Hello everybody,
I'm truly at a loss here.
Problem and general information:
I wanted to shrink my array, which consisted of:
Parity: 5 TB HDD
Disk 1: 5 TB HDD
Disk 2: 5 TB HDD --> this is the one I wanted to remove
Then I wanted to add a 4 TB SSD into the array.
There's a cache pool
I'm using Unraid 7.0.0
I tried following method #2 as laid out in Spaceinvader One's video and used the unBalanced plugin to move the data off Disk 2.
The idea was to shrink the array without losing parity.
In another step, I added the 4 TB SSD to the array and moved a share from Disk 1 to it (which was probably a bad idea).
Then I cleared Disk 2 and tried stopping the array, as suggested in the video. This is when things got ugly. The array refused to stop because Disk 2 couldn't be unmounted. The log claimed that it wasn't mounted - so it couldn't be unmounted. Basically, my server was stuck in a loop.
Unmounting via CLI did not work.
Shutting the server down via the GUI did not work.
Shutting the server down via the CLI also didn't work.
With growing concern and frustration, I opted for "poweroff -f", which didn't work either and got the server completely stuck. In the end, I did a hard shutdown by pressing the power button for several seconds.
When I restarted the server, I didn't want to remove Disk 2 just yet in case anything went wrong, so I started the array and waited for the - very long - parity check to finish. Luckily, it didn't find any errors. BUT: The name of my server had reverted back to the default "TOWER" and I didn't know whether other settings had changed as well. Also, I still couldn't get rid of Disk 2 by following the procedure described above. It just wouldn't unmount.
To be honest, I can't fully remember all the steps that happened next, but somehow after many tries and errors and restoring flash backups (because I wanted to restore the proper server name and revert other possible changes in the settings) I managed to remove Disk 2.
FINALLY success, I thought! So I went ahead and saved the new config and followed all the remaining steps in Spaceinvader One's video.
But when I rebooted my server, it turned out that it wasn't remotely accessible anymore. All I can do now is physically connect to the server, but all the shares, GUI and CLI are invisible on my network, because my router claims that my server is not connected.
Booting up in safe mode is of no help.
I tried restoring a flash backup again - but to no avail. My server uses the same static IP it has always had, yet for some reason it cannot connect to my router. In a desperate attempt to get my server going again, I even changed the name of "network.cfg" to "network.cfg.old" as suggested here: https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/unraid-not-connecting-to-network/8984/18
Nothing seems to help. 😞 Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Unfortunately, I can only offer you current diagnostics.
octi-diagnostics-20250222-1733.zip