Hey all,

So last night around 21:50 I had a couple people asking me if there was anything wrong with my Plex server because they weren't able to access my content.

I immediately opened up a local Plex client and loaded up a movie, and it played instantly.

Thinking the problem was on their end, I insisted they rebooted their device/router and I logged into Unraid and was immediately alarmed when I saw that NOTHING was showing in the 'main' tab - no disks, array, nothing.

Also the Dashboard had no stats on it at all. No docker apps, no CPU loads, system info, nothing.

There was also zero error messages, and I was able to navigate the Unraid web OS through my browser flawlessly, however I noticed that I was only able to access it internally, and using my DDNS to access it externally returned an error.

I rebooted it from the Dashboard menu, and when it came back after a few mins I logged in to find no change.

It's only when I went to the basement and physically pressed the shutdown button on the machine that it eventually went through the shutdown sequences and powered off. I then physically turned it back on and it seemed to boot normally, albeit with a parity check - which is still in progress.

The 'Fix Common Problems' plugin shows no errors, however I've attached the diagnostics file.

The server is kept in a well-ventilated (and cold) cellar. Since the case is also well-ventilated, CPU temps never really get higher than 50deg C and HDDs don't get hotter than 38dec C.

Can someone give me an idea of what caused this? No point having a server if I have to manually reboot it occasionally.

nas-diagnostics-20210828-1209.zip

IT JUST HAPPENED AGAIN!!!

Ok I'm freaking out now. What the hell is going on??

Anyone???

Is anyone even in these forums? I never seem to get any replies whenever I post a thread here. 
Can anyone even see this?

https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Troubleshooting#Persistent_Logs_.28Syslog_server.29

2 hours ago, trurl said:

https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Troubleshooting#Persistent_Logs_.28Syslog_server.29

I'm guessing from this cryptic reply that my diagnostics file wasn't useful?

I've set up the syslog server to dump to a local 'cache preferred' share, so when it happens again, I'll dump it here.

It just happened again!

This time, I was actually browsing the webUI while it happened. The weird thing is - even though I cannot access any of my network shares (including my media content) I'm still able to stream that content from the Plex server from those same shares, while both from inside and outside my LAN. How is this possible if all the content is located on the array which it isn't detecting??

I haven't rebooted the server yet, but I'm noticing while navigating between pages of the WebUI, that the status on the bottom left status bar occasionally switched from 'array undefined' to 'array started', and then without a few seconds switches back to 'array undefined' again.

Eventually, about 10 mins later, the webUI became unresponsive altogether - however Plex still worked!

What is going on?

Could this be a problem with the flash drive? Or are we looking at something else here?

Also, I had previously set the local syslog files to be saved in my 'downloads' share, however I can't find any in there.

I have completely no idea what to do. CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME, BECAUSE I FEEL LIKE THIS IS FALLING ON DEAF EARS!!!

Edited September 4, 20214 yr by Corvus

4 hours ago, Corvus said:

CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME

Not without the persistent syslog, set it to mirror to the flash drive then post that after a crash.

41 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Not without the persistent syslog, set it to mirror to the flash drive then post that after a crash.

I've just enabled that. If it's the flash drive that's faulty, will the logs tell us?

syslogOk it just happened today.
I had my syslog mirrored to my flash drive. This is the file.

CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME NOW??

Unfortunately there's nothing relevant logged before the crash, this usually suggest a hardware problem, one thing you can try it to boot the server in safe mode with all docker/VMs disable, let it run as a basic NAS for a few days, if it still crashes it's most likely hardware, if it doesn't start turning on the other services one by one.

10 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Unfortunately there's nothing relevant logged before the crash, this usually suggest a hardware problem, one thing you can try it to boot the server in safe mode with all docker/VMs disable, let it run as a basic NAS for a few days, if it still crashes it's most likely hardware, if it doesn't start turning on the other services one by one.

When you say hardware, does that include a USB flash malfunction?
I'd rather not have to disable my Plex docker, as where I am, we are still in lockdown and I have over a dozen people depending on my Plex server.

Edited September 7, 20214 yr by Corvus

52 minutes ago, Corvus said:

does that include a USB flash malfunction?

That would be logged, hardware is usually board. RAM, PSU, etc.

43 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

That would be logged, hardware is usually board. RAM, PSU, etc.

So we can definitively say that it's not a USB flash drive issue then? Are we ruling this out 100%?

9 minutes ago, Corvus said:

So we can definitively say that it's not a USB flash drive issue then? Are we ruling this out 100%?

You can always set up Unraid on a new flashdrive a see if it is better.

1 hour ago, ChatNoir said:

You can always set up Unraid on a new flashdrive a see if it is better.

Well I mean, I'm trying to see whether or not we've just ruled that out. Have we or haven't we?

If we've ruled it out 100%, there's no point in me doing that, is there?

If I do, I'm definitely not starting from scratch, I'll be transferring my backup and license so that my array is intact.

Very unlikely that the flash drive is the problem, but can't say 100%.

18 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Very unlikely that the flash drive is the problem, but can't say 100%.

How else can I go about narrowing down which component it is? I don't want to take the server offline for multiple days because I have people relying on it during lockdown - which unfortunately my entire country is still in.

34 minutes ago, Corvus said:

How else can I go about narrowing down which component it is?

Basically you'd need to start swapping components and test.

5 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Basically you'd need to start swapping components and test.

So unless I have the money to buy replacement components, there's literally no other way?

It's very difficult to diagnose hardware issues, especially remotely, you can try using a different computer as Unraid server, if you have one, key is tied to the flash drive, not the hardware.

24 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

It's very difficult to diagnose hardware issues, especially remotely, you can try using a different computer as Unraid server, if you have one, key is tied to the flash drive, not the hardware.

I don't see how that would help, given that a different computer would have completely different hardware specs. It would be impossible to isolate the fault to a specific component.

I know that all of the Unraid OS (including my settings) are stored on the flash, but hypothetically, if I were to replace the RAM, motherboard, CPU and PSU, would I lose the array? What would I need to do to preserve the array and all of its related config?

5 minutes ago, Corvus said:

I don't see how that would help, given that a different computer would have completely different hardware specs.

It would confirm if it's the involved hardware.

6 minutes ago, Corvus said:

if I were to replace the RAM, motherboard, CPU and PSU, would I lose the array? What would I need to do to preserve the array and all of its related config?

It's plug and play, as long as you don't use RAID controllers.

3 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

It's plug and play, as long as you don't use RAID controllers.

Really? So I wouldn't need to do anything special to 'bring back' the array or anything? No special order in how they're plugged in? Just built and boot into Unraid?

What about VMs and how they're configured? Surely I'd have to completely rebuild them to work on the new hardware, right?

Edited September 7, 20214 yr by Corvus

2 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

It would confirm if it's the involved hardware.

It would only confirm if it's literally any of the current components. We're trying to work out *which* component. Moving Unraid to a completely different computer won't achieve that.