river_system

So, after extensive testing the result is that one of the 4 RAM modules was faulty. Running on 2 of the healthy modules now, and while there have not been segfaults or unclean shutdowns since, i still experience the stutter and artifacting with media playback through VLC which worked in the past. Does anyone have any clues what this may be or how to troubleshoot it further? Considering that the disks themselves are perfectly capable of playback and files are OK (it works through Jellyfin, and transfering data is also fast at 100MB/s+), i really don't know what the issue there could be.

Personally, having been mentioned here, i could already identify one bad RAM module through memtest (got several errors in the same exact memory adress and bit, so very high certainty it is the RAM and nothing else). So definitely don't take my post as evidence there's an issue in Unraid itself. I also had to run tests for very long, it took like 30h to get the first error and i'm taking days now to test each single module. Memtest can take a while to find errors, and dozens of passes.

With more Memtest testing, have gotten errors now and at the same location in memory, so my bet is now on the memory being faulty. Currently trying to determine which one. Still not sure that's responsible for the problems with playback tho if one memory module is just barely unstable that it takes dozens of hours of testing to find it, whereas the issues with media playback are basically all the time. Might be looking at several different issues manifesting at once here.

Did that, RAM down to 2133 and CPU also underclocked for good measure and still experiencing same issues with media playback stuttering and artifacting in a matter of seconds. No log entries when trying that.

Unraid v6.12.8 Installed plugins: Appdata Backup, Fix Common Problems, CA Mover Tuning, Community Applications, docker patch2, Dynamix Cache Directories (disabled), Dynamix System Temperature, GPU statistics, Intel GPU TOP, Open Files, Parity Check Tuning, Unassigned Devices, Unassigned Devices Preclear, Unraid Connect, User Scripts, ZFS Master for Unraid Hardware: i5-7600K (@4.2GHz) cooled by Thermalright HR-02 Macho Rev. B, Asus Prime Z270-A, 4x 8GB 3000MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX CL15-17-17-35 (running at 2800MHz), Seasonic G12 GM 550. no dGPU. 2x 18TB WD Ultrastar WUH721818ALE6L4, 1x 18TB Seagate Exos ST18000NM0092, 1x 240GB Crucial M500, 2x WD Green 3TB (not really in use but connected as a pool) I'm having a host of issues at the moment and not really sure what the cause is. Unraid is generally unstable, it got unresponsive a couple times just in the last few days and got stuck trying to unmount drives so had to hard reset it. Docker full on stopped working one time to the point where stopping containers didn't work any more either. Playing back media is also becoming an issue, it's frequently stuttering / buffering with nothing else keeping it busy so it's basically unusable right now, didn't have that problem in the past. Stutters are also usually accompanied by visual artifacts. Did notice one error in the logs about a segfault (it's in the attached log, diagnostic was made yesterday couple hours after that). That has also happened before once a few days ago (that i noticed). What i've done so far / what i know: Got worried about hardware stability with all these issues, 20h+ of memtest have now run fine with zero errors. I did change the hardware setup just before these issues kept popping up / getting worse, so that's a bit suspicious altho i don't have any hard evidence to support that rn. Had some failures to gracefully shut down in the past, but nothing like the amount and severity of issues now. Added a new hard drive (the Seagate) few days ago to extend the array from 2 to 3 disks, it's a recertified drive but did an extended smart test and a preclear before adding it to the array, and no errors there so far. The errors that do occur, including issues with playing back media, also occur even if that playback is from the previous data disk that has run fine for months now, so right now don't have any direct evidence this new drive is what's causing problems. It's also not perfectly reproduceable, but starting to watch a movie for example will lead to stutters and visual artifacts usually between as fast as a few seconds in, or after a couple minutes. Starting a movie up at all also takes a while, pretty sure longer than it used to. It's not an issue with the files being corrupted, copying the files onto the local pc first and then playing back from there works perfectly without stutters and without artifacts, so the files themselves are still fine. The last parity check triggered by an unclean shutdown also showed errors. Have not adressed that yet either, it seems to me that understanding what's going on first before trying to correct errors is important. I think that about sums up the stuff i have noticed; but yeah still no idea what's really going on. The NAS has run mostly fine for months, there has been the occasional unclean shutdown and once all Shares disappeared (reboot fixed that), but the frequency and severity of the issues is a lot worse now, and playing back media just doesn't work properly any more. The only guess i have right now is the usb drive since that was a bit sketch to begin with and i might replace that either way, but yeah that is just a wild guess basically. I'm also pretty new to Unraid for the record, just a few months since getting it. Any tips or advice would be appreciated. tower-diagnostics-20240302-0152.zip