Joe L.

This is a new disk, and it appears there was a small region with sectors not correctly initialized. Perhaps there had been an electrical spike that scrambled them? I don't know. But the zeroing phase appears to have had no problems rewriting them, so they are correct now. Why not preclear the disk one more time, to reassure yourself that the disk is fine. I really doubt you will see any further issues with this disk. Ok, i cleared it one more time, I guess everything is allright now? (syslog attached) There were no un-readable sectors this time. ( a good thing) Joe L.

How would it anticipate a file being opened? I use a different script that uses "lsof" to detect open files anticipating access. It works pretty well for me. spinup_when_accessed.sh It tracks activity browsing directories and spins up the affiliated drives. The script works by using lsof on /mnt/user to find the files and folders being accessed and then gets a list of the disks with the same top level folders (the user-shares) and then spins up the affiliated disks if they are not currently spinning. As soon as one of my media players performs a directory listing, or accesses a file, the affiliated drives are spun up. When I press "Play" the drives are ready and the media player does not time-out. A copy of the script is attached. type spinup_when_accessed.sh -? to see the usage help. Edit: fixed reported bug creating file named "0" on flash drive. New version attached. New version number is 1.4 type spinup_when_accessed.sh -v to see version number. Joe L. spinup_when_accessed.zip

I guess this happens because i rebooted, so there is still a line 'kernel: mdcmd (11): stop' in the syslog The script does work when I use `/usr/bin/cache_dirs -d 5 -m 3 -M 5 -w -F -B`. Any suggestions on how to fix this? Only one. Apparently your version of slackware is using a different version of the "bash" shell (or you are using a different shell entirely) and the disown %% command is not recognized. This would exhibit exactly the symptoms you described. So, if not using "bash", use it. If using a different version of the "bash" shell, change to one with a working "disown" command. If your environment does not have the $SHELL variable set, set it to /bin/bash before invoking the script. If your version of "bash" is not in /bin/bash, make a link for it there, or modify the first few lines in the script to where it lives on your system. Joe L.

You have more than enough free memory... It could be that something is trying to read more than just your directory content (windows explorer is notorious in that respect)... Possibly related: even WITH cache_dirs installed, viewing directories with Windows Explorer on an unRAID server would cause disks to spin up. Not so using Total Commander. That is usually because Window's Explorer opens up the files themselves so it can present thumbnail images to you. cache_dirs does not help with caching the contents of the files themselves.

Clearly, you are not a linux newbie... Glad you got a working ExFAT driver compiled.

Completely up to you. You could stop now if you like. You can run it again, either with or without the "-c" option. (as many times as you like) Eventually you'll want it in your array, so I'd only do one more pass, unless something shows up. You are welcome.

change the line in the config/go file from /usr/local/sbin/emhttp & to /usr/local/sbin/emhttp -p XX & where XX = the port you wish it to use, then reboot the server.

If you do not have a parity disk assigned, and have already gone through a preclear cycle, then just assign the disks and set a new disk configuration, formatting any that need formatting. When you add the parity disk it will be calculated on whatever is on the disks. Oh yes... no-files != all zeros. When unRAID formatted a disk there are a lot of sectors written, even though you've not yet written any files to the disk.

Sorry, but the best you can do is skip the pre-and post read phases. ( -n option) The -z option writes zeros to the first 512 bytes of the disk. (usually referred to as the master-boot-record) It will make the drive look completely un-partitioned. Joe L.

Did invoking that command at least say something like There is no screen to be resumed. (that is what it does on my server if there is no screen session running.)

screen is not connected to the telnet session. (or rather, does not die when telnet disconnected) Did you try running screen -r to see the existing "screen" sessions so you can re-connect to it? About the only other thing you can do is type top and see if the screen and preclear process is still running. (you would see "dd" constantly being invoked) or you can look in the /tmp directory. The preclear process writes its status files there.

Other than you used a version of the preclear script that is 4 versions old, all looks fine. Current version is 1.13, you used 1.9. Your older version does not work properly on disks > 2TB.

unless you invoked the preclear process under "screen", it stopped. There is no way to see its progress if you log in again, since it stopped. All you can do is start it again from the beginning. If you did use "screen" you can log back in and type screen -r to resume your screen session.

Because the section posted does not look at any of the other SMART parameters. It is NOT the report output from the pre-clear, but only part of it. It does not say that the disk was pre-cleared successfully, but only that there were zero re-allocated sectors and zero sectors pending re-allocation. (granted, that is good, but not unless you look at and compare the pre-and-post SMART reports.) So "no", it is not all that you need to look at. It is only part of it.

no

looks fine.

You can boot from ANY device. It is not necessary for it to be the one labeled UNRAID. There is at least one post on the forum where a user described how they use two flash drives, and one is just for the GUID check. Found it: See this thread for how one user boots from one flash drive, but uses the second "official UNRAID" one for the license check. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3846.msg34018#msg34018 Basically, you boot from one flash drive labeled FLASH Then, unRAID mounts the flash labeled as UNRAID at /boot, but you then use the mount --move option to move it out of the way, and move the other into place at /boot. Joe L.

No worry... Not unless their normalized values go below their affiliated failure thresholds.

no way to recover unless you first installed and ran the command under "screen" You must run the reiserfsck command again. Joe L.

The inability to clear the drive had nothing to do with thr existing partitions, or the starting. sector. Existing partitions would have been cleared, that had nothing to do with the error message you saw. Do not fall under a false impression all is well. You will probably experience random parity errors. They are very hard to isolate, so keep this disk in mind if it happens to you. And do not forget to test your memory. It is critical as anything.

Yes, and it told you why, you just missed it. The post-read expected the disk to be all zeros. It was not. The actual cause could be almost anything except the "mouse" It could be a bad disk, or bad memory, or a flaky power supply, or motherboard, or disk controller. I'd start with a memory test, preferably overnight. Then, tests using badblocks on the disk itself. Then go from there. Joe L.

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind for next time. Finished writing zeros and am now on the post-read, 41+ hours so far. I think 30+ of that was all pre-read so I guess I can expect another 30+ for post-read. Doesn't seem to be an option to let me start over and only do post-read using the larger -b, but I guess I will just count it as further burn-in/testing. To run the post-read-verify only on a drive. preclear_disk.sh -r 65536 -b 25600 -V /dev/sdX The option is there to just do the post-read verify. ( -V )

Do not use the drive if it has pending sectors that cannot be re-allocated. RMA it (although you could try another preclear cycle or two and see if they go to zero sectors pending re-allocation on the first, and stay at zero on the second, and no additional re-allocated sectors appear.). Joe L.

Both look great. Enjoy.

Would a swap file help with this? I have 4GB memory and don't usually run with a swap file because creating it seems to be one of the longest parts of boot time. But it might be worth it for those rare occasions when I need to do a preclear. no, it would not help at all. (if you needed one, and did not have one, processes would have been killed in an attempt to free memory and your server would have effectively "crashed" Therefore, if you did not crash, you did not need one. ) Most people will never need a swap file on an unRAID server unless they have very limited RAM and are running memory intensive programs. (where the program itself needs the memory, not the disk-buffer-cache) My older server only has 512 Meg of RAM, and unless I'm compiling a ffmpeg (a huge program) I do not need a swap file. Joe L.