two-computers/ This opens up more questions than answers in my mind however... Does apcupsd support multiple options of UPS communications for the operation of power loss detection? Specifically does it support; 1. USB DATA communications of UPS status. 2. Serial DATA communications of UPS status. 3. Serial SIMULATED contact closure of UPS power failure? 4. Serial SIMULATED contact closure of UPS low battery run time left? If all or multiple are supported, what can or can not be used simultaniously with a specific model range of APC UPSes? I am throwing out more questions since I have used APC on single computers for auto-shutdown, but not on unRAID yet myself. I also have used OTHER vendor UPS solutions (now no longer available...) for network based power monitoring and computer client/server shutdown of local and remote computers. I know it is also possible with APC, the big question is what does the unRAID plug-in apcupsd support of the available APC UPS communications options. Are specific versions supported for various UPS/computer links?

WOW! I will have to say this is getting pretty exciting! Very cool to see what effects occur with changing md_sync_window! So does anyone know, or have a feeling about if the optimum value might change for size of array, or more about the controller and bus speed timing? Possibly all effect the optimum? Is this possibly something we should all look at if trying to TUNE for peak performance? What system changes are likely to need a different value for optimum performance again? Are there any pre-cautions needed or things to look for when changing the values? Are there any other questions that should be asked?...

There are all sorts of things that can cause system instability. Too many processes for amount of RAM installed, bad memory, weak power supply, mutiple power rail power supply - 1 runs out of power because the rails do not actually share the load and may cause a voltage supply dip - much like a weak or failing power supply may do..., plus many others... Your symptoms, seem to me, more likely power supply releated. In all my marginal hardware testing to determine failure modes, most commonly I have had messages such as yours with bad, weak, and failing power supplies. In only one instance have I seen your symptoms occur with a memory issue, I had a bad stick of RAM. If you have another power supply you can try it may be worth it, then also run a full 24 hours of the memory test that is available when first booting from the unRAID flash drive. Syslog is stored in RAM in a temporary virtual drive by default. There are a couple other threads where people have re-directed it to a cache drive, or a second flash drive, (to prevent excessive wear on the precious unRAID boot flash... There are a few ways to do it, sorry I do not have the time to search a bit right now, since I can not think of where I saw them right off hand. If I remember correctly, most people seem to end up adding to the 'go' script to make it go to a real storage location so the log is available even after a power down... ok... found a good link about saving syslogs... http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5568.msg60626#msg60626 Hope that will all help!

It does look like it communicates with it... If the drive is empty, new, or otherwise does not have desired data on it... I would suggest doing a pre-clear with the preclear script. This should tell you if there are any problems, not only with the drive, but also with incompatibilities with the drive and your motherboard/controller. Then the drive will not only also be tested, but also be ready to add to your array as a data drive. If adding it as a parity drive, it is still recommended to run a pre-clear cycle on it first to stress test it and make sure it looks like a good drive to trust for parity protection for your data drives. Here is the post for the script... http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2817.0 Look at the end of the first post for the download link...