Unassigned Devices Preclear - a utility to preclear disks before adding them to the array


dlandon

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On 11/8/2022 at 5:46 PM, dlandon said:

A protection is built in now to prevent preclearing any disk that has partitions.  Go to UD and click the red 'X' next to the serial number and the disk will be cleared.  You will need to have the destructive mode turned on before the red 'X' will show.

thanks. I got stuck here as well. adding disk no.12 after more than a year, suddenly lost all senses what I'm supposed to be doing

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On 12/1/2022 at 8:40 PM, Airmaster said:

I am trying to pre-clear on unraid 6.11.5 using the plugin (Unassigned Device Preclear 2022.09.02).  I keep getting the a post-read verification fail with "Low memory detected".  All of them VMs are stopped and I have 128 GB of RAM with 6% utilization.  This has happened twice.  Any thoughts on what is wrong?

 

 

server-diagnostics-20221201-2033.zip 251.43 kB · 0 downloads

I used the docker instead and it worked great.  My conclusion is that this plug-in is buggy.

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Have not been able to get pre-clear to work with a brand new drive.

 

Got a new drive wanted to stress test it before adding it to my system and i can't seem to get it to start. 

I solved it last time with using the docker container and adding a Prompt but can remember what it was.

 

How do i pre-clear a brand new drive using the pre-clear plugin?

 

This is what the log shows and the it never gets past starting.

image.thumb.png.cbb2c58a1421b20421e74d530f0a323d.png

 

Preclear script invoked as: /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices.preclear/scripts/preclear_disk.sh  --cycles 3 --no-prompt /dev/sdk

 

Says success then never starts.

 

 

 

Both drivers appear to meet the requirements and give me a start prelear button.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Ender Wiggin
remove drive status
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Did you look at the time that had passed? 

 

17 hours had passed till I decided to stop it and realized it was not working. 

 

This happen before and list time I add to pass a parameter that is not exposed in the user interface. 

I believe this is what i had to do last time to get it to start:

 

From Binhex-preclear: Preclear Docker FAQ

 

Alignment Options (-a and -A flags)

Below is the logic built into the preclear script when determining the starting sector for the partition:-

if preclear -a option chosen and drive < 2.2TB then will set to 63.
if preclear -a option chosen and drive > 2.2TB then will set to 64.
if preclear -A option chosen and drive < 2.2TB then will set to 64.
if preclear -A option chosen and drive > 2.2TB then will set to 64.
if preclear -a or -A not defined then 63 or 64 will be chosen based on unraid config, UNLESS the drive is > 2.2TB, in which case it will always be 64.

 

For some reason the aliment is not getting chosen automatically 

Edited by Ender Wiggin
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31 minutes ago, Ender Wiggin said:

Did you look at the time that had passed? 

 

17 hours had passed till I decided to stop it and realized it was not working. 

 

This happen before and list time I add to pass a parameter that is not exposed in the user interface. 

I believe this is what i had to do last time to get it to start:

 

From Binhex-preclear: Preclear Docker FAQ

 

Alignment Options (-a and -A flags)

Below is the logic built into the preclear script when determining the starting sector for the partition:-

if preclear -a option chosen and drive < 2.2TB then will set to 63.
if preclear -a option chosen and drive > 2.2TB then will set to 64.
if preclear -A option chosen and drive < 2.2TB then will set to 64.
if preclear -A option chosen and drive > 2.2TB then will set to 64.
if preclear -a or -A not defined then 63 or 64 will be chosen based on unraid config, UNLESS the drive is > 2.2TB, in which case it will always be 64.

 

For some reason the aliment is not getting chosen automatically 

The docker script is not the same script as the plugin.  What parameter did you have to pass and how did you do it?

 

Post your server diagnostics.

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================================================================== 1.22
=                unRAID server Pre-Clear disk /dev/sde
=               cycle 1 of 1, partition start on sector 64
= Disk Pre-Clear-Read completed                                 DONE
= Step 1 of 10 - Copying zeros to first 2048k bytes             DONE
= Step 2 of 10 - Copying zeros to remainder of disk to clear it DONE
= Step 3 of 10 - Disk is now cleared from MBR onward.           DONE
= Step 4 of 10 - Clearing MBR bytes for partition 2,3 & 4       DONE
= Step 5 of 10 - Clearing MBR code area                         DONE
= Step 6 of 10 - Setting MBR signature bytes                    DONE
= Step 7 of 10 - Setting partition 1 to precleared state        DONE
= Step 8 of 10 - Notifying kernel we changed the partitioning   DONE
= Step 9 of 10 - Creating the /dev/disk/by* entries             DONE
= Step 10 of 10 - Verifying if the MBR is cleared.              DONE
= Disk Post-Clear-Read completed                                DONE
Disk Temperature: 32C, Elapsed Time:  124:18:30
========================================================================1.22
== WDCWD180EDGZ-11B2DA0   3LG8BP8U
== Disk /dev/sde has NOT been precleared successfully
== skip=6615600 count=200 bs=1000448 returned 26041 instead of 00000 skip=11330200 count=200 bs=1000
448 returned 43463 instead of 00000
============================================================================
** Changed attributes in files: /tmp/smart_start_sde  /tmp/smart_finish_sde
                ATTRIBUTE   NEW_VAL OLD_VAL FAILURE_THRESHOLD STATUS      RAW_VALUE
      Temperature_Celsius =    51      54            0        ok          32
 No SMART attributes are FAILING_NOW

 0 sectors were pending re-allocation before the start of the preclear.
 0 sectors were pending re-allocation after pre-read in cycle 1 of 1.
 0 sectors were pending re-allocation after zero of disk in cycle 1 of 1.
 0 sectors are pending re-allocation at the end of the preclear,
    the number of sectors pending re-allocation did not change.
 0 sectors had been re-allocated before the start of the preclear.
 0 sectors are re-allocated at the end of the preclear,
    the number of sectors re-allocated did not change.

 

Is my drive screwed?

 

Everything seems to work except post-read, and SMART reads fine. Everything ran fine up until post-read verification, which failed twice with the plugin. So to troubleshoot I ran post-read verification with the docker and then a full pre-read, clear, post-read cycle; both times getting the message above. I have read that sometimes post-read failures can be caused by bad memory but I'm hoping someone can explain what this "skip count bs" returning unexpected values might be and if that's indicative of a bad drive, because I really want to avoid memtest on 96GB if possible...

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2 hours ago, trurl said:

Have you done memtest? 

 

3 hours ago, Praxinator said:

I have read that sometimes post-read failures can be caused by bad memory but I'm hoping someone can explain what this "skip count bs" returning unexpected values might be and if that's indicative of a bad drive, because I really want to avoid memtest on 96GB if possible...

 

No, the implication here being I'm trying to avoid memtest unless no one can say what this "skip count bs" returning unexpected values actually means

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A RAM issue should show up intermittently with crashes, though. If the box is rock stable then the possible causes can be drive, or cable. Or (with really old SATA controllers) hardware failure of the controller. I had some issues with earlier generations of AM2/AM3 boards where the SATA controllers gave up eventually. SB690/700 was ok though. With the new (B350, B550 / X570) boards, SATA is stable. In your case, I would re-check SATA cable and maybe PSU if not spanking new and generously specced.

 

 

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Thanks for the tips, come to think of it I've had this thing for the better part of a year now running almost 24/7 and did have what seemed like a crash before, everything was still powered but could only access iDRAC and not OS until I cold rebooted. I guess I'll try a memtest then. It's in an older 12th gen Dell Poweredge with redundant PSUs, so I could easily swap main and spare to test if memtest doesn't find anything.

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2 hours ago, itimpi said:

Is there by chance that we could have an option added to the settings for this plugin to indicate that we want the drive in question to be (auto)mounted even if the array is not currently running or has been stopped?

The drive cannot be auto mounted because there is no file system after being precleared.

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2 hours ago, dlandon said:

The drive cannot be auto mounted because there is no file system after being precleared.

I am talking about auto-mounting a drive that is formatted and has files on it!   In particular I am personally interested in mounting remote shares at this point although local unassigned devices would also be desiresble

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4 minutes ago, itimpi said:

I am talking about auto-mounting a drive that is formatted and has files on it!   In particular I am personally interested in mounting remote shares at this point although local unassigned devices would also be desiresble

You are posting in the UD preclear forum.  Auto mounting of a precleared drive doesn't make any sense because there is no file system and never will be.  Once a drive has a file system, it will no longer show as a preclear candidate on the preclear page and will show on the UD page.

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Just now, dlandon said:

You are posting in the UD preclear forum.  Auto mounting of a precleared drive doesn't make any sense because there is no file system and never will be.  Once a drive has a file system, it will no longer show as a preclear candidate on the preclear page and will show on the UD page.

Oh my  mistake - it should have been the main UD thread

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On 12/5/2022 at 8:47 PM, dlandon said:

The docker script is not the same script as the plugin.  What parameter did you have to pass and how did you do it?

 

Post your server diagnostics.

 

For some reason the alignment is not getting chosen automatically. Justed add the flag and it started normally. If i did not add the flag it would not start in binhex preclear or UD preclear.

 

From Binhex-preclear: Preclear Docker FAQ

Quote

 

Alignment Options (-a and -A flags)

 

Below is the logic built into the preclear script when determining the starting sector for the partition:-

if preclear -a option chosen and drive < 2.2TB then will set to 63.
if preclear -a option chosen and drive > 2.2TB then will set to 64.
if preclear -A option chosen and drive < 2.2TB then will set to 64.
if preclear -A option chosen and drive > 2.2TB then will set to 64.
if preclear -a or -A not defined then 63 or 64 will be chosen based on unraid config, UNLESS the drive is > 2.2TB, in which case it will always be 64.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Ender Wiggin
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10 hours ago, Ender Wiggin said:

Justed add the flag and it started normally.

What flag?

 

Your log is so full of these messages, I can't read it:

Dec  6 04:43:45 WAMRED autofan: Highest disk temp is 40C, adjusting fan speed from: 126 (49% @ 819rpm) to: FULL (100% @ 828rpm)

Can you stop the autofan messages?

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