StatMatt

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Everything posted by StatMatt

  1. Absolutely 100% agree. I've had problems with drive replacements as well and the current process/steps seem VERY fragile. It needs a wizard.
  2. These two tabs should be one. The distinction of what is a "Tool" and what is a "Setting" makes no sense to me. When I'm looking to do something, I usually have to go to both of these menus before I find what I'm looking for since they're both kind of cluttered and not clearly organized. Why are User Utilities under Settings instead of Tools? Why is Update OS under Tools? If there is a logic to any of it, I've not been able to figure it out. The two menus should be combined and re-organized in a way that makes more sense to regular users.
  3. I have no doubt that what you're saying makes perfect sense to you as someone who does this everyday, but it makes almost no sense to me. I mean, I can understand the words you're using and what they mean, but I'm trying to figure out how a regular user would have any idea that the status for what looks like a physical disk is the actually the status for an emulated drive (assuming they even know there is such a thing as an emulated drive). Is there some obvious indicator that I overlooked? Even if I did know that, how would I have known there was anything I was supposed to do about it other than what I did? I had an old drive suddenly show up as "unmountable", so I replaced it. I'm not trying to be confrontational. I'm just offering feedback that I think could improve UnRAID as a product. Right now it seems like there are a number of things that are built in ways that apparently make sense to the devs (or ?) but don't make sense to users like me.
  4. Thanks for this tip. I did with the -v option. It generated a TON of output of things that looked alarming, but there wasn't any clear way to copy that log to a file from the GUI so I don't remember what it said. Went back to Main, stopped the array (because it had been in maintenance mode), restarted it, and everything seems okay.(?) Sorry, but I don't remember if it said that or not. If it did, I wouldn't have thought that weird because it was a brand new drive. Seems like it SHOULD be unmountable! The instructions (https://docs.unraid.net/legacy/FAQ/replacing-a-data-drive/) didn't say anything about formatting the drive or making it mountable or whatever - I just assumed that would get handled though the rebuild process. Just a comment: I've been using UnRAID for about a year and a half now, and this is the second time I've had a problem replacing an array drive. For most of users, I suspect replacing a drive is not an everyday occurrence. It would be super helpful if there were a "wizard" or something to walk us through the steps, because the documentation isn't great (doesn't it seem like something is missing between step 8 and 9? And to itimpi's comment how would I know that the if the drive is showing unmountable I'm supposed to do something else first?) and it seems like there are several "gotchas" that make the process fragile. Granted it seems like it's been fixed now, but I have NO idea what I did wrong, nor will I remember the details the next time an issue comes up. Thanks.
  5. I had an array data drive that dropped out of the array for some reason. It's an older 8tb SMR drive and I didn't completely trust it, so I decided to replace it with a new 14tb non-SMR drive. I followed the steps listed here: https://forums.unraid.net/forum/55-general-support/, although I'm not completely sure I remember any checkbox. Anyway, the machine chugged away for 24+ hours updating parity, but now the new drive is showing as "Unmountable: Unsupported or no filesystem". It's giving me a checkbox to format the drive, but it doesn't seem like I would want to format the drive after the parity has been rebuilt, right? Did I screw something up? unsmedley-diagnostics-20231027-1902.zip
  6. Sorry, one more follow-up question. I've successfully used the Unassigned Devices plugin to mount the old 6TB drive via a USB-to-SATA adapter. Now that I've got it mounted, I was thinking I would set up a user script utilizing rsync to move the files back onto the array. It's usually my practice to write to a share (mnt/user/*sharename*) and I have always tried to avoid directly writing to a drive in the array (mnt/*disk#*). For this scenario, would you recommend that I just copy everything to the replacement drive directly (i.e. /mnt/*disk#*), or should I copy to the share (for a few folders that would write to the cache pool, which has ample capacity for the contents of those folders) and let Mover sort everything out? Or am I completely off-base thinking about using rsync for this task? Any other suggestions? Thanks!
  7. Two thoughts: regarding the warning message maybe adding an example ("e.g. replacing a drive in the array"), and also maybe something like "(if your array currently has an emulated disk due to disk failure or routine replacement, formatting may result in loss of all data on the emulated disk")? Going a bit further, can you somehow have an additional check in the formatting process so if the array has an emulated disk that it gives either another stronger warning or maybe even prevents disk formatting (unless in enabled by checkbox somewhere deep in the settings that casual users wouldn't normally use)? Seems to me like it would be an edge-case where someone would need to format a disk in an array with an emulated disk, so locking out that functionality (with a work-around for those who really know what they're doing) may be best. I also agree that the documentation should clearly state that the filesystem cannot change during array disk replacement. Thanks for the opportunity to provide input.
  8. By the way, thanks for posting that warning. That was a couple of days ago and I didn't remember specifically what it said. Re-reading it now really helps me realize that I wasn't just being careless - I actually did read that message and honestly thought it wasn't relevant to my situation.
  9. In reply to JorgeB's post of the warning message: that warning says it'll lead to loss of all data on the drive being formatted. That is where I feel it might be confusing, because I know from past experience that if I'm adding a new drive into the array that any of the data it might have had on it would be lost. It wasn't at all clear to me that the drive being formatted was (apparently?) the EMULATED drive. I thought the warning was about the new drive, which was blank and I wasn't expecting or even wanting any files on it to somehow become part of the array. So this warning didn't seem applicable to me in my scenario.
  10. Obviously this is frustrating to me and not my intended outcome, to now have to mess around for several more days figuring out how to get my data back and off the old drive. I think the documentation and warnings could have been more clear about the fact that you can not change filesystem during a rebuild. It wasn't clear to me until you said it just now that the format was of the EMULATED disk (I don't even understand what that means, tbh) - it seemed to me like it was talking about formatting the new disk (which made sense to me - whenever I've added a new disk to the array one of the first things that needs to happen is for it to be formatted). If I can make this mistake, others can too which is why I'm suggesting updating the documentation and warnings. Data recovery question: Does it matter *how* I connect my old drive using unassigned devices? I have a USB3 drive bay that I could use - apart from some likely transfer speed disadvantages is there any reason I couldn't use USB3 instead of SATA? There aren't any more 3.5" bays in the server case so I don't have an easy way to put that disk back in.
  11. I somewhat remember a popup, but I thought that was a normal part of the process. This was my first time replacing a drive in the array so I didn't realize the message was abnormal. I thought it was just warning me that any existing data on the new drive would be wiped. I don't recall seeing any warnings about "format is never part of a rebuild". Why would it then spend nearly 2 days doing all of the reads from the other pool drives and writes to the new drive telling me that it was updating parity? Shouldn't it have been doing mostly writes TO the parity drive? Suggest updating the documentation and warnings to be more clear.
  12. I recently decided to upgrade one of my array drives from an older 6TB to a new 18TB drive. I followed the steps in the UNRAID documentation (https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/storage-management/) and watched my server do a parity rebuild over the course of about 2 days. Now the parity rebuild says it's done. The old drive was about half full so it had about 3TB of files, but the new drive is now showing only 2.75MB (i.e. 0.00000275TB), so basically nothing. On the main tab if I browse the contents of the drive there are no files or folders showing AT ALL (it says: 0 objects: 0 directories, 0 files (0 B total)). It appears the parity rebuild didn't actually work. I was watching the main tab from time-to-time throughout the rebuild and it was showing tons of reads from the other seven array drives and writes to the new drive, so I'm really confused about where my data is. What do I do now? Not sure if it's relevant, but the old 6TB drive was formatted xfs, but I decided to try zfs on the new drive. I didn't think the underlying FS would matter for parity rebuild but maybe it does? I had most of my docker containers except Emby turned off during the rebuild, and this morning when I saw the parity rebuild seems to have failed. I also hadn't disabled mover, but I didn't think that was necessary since the documentation didn't mention anything about that. The old 6TB drive is sitting on the workbench waiting to be cleared for re-use for another purpose. I don't have an extra 3.5" bay in that server so it would be difficult to put it back but I could probably gin something up if needed. I also have another backup UNRAID server that I could put it in pretty easily (also a couple of Win10 boxes) if that would help, but I'm reluctant to do anything until I get some guidance. Diagnostics attached. bonzo-diagnostics-20230829-0904.zip
  13. I agree with this suggestion. The current UI design makes it difficult to understand how mover will work. It would be better if arrow always points the same direction as suggested by OP. Would make it much easier to understand what Mover will do and to confirm you have it set as intended.
  14. I hit the "Compute All" on the Shares tab literally 90 MINUTES AGO and it's still calculating. How could it possibly take that long? Could it cache the most recent result and display that with a timestamp and give the user the option to update that if it's not current enough? If I navigate away from the Shares tab, it'll have to start over. I'm trying to get the information to work on my file organization and the wait is extremely frustrating. Reminds me of another semi-related UI cache issue that I might submit as it's own feature request. Whenever I get a notification from Fix Common Problems that I have plugin that needs to be updated, I go to the Plugins tab and then have to wait (what feel like) 5 minutes while it's "checking for updates" for every plugin. I've never actually timed it, but it's bad enough that I leave the tab open and go work on something else. Somewhere the system is checking that information often enough that the results are known to the Fix Common Problems plugin, so why isn't a cached result displayed on the UI? There are a lot of things to like about UnRAID, but the UI can be maddeningly slow!
  15. That was super-weird. I rebooted my main unraid server, and once it re-started suddenly the little bulbs were green and I was able to mount the remote shares on my Win10 box, but at the same time my backup unraid server no longer showed as online so that remote share couldn't be mounted. I went in a pinged it, and once I did suddenly it also started working (after a couple of tries - I forgot UNIX is case sensitive). Something very strange seems to be going on with name resolution on my network - will have to try to get to the bottom of that. Thanks for your help.
  16. Interesting result. I can ping the IP address of the computer no problem. It's on my subnet at the address x.y.z.35 (incidentally, how does one stop the ping command? It seemed to just keep pinging over and over - I wasn't sure how to interrupt the command so I just closed the command line window. Hopefully that stopped it and didn't just leave it running in the background forever!) However when I tried to ping the computer name, it appears to have resolved to the incorrect IP address of x.y.z.39. The mobo is one with dual NICs as well as IPMI, but I have the second NIC port bound only to Hyper-V manager and from my router it looks like the IPMI BMC was assigned a different IP address. I just tried starting up one of the VMs and it was assigned yet a different IP address. So why is unraid incorrectly resolving the hostname? And what can I do about it? Thanks!
  17. I've been trying to search this forum/thread, but haven't found this specific issue. I have a few remote shares set up on a Win10 PC. Everything seemed to be working fine and I was able read/write to those shares until recently. I usually have that PC powered off while I'm away, and when I returned recently and booted up that computer, the remote shares won't reconnect. The remote PC is on and I am able to log into it (local or RDP) and the shares should all be accessible - afaik nothing changed. How can I best diagnose the issue? I've tried adding a new share from within unRAID, and when I "search for servers" that PC name (E5-2670) comes up, but then when step thru the wizard and try to load shares the list comes up blank. Hoping I can reconnect these shares and appreciate any tips. Hopefully it's okay to post this question right in the thread here but I'd be happy to make a new thread if that's preferable. Thanks! bonzo-diagnostics-20230818-1509.zip
  18. Thanks for the link, JorgeB. I do have all of the array drives formatted ZFS - maybe I should drop the SMR drives back to XFS and see if that makes any difference? I was also getting very disappointing write speeds from the one drive that isn't SMR, but it is formatted ZFS. The platform is old (it's an Ivy Bridge i7), and maybe ZFS just has too much overheard for a 11-year-old CPU?
  19. Thanks everyone for your thoughts on my issue - sorry to be so slow to reply. I am attaching diagnostics from the "new" server. I recently used Unbalance to move about 1.77tb from one drive in the array to another, and it took more than two days at an reported average transfer rate of 9.46Mb/s. This is with parity disabled. Now the drive I was writing to is an SMR drive, but even so isn't that slow even for SMR? In my previous post I mentioned a Duplicacy backup and I was getting similar speeds writing to a non-SMR drive. Below I'm pasting in the report from the unbalance log file. (No, I don't know why it says elapsed time 0s.) I was occasionally checking the server while unbalance was running and never saw CPU at more than about 20%, and I had Mover basically disabled (set to monthly more than 20 days away) and also had Docker and VMs disabled. I know a few people are thinking my issue is not the same as OP, so I'd be happy to move to a new thread if warranted. unsmedley-diagnostics-20230818-1206.zip
  20. I have a second server on 6.12 that I've been setting up for a server backup (eventually to be off-site). It's currently on my LAN (wired 1GB) and with parity disabled I'm getting single-digit (!!) average write speeds. Duplicacy is telling me a 6TB backup will take over six days. I disabled parity to try to speed it up but it's still giving single-digit write speeds.
  21. I'm having a similar issue. Recently upgraded to 6.12.3, and now Mover basically never stops running just transferring ~200GB in client backups from the cache pool to the array. Like OP, I'm seeing a lot of times when the array appears to be idle. I never had this problem on 6.11 or earlier.
  22. No PCIe slots available in the server to add a GPU, I'm afraid. But I have a i5-6500 computer around that isn't getting much use so I'll just try going the bare-metal route. Thanks so much for all of the help!
  23. Very helpful, thanks. I had no idea about the machine type so I just went with the default. I'll try to change to Q35 - I haven't activated Windows on it yet, so hopefully no major issues. I was planning to use this VM for my son to have his own "sandbox" machine to mess around with Algodoo (physics simulator) and Minecraft. Figured a VM would be easier for me to manage than bare metal and he was going to be RDP-ing to it from an iPad or Chromebook anyway. In truth, I'm not really sure how much VRAM the board is allocating - I'll have to look into that. I wouldn't think either of those titles are particularly demanding so I was hoping the iGPU can handle it, but maybe I should go for a different strategy...? Again, thanks for the help.
  24. Okay, that's embarrassing - I just hadn't rebooted the server since installing the plugin. I rebooted the server and it seems the plugin is working now. I don't recall seeing in the install instructions that a reboot was necessary - sorry if I overlooked that. BUT, I do have one more question. I've not yet found a good resource that explains KVM, so I don't fully understand the different types of "machine"s. I've used the default, which is the i440fx-6.2, but I notice in the documentation it specifically refers to Q35 machine. Do I need to change the machine to Q35, or will it work with the i440fx?
  25. Okay, I guess I'll give it a try and see what happens. Thanks for taking the time to reply.