dmc72

Too bad it won't run 7.x. Here is the tread from when some of us were having the usb issues: ESXI USB reset A quick look at the log should help show if you are caught in this problem. IIRC, you should be able to add a 2nd USB device( UPS unit?) and that may fix it( no idea why) Also, if you have a spare PCI slots you can pass through acard with USB ports for the USB drive, but think you would need to boot from vmdk instead of Plop if it's not the USB reset issue, report back and will try to see what else is going on. Good luck.

Hi, I had a lot of USB issues using esxi 6.x. there's is a big thread on the issue I and others were having from a few years ago. The best fix for me was upgrading to esxi 7.x. it fixed all my USB issues and even better allows you to direct boot the VM off of the USB drive. No more plop or vmdk's, just boots and updates like it was on bare metal. If you can't upgrade to esxi 7.x for some reason, let us know if this was a working system that just started acting up or was it after an upgrade on either eexi or unraid. Also check your vmkernel.log for errors to point in the right direction.

@miicar You don't say which ESXI version you are on. if possible, I highly recommend trying to upgrade to the latest 7.x ESXI. It allows you to direct boot the vm from the Unraid usb. I am also not seeing any of the usb reset problems I had with 6.x. if you are staying with 6.x ESXI, you can try adding a 2nd usb(ups unit?) or what i did which was to add a pci usb card and added the usb port from that.

Yes, Flemming's how-to is showing how to do just that. ESXI 7 allows you to add the USB Drive to the VM and boot the VM direct from the USB. No more playing with PLOP or VMDK's like prior ESXI versions. Works great.

UnRaid 6.9 is working for me under ESXI 7.0b booting( EFI ) directly from USB Flash drive my setup: Norco 4224 / SeaSonic X750 / SM X9SRL-F / Xeon E5-2640 v2 / 32GB U-ECC / M1015 / RES2SV240 / ESXI 7.0B / UnRaid 6.9

@Flemming Thanks for the write-up for ESXI 7.0 install, the EFI boot part really helped me I know you were doing a conversion to ESXI, I was doing a clean re-install of both. Just wanted to add a note for anyone installing with an clean Unraid flash drive. I used the "Unraid.USB.Creator" for my flash drive and choose the "Allow UEFI Boot" under "customize". By doing it that way I can skip the "Add Boot Option" and go directly to "Change boot order". FYI, I am now running ESXI 7.0b and UnRaid 6.9 on a Supermicro X9SRL-F motherboard. It works well, except dhcp is not being passed to any vm. Static ip's work normal.(will look into further)

None of the fixes had really worked well for me. I ended up adding a 4 port usb pcie card: https://www.amazon.com/Express-SuperSpeed-Adapter-Dedicated-Channels/dp/B00HJZEA2S but I am still using a VMDK for booting ( I think I tried usb boot and never got it working right.) This setup works well for what I need. It was a bit expensive, but i can pass each port to a different vm if needed. They list a 2 port which is cheaper and shld still work fine.

@uldise - I'm not sure why yours works and mine doesnt. do you have the UPS passes thru to the vm also. I know that workaround was working for some. Have you checked your ESXI logs to verify no warnings/errors? just an update: When I clean install or upgrade to ESXI 6.5 I was seeing a bunch of errors on my datastors: I got this fixed by disabling the new sata driver -"vmw-ahci". Once i found it, it was easy to fix following this guide: So ESXI 6.5 is running ok, but i still see trouble with adding the UnRaid usb: sample of ESXI log errors: Any other usb drive works fine, so I started looking at whats on the flash drive that could trigger this. I put the flash drive in a laptop and deleted the "ldlinux.sys" file. when i plugged back into the server - the errors stopped. i added the unraid flash drive into a windows 7 VM, when i ran "makebootable.bat" it re-created the "ldlinux.sys" and the esxi errors started back up. I renamed the "ldlinux,sys" and the errors stopped. put the name back and the errors did not start again. i rebooted the win7 VM and it would not start with the unraid flash attached. I found the errors i'm seeing in a ESXI forum and posted there. if anyone is interested : Does anyone know what is in the "ldlinux.sys" file or how it works?

Thanks Uldise, good to know. Did you upgrade or clean install to 6.5? I'm going to try to upgrade from 6.0 to 6.5 (instead of clean install) to see if that fixes my issues. will let you know how i make out.

You had me excited that this was finally fixed. Unfortunately, clean installed ESXI 6.5 and its giving me all sorts of odd issues (using X9SCM-IIF MB). cant get unraid to boot-the usb device disappears from the vm(any VM). The esxi logs (dont think its isolated to unraid) -"dev = usb0105, cmd = 0x8004550f, err = -2: Failure" and my datastors all get "state in doubt; requested fast path state update" in /host/vmkwarning.log. oddly my oldest datastor drive doesnt show this error. Seems like a problem with the sata and usb controllers. So for now I'm going back to esxi 6.0 , but will give 6.5 another try in January when i get free time. please let me know if anyone gets esxi 6.5 working well on supermicro x9scm board. thanks.

When i was trying to setup the usb card I tried Plop + Plopkexec and it could never find the usb. The card is PEXUSB3S44V - Startech Renesas_uPD72020x chip. It just seemed like there was no driver there for it. Does anyone have this card/chip working with Plopkexec? I guess i can give it another try when I update to 6.2.3

I have been using : www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HJZEA2S in my ESXI box. its a little pricey but it lets each usb port to be assigned separately to different vm's. you can get the cheaper version, but all the ports get passed to 1 vm. I'm still on 6.1.9, hope to test the latest versions in the next week or two. I cant usb boot with this setup(guessing a driver could be added) so I am using VMDK and just put the "UNRAID" usb in the port that i passed thru.

Been a long time for me too. I think the bios for the cards is "ctrl-H" (maybe "cntr-C"? - it should pop up on the screen during boot) Check to see if ESXI still has them available for passthru ->"configure ->Advanced Settings" Also check the VM settings still shows the 3 cards passed thru?

Its mounting RW now. When I ran fsck from UD before posting it returned "appears to be OK". but in the system log: kernel: hfsplus: Filesystem was not cleanly unmounted, running fsck.hfsplus is recommended. mounting read-only. running fsck with -f fixed it. Is there a way to show the "not cleanly unmounted" msg from the syslog in the UD log? Thanks for the help dlandon. and Thanks (+gfjardim) for UD - it is very useful.

I am trying to Mount a hfsplus drive with UD. It wil only mount as read only. I dont know if this is by design or if I'm having a problem. It is a friends drive and I think journaling is enabled, but don't know if that is causing the Read Only. Is there anyway to make this writeable? Also, how can i verify hfsprogs is installed? Unraid version: 6.1.9 Unassinged devices: 2016.05.03 Log info: May 21 01:50:59 Adding disk '/dev/sdf2'... May 21 01:50:59 Mount drive command: /sbin/mount -t hfsplus -o force,rw,users,async,umask=000 '/dev/sdf2' '/mnt/disks/WDC_1250' May 21 01:50:59 Successfully mounted '/dev/sdf2' on '/mnt/disks/WDC_1250'. May 21 01:50:59 Partition 'WDC WD60EZRZ 00RWYB1 WD WX11D1411250-part2' is not set as sharable and will not be shared... May 21 01:51:00 Device '/dev/sdf2' script file not found. 'ADD' script not executed. Output from 'findmnt': /dev/sdf2 hfsplus ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,umask=0,uid=0,gid=0,nls=utf8

I just tested the latest stable-6.1.9 and 6.2b21 without either workaround and still see the errors. I can use 6.1.9 (via Plop) if i have my usb UPS plugged in or if I use my card reader. 6.2b21 did not work with the 2 usb workaround (PLOP). (haven't tested with card-reader yet.) If I boot either version with just Unraid usb i see the errors and ESXI stops seeing the flash drive until i physically remove the flash drive and plug back in. I am currently running ESXI 6.0.0 3380124. If anyone that had this problem and is now running error free without either workaround(2 USB/card-reader) could you please list your setup along with ESXI build+Unraid version! Thanks -Dave

I tested adding my (APC)UPS to UnRaid(6.1.3) and booted from usb flash and continue to get the resets/excessive reads. Not sure what I'm doing different from the people that have this working. Do I need to enable the UPS setting in UnRaid before rebooting? I couldn't even complete the boot process with this setup and had to re-plug in the flash drive to see it in ESXI again. Could anyone that has the (2) usb setup working verify there are no errors in :{ESXI IP}/host/vmkernel.log ? I kept seeing "ALERT: URB timed out - USB device may not respond" Going Back to the card reader for now! Does anyone know where/how to report this trbl to the linux kernel people?

I found some old posts about the usb reset trouble, but it was on usb mouse+keyboard troubles. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=91496 The fix for their issue was to enable kernel option 'CONFIG_USB_EHCI_TT_NEWSCHED'. I don't know enough about linux to check if this could be a cause. Does anyone have a list or a command to get a list of all the UnRaid kernel options? I would like to compare the kernel options from UnRaid 6b15 to 6.0. I am thinking 1 of the default options may have flipped going to the 4.0 kernel. Does anyone have a good(easy to understand) guide or website on compiling kernels? and a list of packages Unraid 6 uses? more testing: I tried formatting the flash drive as fat16, but no change in resets. I also wanted to try running as USB1: I tried disabling the ehci driver to force usb-1 on a flash drive in a 6.0 VM. "modprobe -r ehci-pci" errors that it is builtin. so i tried 'echo -n "{device id from lspci}" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ehci-pci/unbind' (read it somewhere) That does remove the usb 2 from 'lsusb' but then i don't have access to the flash drive. Is there another command i need to get access back as usb1? or is there a better way to test the drive as usb1?

I am seeing: ...No Caching mode page found ...Assuming drive cache: write through from my card reader(6.0) and SanDisk blade(6b15) which do not get the 'resets'. and also on all multiple flash drives(which have the resets). so it doesn't seem to be the cause. I think it is just a regular check to see if the device has a useable cache(like a regular hard drive).

I found an old no-name usb reader(ESXi lists it as "Alcor Micro Mass Storage Device") and it is working without the resets in ESI 5.5 with UnRaid 6.0 Final. I am booting from VMDK with just the config folder on the reader. I'm glad using the reader worked, but would be nice to be able to get flash drives working again. To Limetech: The new key replacement feature worked very smooth!

Dan thanks for the info! I have a couple of readers floating around here, hopefully one has a unique GUID. If not I'll try the FCR HS3. Can anyone explain why this would actually work? I cant understand why a reader works vs a flash drive, especially after trying multiple different brands/sizes of flash drives. One other thing I tried while troubleshooting this was to update the X9SCM-iif BIOS to Revision 2.2 - but it didnt help. Here is the BIOS change log for 2.0a to 2.2 on X9SCM-IIF(From SuperMicro) 1. Update PXE OPEOM to 1.4.4 2. Enhance B2 workaround 3. Remove ME power SDR 4. Update Intel RST to 11.6 5. Fix SBIOS type#17 memory speed not correct issue 6. Update CPU microcode 7. Fix Memory speed not correct issue 8. update UEFI security fix 9. Change BIOS revision to 2.2 Also this is how the USB ports are split for the 2 USB controllers: USB0-7 to EHCI0 USB8-13 to EHCI1

Dan - Can you check for the errors again-just wondering if the took a while b4 starting again.(I see them on 5.5+6) If still no errors, can you tell me more of your config? 1.) Are you booting ESXI from USB or a drive? 2.) If USB, Where is it attached(which usb header#?) 3.) Which card reader are you using? 4.) Is Unraid booting from PLOP or VMDK? 5.) What version Unraid? 6.0 Final? also, the errors you were seeing-were they in ESXI 6 and came clear, Or they cleared when you went to ESXI 6 from 5.x? Did you change anything else when you went to ESXI 6? Thanks -Dave

I tried VMDK boot and still seeing the errors(only left the config folder on the usb drive). my VM config is very generic using VM version 8 and add echi usb controller+device, dont even need to add the sata cntlr to the vm. About a minute after boot completes the errors start -dont even need to start the array. kaiguy - if you get a chance can you create a test vm with a plop boot and check unraid and vmkernel.log? Also do you have any patches applied to your ESXI 5.5?

I do agree that it seems slower. I don't think the usb is used after the initial boot. It all stays in ram, except to write config changes. I figured the slowness has to do with the never ending reads on the usb drive causing the VM to struggle(just a guess). For some reason while testing a few things, the usb completely disappeared from ESXI 6, had to unplug and plug back in to be seen by any VM. It's very odd, I wouldn't think a usb in a VM could affect the host this much. I have been booting with PLOP. Will try to get time to try with VMDK.

fyi, I sent an email to "[email protected]" to bring attention to this. Hopefully there is an easy fix to make it into 6.0 final.