bonustreats

Just wanted to update: all steps are complete, parity AND resources were available consistently (other than downtime for physically replacing HDDs). Waaaaay simpler and easier than I was expecting it to be. Thanks so much @jonathanm and @itimpi for all the help - it's definitely most appreciated!

Ah gotcha - wasn't sure if there was some distinction I was missing somewhere; thanks! Better safe than sorry! Started a non-correcting check and will look for any sync errors. If there are, I'll report back (guessing that's a hard drive issue?); if not, on to step 2! Thanks again!

I think step 1 is complete. I let parity rebuild on the 8TB and it just finished, but I just wanted to double check: - after parity is rebuilt, are you saying to run another parity check? OR did you mean the data rebuild includes a correcting check? Here's my homepage: Which to me, looks like a correcting check was done during the rebuild. If that's NOT the case, then I'll run another parity check before moving on to step 2. Sorry for the billion questions and thanks in advance!

In case anyone's reading this thread and is using shucked WD Easystore HDDs that don't show up in BIOS, please see this comment by @jonathanm. TL;DR - you need to disable the 3rd pin from the left on the power connection of the HDD by either using Kapton tape to cover that pin or use a Molex to Sata Power connector. I've had my own issues with some shitty connectors, so I'll be trying the tape method (should be arriving today). E: tape arrived, first HDD installed and recognized! Rebuilding parity as we speak; ETA: 18.5 hours.

In addition to the discrete steps, I think I like yours better since personal preference is to err on the side of caution by keeping parity valid at the expense of time; especially going from 2 parity drives to 1. I'll probably expand parity again at some point, but I'll need a bit more consolidation to open bays in my case. Thanks @JorgeB for the good info! I'll just keep my standard "don't add anything during the parity check" going, but good to know it won't break anything. Thanks again for all the help and I'll update as necessary.

Man, so many things I didn't know! - I assumed both parity drives needed to be the same size - Wasn't sure about rebuild data availability and was definitely trying to play it safe - knew that the array was available during a check, but wasn't sure about when it's building parity. Also, is writing to the array during a parity check okay? I've always avoided that just to be safe. Based on this, looks like your solution will work better than mine (parity maintained, almost constant data availability), albeit take a bit longer (which is fine with me!). Thanks so much for the inputs! I have one more drive to preclear and I'll probably start early next week. I'll try to update with progress or any tidbits, but will report back once it's done to mark this solved. Thanks so much for the quick responses and good information!

You're right - bad verbiage on my part. Removing and replacing is what I should have said - sorry. I was planning on moving files for 2 reasons: - being able to 'clean' the 2x 2TB that are being replaced. That way if I ever need them again, they're ready to rock. And, - consolidating shares that have been spread across multiple disks. SIO mentioned that it was way less wear on the whole array to pull data from just one disk (Plex, etc.) when needed. I'm planning on having one of the 8TB specifically for movies and the other specifically for TV series, with room for expansion. Just a couple questions: 1. Will unRAID allow for 2 dissimilarly-sized parity drives? The 8TB can be building parity and the other 4TB will be parity 2 during that operation? If so, awesome! 2. gotcha 3/4. This is where having all the data on the remaining 4 data drives comes in. With the fresh 8TBs, I could use unBalance to move ALL the Movie and TV shares onto each of those new disks and not wait for unRAID to rebuild them. Is this a bad idea? 5. Yep - sorry, I think I forgot to include this step. Just to reduce downtime, I guess. I do have some plex users, but also don't want to put data at risk.

Oh, goootcha - didn't realize that parity would be invalidated. Crap. Thanks!

Hi Everyone, Based on SpaceInvaderOne's latest video regarding properly set up shares, I'm looking to upgrade my current configuration to keep media shares confined to one disk (if possible). In that vein, I picked up 3 WD Easystore 8TB drives that are currently preclearing. Here's my current configuration: What I'm hoping to do: Total number of disks stays the same; array size increases by 4TB. New Config Parity: WD 8TB Parity 2: Removed Disk 1: WD 8TB Disk 2: Same Disk 3: Same Disk 4: WD 8TB Disk 5: Same Disk 6: Same Disk 7: Previous 4TB parity disk I saw the wiki articles about array shrinking and reducing parity drives but wasn't sure if there was a best practice for doing both at the same time. Here's my plan to (hopefully) keep everything safe, as well as minimizing things like parity checks: 1. Move data (using unBalance) from the 2 drives I plan to remove onto the other 4 data drives (exclude them from all shares) 2. Run new config utility 3. Remove extraneous drives 4. Run a parity check 5. Remove parity 1x 4TB drive 2 (ensure parity is still valid) 6. Replace 1x 4TB parity with 1x 8TB parity 7. Add 2x 8TB drives and re-designate old 1x 4TB as a data disk for the array 8. Move data (using unBalance) *9. Final parity check Does that seem like a reasonable order of operations? How do you guys feel about dropping from 2 parity disks to 1? Please feel free to poke holes if I missed something or I'm being dumb. Thanks so much!

Hooooly crap, you're right! I added github.com to the whitelist, but that didn't make any difference, so I just disabled pihole and github loaded right up. WOW, that didn't even cross my mind. I disabled it and installed the plugin. Thanks so much for the answer AND the quick turnaround - it's most appreciated!

Hi @ich777, After all the help to get stuff setup on 6.8.3 (thanks again), I updated to 6.9 stable and ran into an issue (I'm very sorry). I removed all the extra parameters/variables from the Plex container after upgrading and started to follow the directions in the first post. However, I ran into this error trying to install the NVIDIA driver: I just assumed something was wrong with my system, so I tried these things: - pinged the server (success) - removed the previous unraid-kernal helper plugin (success) and tried redownloading the NVIDIA drivers (failure) - tried to install manually via the plugin page/link (failure) - downloaded another docker - your unraid kernel helper (success) - streaming via Plex both on and off the network (success) I'm not quite sure why it won't download, but I'm just wondering if maybe I missed turning off a setting or something. Diagnostics are attached in case they're needed. Thanks very much! radagast-diagnostics-20210303-1701.zip

I don't think the fan speed was higher, but honestly can't remember. If it happens again, I'll make sure to take a look to compare. I didn't know that about the docker page, but I do have (and have had preivously) kept it in basic view - thanks for the info! I'll keep my eye on CPU usage when I go to the dashboard page, but I don't think I'll be visiting as frequently until it's resolved. Thanks again!

Thanks for the link! Apologies - I didn't mean for you to have to Google something for me; just thought it might have been a prominent issue or something. I was looking into persistence mode and found this - it seems like pulling the GPU out of P8 (deep sleep) may invoke some RAM usage. However, does forcing it out of deep sleep cause any extra 'wear' on the card? Maybe just increases the likelihood of fan failure? Sorry, these aren't direct questions (unless you know the answer, haha), so I'll keep digging. Maybe this is related to the CPU load increasing? While googling that error, I came across someone in a previous thread mentioning something very similar to what I was seeing with the CPU issue. They seemed to think it was related to @b3rs3rk's plug-in, but there's no direct proof of that. Sorry - bad phrasing. I just meant that the CPU load increased to 4-7% and stayed there for no apparent reason until I started/stopped the Plex stream; everything else behaved normally (GUI/system was fully responsive, though I didn't do any sort of testing for all functionality). All that to say, I haven't seen this happen again, so maybe it was just a fluke? Edit - and I'm not seeing any other problems; sorry, forgot to answer

Just wanted to follow up with some (slightly) odd behavior, though I'm not quite sure where the issue may be coming from. I've noticed my CPU spooling up to 4-7% usage and just kind of hanging out there while nothing's going on - no Plex stream or VM running. At the same time, my GPU comes out of P8 (idle) to P0 and also just kind of hangs out for a while. I then initiate a transcoded Plex stream and terminate it after a few minutes and the system returns to normal (1-2% CPU load). This morning, I was able to catch the cycle: I checked to make sure my dockers were running and updated Plex. The CPU/GPU load stayed elevated until I started, then terminated a Plex transcode and it went back to 'normal.' I don't think I've seen this behavior (at least with the CPU) before upgrading, but I honestly can't say that for certain. Image of the CPU load and ethernet traffic is attached, as well as the diagnostics file. I was looking through the system log and saw this repeated a couple thousand times: Feb 18 05:43:11 Radagast kernel: resource sanity check: requesting [mem 0x000c0000-0x000fffff], which spans more than PCI Bus 0000:00 [mem 0x000c0000-0x000dffff window] Feb 18 05:43:11 Radagast kernel: caller _nv000709rm+0x1af/0x200 [nvidia] mapping multiple BARs And thought maybe my GPU got stuck in a loop or something? Wasn't sure if I should post here, so if it isn't related to the plug-ins, I'd be glad to start a separate thread. Thanks very much! Edit: just wanted to further point out the CPU and network spikes at ~05:45 (that was me downloading Plex update) and the other at ~07:30 initiating the Plex transcode. radagast-diagnostics-20210218-1559.zip

Apologies for the delay in response, but I just had a chance to implement the changes. They went flawlessly! Thanks so much @ich777 for all your hard work, it's most appreciated! Also thanks to @yogy for writing out the steps for dummies like me! I also installed @b3rs3rk's plugin and it's working great, too! I've been using unRAID since...2013 (2012?) and I've been consistently impressed by the patience, knowledge, and overwhelming amount of support that the community provides. You guys are the best - thanks!

Hey everyone, Just had a question and wanted to run through the steps @yogy wrote on page 23 to make sure I wasn't going to mess anything up (sorry for all the noob-y stuff). 1 - I'm not quite sure what the differences are in the pre-built images and which one I would need. Here's my sitch: I recently acquired an RTX 4000 and would like to use it for plex streaming on the current (stable) 6.8.3 OS. I've watched SIO's excellent video about h/w transcoding and have been catching up with the ongoing situation regarding plugins and removals. My question: I am using ZFS as the file system in my server, so does that mean I would need the "custom NVIDIA&ZFS" download or would the "custom NVIDIA" suffice? Here are the steps that I would take to upgrade: 1. backup my flash drive 2. replace all bz* files on the flash with the ones from the download 3. reboot server and install unraid-nvidia-kernel-helper plugin from CA 4. follow SIO's passthrough steps (passing parameters, etc.) 5. turn on hardware encoding within plex 6. double check that watch nvidia-smi shows the GPU and utilization during playback 7. celebrate Is that correct? Again, apologies for the noob questions, just nervous about messing with my mostly rock-solid setup. I appreciate all the hard work @ich777 has done to make this a possibility - thanks very much! Thanks in advance! E: welp, I am a dumb dumb. I'm using XFS not ZFS as my file system - my apologies. Guess I would just need the custom NVIDIA download. Don't drink and post, folks, haha.

Update: I ordered a PCI NIC to tide me over until stable 6.9 drops. Everything seems to be working well with the current setup. Thanks everyone for the responses; they're most appreciated!

Hey Jorge, Thanks for the link! I wasn't sure if manual was still a preferred (possible) update method. I've been reading through some other threads about some issues 6.9 beta (as well as some of the fixes) and I miiiight not be ready to live on the bleeding edge with my current unraid novice status, haha. Might just grab a PCI NIC and call it a day until 6.9 stable releases. Thanks again!

Oh man, really? WOW - thanks! How in the hell did I miss that? Is that in some release notes that I missed? I'm guessing the steps are: putting the old hardware back in, upgrade to the beta, then swap the hardware again? Thanks so much for such a quick response!

Hi Everyone, This morning I replaced all the guts of my server with upgraded hardware: Gigabyte Aorus Pro B550 Ryzen 7 3700 Trident Z Neo DDR4-3200 - 16GB But left all the HDD/Cache stuff there. I then upgraded the BIOS to the latest release, change the boot order to my flash drive, and voila! Upgraded server! Except... I can't see it on my network. It will boot and start regularly when using GUI mode, but it won't be seen on the network. Things I've tried: - resetting the network (no change) - changed the IP address from static (no change) - new cable (no change) - looking through the BIOS to see if there was some setting that I missed (didn't see anything) Observations: - I do get the 'network lights' on the port when I plug the cable in - there are 2 drives from which I can boot in the BIOS (one says 'partition 1'); maybe I have them in the wrong order? This may not be unraid related (maybe more hardware related), but I wasn't sure if anyone's seen/had any issues like this using my particular board OR if maybe I'm just being an idiot and missed something easy. Thanks so much for your time (diagnostics attached)! radagast-diagnostics-20201202-1945.zip

So I found out why my cache drive failed! Looks like a cheap molex to SATA connector melted and caught on fire! If any other folks see this, please learn from my mistake and use better connectors - crimped connectors or the SATA power cables are better. I posted on Reddit and a couple people gave some really great information, including a youtube review of another situation eerily similar to mine.

Thanks a lot - I appreciate all the help! I'll mark this one as solved.

Wow - thanks so much for the quick reply! Just out of curiosity, were you able to tell that from the server diagnostics or from the SMART report? If from the SMART report, was it because all the attribute VALUES were 100? OR was it because there were P's in the prefailure warning column? From this post it indicates that V-NAND or 3D TLC are the preferred types of SSD - is that correct? I was also looking and couldn't find a size recommendation for the cache - would 500GB be enough for...pretty much only Plex? This drive looked okay, if that's the case. Thanks so much for all the help and sorry for the billion questions!

Hi Everyone, Yesterday, I noticed Plex was down and went to investigate. I tried rebooting the server, but I saw that the cache drive was unmountable. I found a couple forum posts about how to erase/rebuild the cache drive, but I'm not sure if the drive itself is bad. I ran a SMART report, but I'm not sure if the drive is dead or if it's just behaving weird because it doesn't have a proper file system associated with it. If the drive is okay and I just need to rebuild it, just wanted to confirm that this link would work for this situation. Thanks very much for your time! radagast-diagnostics-20190911-1534.zip radagast-smart-20190911-1130.zip

I've had some issues before with call traces However, I got some new hardware and I'm getting them again. I looked through the log file and didn't see anything that I recognized; at least from previous posts. Are these call trace errors something to be concerned about or is it possible to ignore them? Thanks for your time! radagast-diagnostics-20171013-1713.zip