Cessquill

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Everything posted by Cessquill

  1. Hi New PSU finally turned up yesterday, installed it in about half an hour and everything seems to be working fine. Meant I could get rid of a couple of Molex->SATA splitters, and everything is much tidier now. Taking the old one out, te difference in build quality is immense. I'm sure it'll get re-used in a desktop somewhere. Still getting a few errors on my Disk 3, which could either be a SATA or drive issue. I'll look a little more into smartctl, and raise an issue elsewhere if required. Just a note to say thank you for your time and patience.
  2. Hi guys - just a quick note to say thank you again for your support with this. I've got my unRAID system up and running again for now, but I've just ordered a Corsair 650w PSU, as recommended in the Wiki. The more I read about PSUs, the more I realised you just can't cut corners. Sorry if this was a bit of a schoolboy error, but when I started the project I was struggling to pay for the components. I was offered a 500w supply with the case, and I (wrongly) assumed that by adding up the sum component draw I'd be OK. Since the Corsair's got 8 SATA leads on it, I can ditch most of my molex->sata convertors, which I've never been confident with. Going to have a good look at the SATA leads too while I'm there, since two of them in my system are ones that came with the motherboard. Thanks again
  3. Thanks guys - I'll look to upgrade the PSU. The one in there's nothing special - something that came with the case. I'll check what it is shortly. I was thinking of upgrading anyway, since I got it before 80plus PSUs hit the market. Figured it would pay for itself anyway, since it's on 24/7.
  4. Ahh, thanks guys. So you're saying that the drive's OK, but my PSU or mains itself might be the culprit? I was thinking of changing the power supply, since although it was new, it was fairly cheap. I have loaded it with quite a few molex splitters too, which can't be great.
  5. Hi - and thank you so much for your time. I've just run this on the drive (didn't umount it, or stop parity check - hope that's OK). Results are attached. smartctl_test.txt
  6. Hi Recently my area suffered a power outage. My unRAID box wasn't doing anything at the time (all drives spun down). When it came to rebooting, it would be mounting some of the disks for a long time, and then disappear off the network altogether. After a few goes, I left it overnight, and when I came back it was OK again. A few parity check errors, but otherwise fine. I tried some normal restarts and we were back to where we started. Unfortunately, this happened again this week, and I've just about got it back on again five days later. First time it's booted past the mounting stage. I'm tempted to think I've got a hardware fault somewhere. Some reboots would lock the machine completely (I assume it had locked, I couldn't type on the keyboard or ping it). I'm attaching a syslog in the hope that somebody can help me get to the root of this problem, since I'm currently always one bad shutdown away from have data loss for a week. A few thoughts and stats... - There are 10 WD Green Power drives in the array, a mixture of EACS, EADS and EARS - 8 drives are plugged straight into the Gigabyte motherboard, 2 into a SuperMicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 PCI card - Drive 9 is taking ages to mount at the moment, and sometimes lists errors on the home page errors column. I've just replaced the SATA cable. It is plugged into the PCI card - Drive 3 occasionally has errors on the home page, but I've not yet found the root of that. Don't think it's related to this. - All are coming off a 500w power supply, with a few molex-Sata splitters - Afraid I couldn't capture any log files from when it bombed out whilst mounting - The log file attached was accessed during a parity check via http://unraid1/log/syslog - It's normally a headless machine that I telnet into, but I took it out of the rack last night to see whether anything on screen was to blame. I took it into work today and saw a few error messages flash by on boot when it locked, but no such errors on a clean boot - I'm running 4.7. I was previously running 4.6, but upgraded after the first round of errors Any help very gratefully received, since I'm a little lost here. Take care, Simon syslog_11-Mar-2011.zip
  7. Ahh, thanks for that. To be honest, after running DVD Shrink across all titles, I've re-backed-up any that had missing files and all seems fine. Some of the smaller files could have been MyMovies meta-data, IFO files, BUP files, and maybe even DVD-ROM extras (since it was a complete file copy). I figured I could identify the VOB files, play them in something like VLC and then attribute them to the correct movie (hopefully!), since I'd all ready decided to run an analysis over all titles, I can save myself the hassle and redo the 30 or so discs. Therefore, I'm hoping that I shouldn't really need the lost+found folder; and if I did, I'm not sure how confident I'd be that the files in there were OK.
  8. Thank you. And you might have answered a question for me there. I have a 10 drive case, with 8 SATA ports on the mobo, and another 8 on a Supermicro card. Since the case is now full, I am either looking to either expand externally, or replace the case. I've seen a 20 drive case (plus 2 2.5" mounts) that has 5 SAS backplanes. Can I assume that one of those SAS cards could drive two of the backplanes, with the other three coming off SATA->SS cables? If so, that would be ideal, and would leave me enough SATA ports to add an SSD cache drive.
  9. Hi Right. I think I'm nearly back to where I was. I haven't had a chance to write to lime-tech today, but will do that. In the meantime, here's a few of my notes that might be of use to people in a similar situation. All of my DVDs are backed up as a straight file copy, and I use the My Movies system for cataloguing and playback... - Follow Joe L's suggestions above exactly as written. Disk 1 refers to the same disk 1 in your unRaid system (we're not concerned with parity here), and do it for all disks except the one that you've just installed (which should still be empty) - Although you can do it over telnet, it is worth doing it on the actual unraid machine, just in case. If your unraid box is in a rack in a cupboard under the stairs, take 10 minutes out to set it up on a desk with a screen and keyboard. The fewer issues the better. - There is likely to be some tidying up at the end. If you are hiding the individual disks, for the purposes of this, it is helpful to display them. That way, if you end up tidying through Windows Explorer, you can get to them easily. - Likewise, keep the spin down delay set to off until you've completely finished. Otherwise, you'll end up spending lots of time sitting there waiting for disks to spin up as you're jumping around folders. - While it is restoring, the screen does go off. A key press will bring it back on again to see progress. - The restore of a 1TB drive can take about 5 hours. Multiple this by the amount of drives and arrange your time accordingly. Some of my drives took 4 hours, some 5. They are all Western Digital Green Power, but different variants - As written elsewhere, umount is spelled without an "n" (not unmount)...! - I occasionally got errors whilst restoring that all seemed to be about jpg files (however, I wasn't around to see all errors!). Since these files were generated by My Movies, I was pretty confident that I could refresh them all. - I occasionally got some CPU temperature issues, which I had never seen before. It throttled the restore speed, but didn't have any other issues. - Most folders restored back completely fine as if nothing had happened. I also had a lost+found share in it with about 320 objects in (mostly folders, but some files) - All objects in lost+found were named by numbers, and all root files did not have extensions (it was obvious from looking what types they were though, since 1gb files were VOB, etc.). However, within the folders, all files were in tact. That is, open a folder and you've got a DVD inside it. Because My Movies puts meta data and cover artwork in these folders, it was easy to work out what that title was, and move it back into its proper home. - I found that restoring folders from lost+found back to their proper shares (in Movies, or TV for example) was easiest in Midnight Commander (type mc from the console). That way, you can do it a disk at a time and moving is instantaneous. - I also noticed that the numbering structure of the lost+found corresponded to where it was originally. That is, the lost+found folders start with a number, then an underscore, then a (seemingly) random number. The first number corresponded to its original share. Therefore, all folders starting with a "2_" were moved back into the Movies folder, for example - Once all folders were back in their proper shares, I moved back to the (more familiar) windows interface to rename them. Fortunately, My Movies places an XML file into a movie folder. The filename has the same name as its folder, so it's just a case of renaming each folder accordingly. - A couple were not quite so straight forward, having "disk 1" as their title, but you can then refer to the cover jpg to jiggle things about - How do I know that I've restored everything? Is it all there? I then moved on to the My Movies interface, which helped me with some of these tasks. - Under Collection, select Optimise Database. This will highlight any titles that were in your collection that it can no longer find. I had a few. Some of these were because I'd made a typo in the folder name, but a whole chunk from my "TV" and "Standup" shares were missing completely. By this time, my lost+found only had 9.25gb of files in it, and my array was reporting no extra file space free. Therefore, they had to be there somewhere. Go through each disk and check the casing of the folder names of each share. On a couple of my disks, there was a "tv" folder. On others, it was "TV". Make them all the same, and your files should return back into the file system (use the casing of the files that are all ready available as the master here, and make everything else match that). Keep running Optimise Database until all titles are there. - Now to flush out the issues I was having with JPG files. In My Movies, go to Options, Meta Data Storage. I tried running the "Update" command, but it kept hanging on specific titles. To flush this out, use the "Clean" command and completely remove all meta data that My Movies has created. This may take some time, but worth it. Then, you should be able to run the "Update" command, and all meta data will be completely refreshed. - How do I know that the movies will play? Well, here's where I'm not so sure. I all ready know that at this point I've got one title that's pretty much fubar'd, but it's a Disney film that I can put back on whenever. No big loss. That was the only one that stuck out in my lost+found folder. What I have ended up doing was installing DVD Shrink and using its "Open Files" command, pointing it in turn to every title in my collection. This runs a 30ish section analysis of the title that hopefully highlights titles that are not good. However, I'm pretty much guessing here. Performing this has highlighted about 20 discs that it could not perform a full analysis on, which isn't bad over a 1500 disc system. It did take a while, but setting 3 machines to the task and doing it in the background made fairly light work of it. That said, I have had analysis problems before but the title has played fine. Also, having never performed this analysis across my disks before, the errors could have all ready been there. Also, DVD Shrink is a little old and unsupported now - I don't know whether there's anything on any discs that it is just not familiar with. Either way, it's no big deal to copy up 20 or so in my spare time. Saturday saw me pick out four titles at random and play them flawlessly - at least one of which I know to have been in the lost+found folder. - So what do I do with the lost+found folder? Well, I'm now left with 9.25gb of files (plus a few empty folders) in lost+found. All have numbers as file names, with no extensions. Some could be XML files, some could be JPG (judging by their respective sizes) - I know that these would now be redundant, since I've regenerated all meta data. Some of the disks I've backed up also include the DVD-ROM features (that I will never use), so some of the files could be from there. The rest look like VOB files. But to which title? Some of them may be files that I had all ready deleted that it was able to recover (maybe, not sure). Bearing in mind that I have about 20 titles to copy back over, trying to locate and rehome these files looks to be a superfluous task. I'll probably back them up to a USB drive and hang on to them for a while, just in case. - Will the files I have play? I hope so. Well, I have run them through a basic analysis in DVD Shrink. I could always run its deeper analysis. I know I did have a corrupt movie on there all ready (before the calamity), but it passed DVD Shrinks test. I'm holding on to the hope that if a file not been restored, or is badly damaged, DVD Shrink will have picked it up; otherwise it will be fine. I might have to let some titles play through to the end before movie nights... ----------------------- A huge thank you to you guys who have helped me out on here - if you're ever in the UK (or I'm ever where you are), I owe you a night out for saving me potentially months of work. I'm off to post my experiences to lime-tech. I appreciate that there is now an area on the forum acknowledging this, but if I'm honest, I wouldn't have checked here before adding a disk to the array. Again, thank you.
  10. Restoring the third disk now. All appears OK,although I'm not familiar with the reiser output. Unfortunately, I have to say that I rarely visit the forum unless something is wrong (so top marks to the regulars that keep the wheels turning). I've always absolutely trusted official releases, but now I'm a little insecure. Sure, I could have picked up the error if I had my wits about me, but I was awaiting the usual 4 hours drive clear to finish before I clicked on format. I'd grown used to the fact that, to do something major, you had to unlock it with a checkbox. The restores so far have listed about 250 unreacable items deleted - is this something to be worried about? By the way, if anybody else is doing this who is unfamiliar with dealing directly with the unraid console, if the screen goes off, don't panic! It's just a screensaver. Pressing a cursor key brings it back.
  11. Thank you so much guys - I'll get that under way. As a side issue (and not unraid related), I've just got DVDs backed up on there. Does anybody know of any tool that can verify that the contents of each folder? I'd rather not watch each movie in turn if I can help it. I guess I could point something like dvdShrink at each folder in turn, but you never know. Anyway. Thanks again - that's given me something to do today.
  12. Hi - after reading a few other posts, I've got the following... - Afraid I didn't notice the fact that all drives must've been listed as unformatted. My bad, but in my defence I have always trusted the system to maintain data integrity. I'm not a linux user - just someone who stores his movies, and I pretty much did what I've always done when adding new drives. - I'd always expected to tick a confirm box when doing something major, so when a "some of your drives are unformatted, click here to format them" message appears, I click it thinking that it knows what it's doing. - Box was turned off the minute I saw all drives blank. Is there any restore command I can apply? Please say yes!
  13. Had a quick search, but am currently panicing a bit too much to focus. Just added a 10th 1TB drive (9+parity) to my 4.5.3 system because all were full. As I only add one every 6 months or so, I'm not completely au-fait with the procedings. The disk was recognised. It took 4 hours to clear, then I was prompted to format all unformatted disks. Clicked on it. All disks formatted. I was half tired, but half not reading, since I was always led to trust the "your data will not be lost" principle of this system. As you can tell by now, all is not good. All disks formatted. All data and shares appear gone. Is there anything I can do, or is that it? I've turned it off for now in panic, and I'll go searching to see whether this is an issue. First glances suggest the software has not held up its end of the bargain. Please tell me there's some way of recovering just under 8TB of data... PLEASE! Cheers, Simon
  14. Not so from here. You've all ready suggested it in a later post, but personally, I read what the software did at the time and purchased it BASED SOLELY ON THAT. If I'm getting extra features in the future for free then great. If I'm not, then hey - at least I got what I paid for. I appreciate that the product needs to develop in the future to cater for new hardware/requirements for future customers, but very little has changed on my other network hardware that I bought. My router has had a couple of firmware updates. A Buffalo drive maybe one. Other than that, they all do what they said they would. Of course this does not apply to everyone, but I wanted to chip in my annoyance that I was being misrepresented. I still recommend it to friends/colleagues based on the sheer amount of existing documentation out there. If that dries up, then it dries up, and that's a shame; but by then we'll all be streaming HD movies straight from a remote provider anyhow (or other storage requirements will exist)...
  15. Thanks for that. Sorted. I've been noticing that my browser is throwing up some javascript errors when performing some actions. Appears to be down to the disabling of the form when refresh is triggered. I'm guessing that it's nothing to worry about (as long as I don't click any other buttons whilst it's refreshing), but it's worth noting.
  16. Copying the bzroot and bzimage files over from my XP box onto the running server, and I'm getting an "Access Denied, Make sure that the disk is not full or write protected and the file is not currently in use" error for the bzimage file. The flash share is set to export read/write. I'm upgrading from 4.4 to 4.4.2 Am I going to have to power down and put the flash in the PC for this, or am I doing something really stupid (again)?
  17. Hi guys - I had to put this problem on hiatus, as work went crazy. Anyways - I plugged the server in again today, upgraded the flash drive to 4.4, and tried performing actions that used to crash it, and it's been fine so far. Copying a DVD folder from one drive to another used to crash it, but it appears to be much happier, which I'm guessing could be down to an updated version of linux. Thanks for all your help on this, and so far so good...
  18. Could be my doing a refresh, yes. Having not added disks since initial build, I was probably trying to work out time remaining until live (something which disk clearing doesn't tell you). Probably got carried away and bored waiting I let the supplied memory test run from Friday midday to Monday morning, cycled through 173 times without error. Does that rule out memory problems, or could it still be that? Could quite easily be the power supply - it was one I bought with the case. I'd happily switch it out for a reliable one, since when I bought it I was far too noob to think it'd matter Thanks Joe L EDIT: I was also refreshing to see the status of the existing hard drives, since the spin down seems unpredictable on them.
  19. Installed two more drives in the machine yesterday. Whilst it was clearing it crashed, so I re-ran it using the tail -f /var/log/syslog > /boot/syslog command. Find attached the results. Does it say anything? Fortunately, the machine is now at work, so it's easier to get up on the bench and work on.
  20. Thanks for that. I don't know where the parity errors are coming from yet - good point. I left memtest running for the weekend. It got through 173 times with 0 errors. This is at work though and it was crashing at home. I've just added two more drives so I'll start putting it under load again and see what happens.
  21. Hi speeding_ant - quick question (or anybody else running this board in an unRAID system)... What other hardware are you running in your build. I'm getting quite a lot of lockups on mine when writing to it (one every day or so), and several parity check errors. Trying to nail down if any of my hardware is faulty/incompatible. Thanks
  22. I have done exactly the same thing, and wondered what was going on. Oddly enough my machine has been up for a few days now without problem, although I'm only copying files via an old machine with pre-USB2 interface. Hopefully over the weekend I'll lift the lid and see whether all cables are snug. I'm a bit worried that it's a general incompatibility with the motherboard (although I did clear it with another user on here, so I'll check what memory/power supply they have).
  23. By the way, are you the same yodine from the MyMovies forum?
  24. Thanks again Joe. Yes, that's the tail command I've left running in the background, and as far as I can remember it hasn't listed anything after a ROOT LOGIN line. It's running again now though, so I'll see what happens later. All mounting screws were used when building, but I can't vouch for the quality of the PSU - one that came with the case.