BobPhoenix

What problems are you having that causes you to need to update? I normally only update firmware if I'm having problems. Updating can CAUSE problems so I don't update unless I have to.

According to the article GitHub was in some financial difficulty. So for the optimists in the crowd maybe this won't be too bad. I tend to be more of a pessimist though.

Partitions have a -part1 at the end of the name for the first partition. I suspect partition 2 would be -part2 etc... but I've never used anything but a single partition on my drives with unRAID so I can't confirm this. So for my PNY SSDs I would use ata-PNY_CS2211_960GB_SSD_PNY381621931203001D7-part1 to get the 1st partition for the first drive: root@VMServer:/dev/disk/by-id# ls ata-PNY* ata-PNY_CS2211_960GB_SSD_PNY381621931203001D7@ ata-PNY_CS2211_960GB_SSD_PNY381621931203001D7-part1@ ata-PNY_CS2211_960GB_SSD_PNY3816219312030022C@ ata-PNY_CS2211_960GB_SSD_PNY3816219312030022C-part1@ I.E. the full path in the GUI would be: /dev/disk/by-id/ata-PNY_CS2211_960GB_SSD_PNY381621931203001D7-part1 to the first partition on the first drive above.

See if this would help - not unRAID but advice might help: https://lifehacker.com/5991848/how-to-boot-from-a-cd-or-usb-drive-on-any-pc

Two suggestions for you - first is most likely and I had nasty problems with it but I've had problems with the second before as well. Turn off in bios if on MB or remove the Marvel 88SE9123 controller card - I had my Marvel 9230 controller passed through to a VM and got dropped drives and had to reboot the server to get them back. Didn't cause unRAID crashes for me but if you are using array drives on yours this is likely your problem. I turned my MB 9230 off in the bios so I wouldn't be tempted to use it and haven't had any problems with that server any more. Turn off in bios if on MB or remove the NEC USB 3.0 controller card. Since I stopped using my Fresco USB 3.0 card in another server it has been up for 15 days and I believe it would have been longer but I had to reboot for an unRAID upgrade. Before that I got random crashes that I couldn't figure out with it installed. Really think the 1st one is most likely the cause but doing either or both of the above is where I would start to trouble shoot since you have already tried some other hardware changes.

Just got the same thing on my server 6.5.3- rc1 here. Will see if a restart will help.

I've used a fan and mount like this before to put fans blowing on my PCI slots from above them: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118204

If you are going to use your SSDs in your VM you will want to connect them to this controller and pass it through to the VM. To do that I would recommend "stub"ing the device in "syslinux.cfg" (you do that from the GUI on the unRAID flash drive). Look for the boot option you use to regularly boot unRAID (I.E. if you boot to GUI mode you will make changes to that). Most people I think use the standard default options and boot to non-GUI mode. Anyway the section in syslinux.cfg that you should be looking for: label unRAID OS menu default kernel /bzimage append initrd=/bzroot so to stub your ASMedia card you would change the above to look something like this: label unRAID OS menu default kernel /bzimage append vfio-pci.ids=1b21:0612 initrd=/bzroot if you had more devices to pass through to this or any other VMs just add it after a comma so 1b21:0612 would become 1b21:0612,xxxx:yyyy for instance Note how I got the information on your ASMedia card from the display at the top: "[1b21:0612]". Now just reboot. When you do your SSDs will no longer be visible to unRAID any more. But when you edit your VM you will now see that the ASMedia card is listed as available to pass through to the VM now. For instance on my VM server I have the following devices showing up as available to pass through to a VM most of which ARE being pass through to another VM: So your ASMedia controller would show up in the above box along with any other devices you stub'd to allow pass through. Hope that help.

You might just want to settle on the drive manufacturers test programs to test it and then add it to your array and let unRAID clear it. Unlike in versions from 5 and before (maybe even early versions of 6) - the array is NOT offline (with current versions of unRAID) when you add a drive that has to be cleared to the array. I still use the command line script version of preclear to test my drives and you could use that as well as another option if you want.

Great news! Though you would be successful.

Yes but PLOP boots the unRAID OS from the unRAID flash drive. The only thing you might have to do is run make_bootable.bat from the flash drive. But if like me you prepared it to boot from the flash drive originally then you could proceed just like I advised.

For me it was a easy as removing the ESXi datastore drive and USB boot flash and setting the unRAID boot flash as the boot device and booting the computer. I had all my drives connected to passed through HBAs for unRAID and they were left in the computer. I did have to setup my Windows VM from scratch on unRAID as a VM but if you only have unRAID as a VM then to get to unRAID bare metal it should be as simple as I stated.

I see your Marvel HDD controller is enabled. I suggest you turn it off in the bios and remove any drives connected to it and use other connectors for them. When I had the Marvel controller turned on on my ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16 I would get drives dropping out randomly between 2+ times a week to every other month. The only thing that saved me was that I was passing through the Marvel controller to a VM and not using it with drives in my array. But I had to reboot my computer once too often because the Marvel controller dropped the drives and made the VM unusable. That is why I switched out my IBM M1015 8i controller to a LSI 9201-16i to gain back the 4 ports I lost from the Marvel and gain an extra 4 ports besides.

It was suggested in another thread with a similar complaint about a Windows VM that maybe what you are seeing is Spectre/Meltdown updates in Windows and/or Linux.

I would try changing the nic type for the VM from virtio to intel. So something like this: <interface type='bridge'> <mac address='xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx'/> <source bridge='br0'/> <model type='e1000'/> <==== this is what you change from virtio to e1000 <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x0x' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/> </interface> Hopefully that will fix the problem.

Turn off USB3.0 in the bios and see if that helps.

I would loose them from the Dashboard periodically myself. I would go to settings>VM manager and find that VMs were disabled every time. I would re-enable them and be back in business. So my suggestion is to go to settings>VM manager and make sure they are enabled first. Note: I did not look at your diagnostics so I could easily be wrong but my suggestion is an easy check and possible fix so I had to post it.

You are correct in that Unassigned devices should NOT cause problems when writing to the array. The disconnects probably are not causing you any real problems then but it won't hurt to test with it disconnected to make sure. So if it isn't the DVD drive on the LSI or the disconnects then I would turn on the Turbo Writes and see if that gets you a significant increase in performance. I had some drives that were just SLOW. They had NO smart problems but when I took them out of my array the speed went up dramatically. So you may have a drive that is developing slow sectors but are not producing smart errors yet. You might want to test your drives for that and see if you can find any slow spots. Then replace any disks that are slow either because they are older (newer drives are usually faster than older drives) or they are developing problems that smart hasn't reported yet. That is all I've got for you at this point maybe someone else has additional/better ideas.

Yes. Hopefully that will take care of you problem. 35-44 isn't bad when writing to your array but I think you should be getting more like 50 maybe even 60. Another option is to turn on TurboWrite mode (I believe that is "reconstruct write") in settings. That should improve your write speeds at the expense of having to spin up ALL drives when doing a write to the array.

It looks like you have a DVD/BluRay device installed. It also looks like you have it attached to your LSI card. I would hook it up via USB if possible or MB SATA port if not. It is possible that having it connected up to the LSI card is slowing down your parity check speeds. Log entry: May 18 09:47:03 Tower kernel: scsi 7:0:1:0: CD-ROM HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH24NSB0 LN01 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 May 18 09:47:03 Tower kernel: scsi 7:0:1:0: SATA: handle(0x000a), sas_addr(0x4433221106000000), phy(6), device_name(0x0000000000000000) May 18 09:47:03 Tower kernel: scsi 7:0:1:0: SATA: enclosure_logical_id(0x500605b002c8af85), slot(5) May 18 09:47:03 Tower kernel: scsi 7:0:1:0: atapi(y), ncq(n), asyn_notify(n), smart(n), fua(n), sw_preserve(n) May 18 09:47:03 Tower kernel: sr 7:0:1:0: [sr0] scsi-1 drive May 18 09:47:03 Tower kernel: cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20 May 18 09:47:03 Tower kernel: sr 7:0:1:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 May 18 09:47:03 Tower kernel: sr 7:0:1:0: Attached scsi generic sg7 type 5 I also see a port multiplier which would slow down a parity check - but the constant connects and disconnects below are the most likely (in my opinion) for your slow down: May 18 14:17:57 Tower kernel: ata6: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x40c0000 action 0xe frozen May 18 14:17:57 Tower kernel: ata6: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed May 18 14:17:57 Tower kernel: ata6: SError: { CommWake 10B8B DevExch } May 18 14:17:57 Tower kernel: ata6: hard resetting link May 18 14:18:07 Tower kernel: ata6: softreset failed (device not ready) May 18 14:18:07 Tower kernel: ata6: hard resetting link May 18 14:18:15 Tower kernel: ata6: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) May 18 14:18:15 Tower kernel: ata6.15: Port Multiplier 1.2, 0x197b:0x0325 r0, 15 ports, feat 0x5/0xf May 18 14:18:15 Tower kernel: ata6.00: hard resetting link May 18 14:18:17 Tower kernel: ata6.00: failed to resume link (SControl 0) May 18 14:18:17 Tower kernel: ata6.00: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0) From the log ata6 has the following drives connected to the port multiplier - I would get another LSI card and stay way from the port multiplier: May 18 14:18:30 Tower kernel: ata6.01: ATA-8: Hitachi HUA723020ALA640, MK0271YGJ7RVHA, MK7OA800, max UDMA/133 May 18 14:18:30 Tower kernel: ata6.01: 3907029168 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA May 18 14:18:30 Tower kernel: ata6.01: configured for UDMA/133 May 18 14:18:30 Tower kernel: ata6.02: ATA-8: ST2000DM001-1CH164, W1E3Y8ZF, CC26, max UDMA/133 May 18 14:18:30 Tower kernel: ata6.02: 3907029168 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA May 18 14:18:30 Tower kernel: ata6.02: configured for UDMA/133 Maybe swap the DVD and the Hitachi above. Then find another port on the LSI (or another LSI card) for the Seagate. Then the port multiplier would only be servicing your DVD drive where it hopefully won't hurt anything.

Will see how the Parity check time is tomorrow when it finishes but looking like it will be the same time frame as the last check 3 days ago. But I can give feedback on the VM startup time. Very little of my setup really applies to the first post but am obliging. Server spec: unRAID system: unRAID server Pro, version 6.5.3-rc1 Model: ASRock Dual X5 Xeons Motherboard: ASRock - EP2C602-4L/D16 Processor: Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2670 0 @ 2.60GHz Cache pool: 2x PNY_CS2211_960GB_SSD Array: 2 parity 13 data array all 6TB HGST NAS drives. All VMs are seabios. 32Bit Windows WHSv1 can't tell any difference but it takes minutes (maybe10+) to start anyway - not really sure why but it is a blank screen for a long time and that wasn't reduced much if at all - image file is qcow2 drive so maybe that is why. Does have a 4 port Intel controller passed through for its storage drives root drive with C:\ and D:\ partitions are on image file on SSD cache pool. 32Bit Windows 7 seemed to boot faster. I could usually see the black screen before the login screen but didn't after installing 6.5.3-rc1. Just the login screen nothing was passed through to the VM. 64Bit Windows 7 seemed to boot faster. Same reasons as 32bit above and nothing passed through. Have another 64Bit Win7 VM that has tuners passed through that I will test tomorrow after parity check is done. unRAID 6.5.1 VM (yes I have an unRAID VM running on a host unRAID server (host specs above) - my case has 48 HDD bays on two SAS expanders so why not consolidate two unRAID servers on one box). This VM has two Happauge HVR-2250s passed through to it as well as a H310 HBA (LSI-9211-8i cross flashed) connected to one of the 24 bay SAS expanders in my case. This seemed to boot faster to the unRAID boot screen and a little beyond. Normally I see the PlopKExec screen displayed longer and after unRAID starts to book the "OK..."'s before the rest of the logging starts. This time I barely saw the PlopKExec screen and didn't see the "OK..."s at all. Could switch this VM to OVMF if you want. OK parity is done and here are the times for this one and the one just a few days before on 6.5.1: 2018-05-19, 08:23:51 10 hr, 59 min, 52 sec 151.6 MB/s OK 0 2018-05-15, 09:54:36 10 hr, 54 min, 35 sec 152.8 MB/s OK 0

I'm still using my USB and license that I got when I had 4.7. Upgrades are free and so far it doesn't look like that will change any time soon. But I would probably pay for upgrades if I was stuck on a version that only supports 2TB drives like 4.7. And then again when the VM manager and Docker were added.

I setup MSDOS6.22 and WFW3.11 in a VM and just executed it as you can see from the attached graphic. I also included my settings beside it. As you may suspect I setup the VM on VMWare Workstation than transferred the HDD image file over to unRAID (VMDK for the HDD is the clue). Maybe that will work for you.

Would seabios and pass through of HBA/TVTuners/USB help?

May not help but try setting scaling on the VNC window to "Local Scaling" if it is currently set at NONE or "Remote Resizing".