My home lost power the other day for a significant amount of time.  I have the Unraid server connected to an UPS so in theory there was no power interruption.  But my plan in this case was to use my phone (router and switch also retained power) to manually shut down the server for a clean shut down.  But several strange things occurred while the power was still off that I'm having trouble understanding:

• Initially my WiFi router seemed to be off.  I don't know why, simply unplugging and plugging it back in seemed to get it working.
• Once my phone was connected to my WiFi router again I was not able to use my browser shortcut to connect to the Unraid server.  Why?  Again, my router, switch, and server were all powered on and connected.  Do routers require an internet connection to route internal traffic?  This seemed like a good plan, but it didn't work and I'm trying to understand if it was a fluke or if I need a better plan.
• Normally I do not have a monitor and keyboard connected to my server.  So I plugged them in hoping to issue a shutdown command.  When the monitor turned on it did not show a command prompt.  I don't remember the exact message, but it looked like it was in the middle of running something.  I hit "Enter" and Unraid showed me the next line of information.  I hit "Enter" again and again and it kept showing me more lines of information.  Finally it asked me for my login information (username).  I tried entering "admin" or "root" but it just kept asking me for the login.  So I tried the password and eventually it stopped responding.  Then, suddenly it said something to the effect of "initiating a clean shutdown procedure" and then the computer turned off.  Actually the fans and case lights remained on, but this is a known oddity I've always had when I sometimes shut down the server (the fans and light remain on until I kill the power).  Any idea what was going on?  Did Unraid self-initiate the shutdown but somehow got stuck until I did something?

 

When power returned and I was able to turn the server back on everything looked fine.  Unraid was not running a parity check (as it normally would after an unclean shutdown) and it seemed like it did initiate a clean shutdown on its own as far as I could tell.  I realize that the Unraid manual talks about configuring a UPS for auto shutdown, but I certainly did not set that up.

18 minutes ago, zero_koop said:

configuring a UPS for auto shutdown, but I certainly did not set that up

Post a screenshot of UPS Settings

Well we just had another power outage so I got to test things again.  Basically the exact same thing happened as last time.  When I turn on my sever it boots up and I'm left at the login screen.  As far as I know it should sit there until told otherwise.  But whenever I view the server after a power outage it is at this line:

Starting NTP daemon: /usr/sbin/ntpd -g -u ntp:ntp

If I hit enter I get more and more lines to reveal until I get "Tower login:"

But whatever I type here does not appear.  I tried typing in a login and password anyway, but no luck.  However if I continue to hit Enter it will show more lines and will eventually show a line that says "root" or my root password (words that I typed in previously).  So for some reason the screen is very delayed in displaying what it should.

Then I tried hitting the power button on my case and this initiated a safe shutdown!  I probably tried this during the first power outage, but forgot.  So can anyone confirm that hitting the power button will tell Unraid to initiate a safe shutdown?  If so, that is a nice feature that I wasn't aware of and very useful for this type of situation.

 

So after power came back on I decided to run some tests.  First I was able to successfully boot my server, login from the command prompt and issue the "powerdown" command to safely shut it down.  Same result as with the power button.  Then I decided to simulate a power outage by unplugging my UPS from the wall.  The server did not react at all (as I would expect), but this is different behavior than what I saw during the real power outage.  So bizarre!

 

Here are my UPS settings.  It appears to be disabled (I've not changed them from the default).  Setting this up sounds interesting, but the manual page is 47,000 words so I guess I'm not THAT interested 😉.

 

5 hours ago, zero_koop said:

confirm that hitting the power button will tell Unraid to initiate a safe shutdown?

Yes

@trurl Thank you!  That's great news, and very convenient when I am in a tight spot dealing with a power outage.

 

I'm still curious as to why I find my server in an odd state when I turn on the monitor during a power outage.  Why is it not at the prompt screen and instead is seemingly executing some command that does not display until I hit the Enter key to display the next line.  But you have answered my original question.  The most likely answer is that I hit the power button and shut it down and then forgot that I tried that.  I will continue to test and look into my other question but it is much less urgent now that I have a safe backup method of shutting down the server.