New corr/noncorr indicator in Parity Operation History report

[daTroll]

Please? In addition to Action, Date, Size, Duration, Speed, Status and Errors, I think it could be nice to see whether a parity-check was run as corrective or non-corrective.

 

Cheers,

T

[itimpi]

If you have the Parity Check Tuning plugin installed then it this part of the additional information added to the history

[daTroll]

Thanks for the suggestion! I've installed this plugin and I see two additional columns in the history: Elapsed Time and Increments. Where can I see the indicator for corrective or non-corrective parity-check?

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, daTroll said:

Thanks for the suggestion! I've installed this plugin and I see two additional columns in the history: Elapsed Time and Increments. Where can I see the indicator for corrective or non-corrective parity-check?

This information cannot be seen for checks run before the plugin was installed as it was not saved by Unraid.    If you now run checks while it is installed you will see the extra detail in the Action field for future entries.   As an example instead of it simply saying ‘Parity-Check’ it will now say something like ‘Scheduled Correcting Parity-Check’ as it adds how the check was triggered, and whether it was correcting or not.

 

the plugin does have other features you may find useful to reduce the pain of running parity checks which you may find useful, but it is not required to use these to get the extended history.   The extra columns are for recording details that become relevant if you are using the plugin options to break array operations into multiple increments.

[daTroll]

I expected something like that. After installing the plugin, I tried running manual parity checks, once with and the other without the corrective checkbox ticked. As this takes nearly two days on my system, I then cancelled the processing. Both tests say only "Parity-Check" in the Action column, just like before I had this plugin in my system. It will however be helpful to see future scheduled runs with a different Action, and then any manual run could be implicitly assumed to be corrective. Not perfect but it goes half the mile.

[itimpi]

52 minutes ago, daTroll said:

I expected something like that. After installing the plugin, I tried running manual parity checks, once with and the other without the corrective checkbox ticked. As this takes nearly two days on my system, I then cancelled the processing. Both tests say only "Parity-Check" in the Action column, just like before I had this plugin in my system. It will however be helpful to see future scheduled runs with a different Action, and then any manual run could be implicitly assumed to be corrective. Not perfect but it goes half the mile.

If you cancel too quickly or look to soon after cancelling then then this might happen.  The plugin runs a monitor task every 17 minutes by default if it is not specifically monitoring an increment (it is more frequent when actively monitoring an increment).   You need to give this task time to spot that the check started and later that it finished.  These are the points at which it captures when an array operation has started and its details and later that it is finished and the history needs updating.  Normally checks run for much longer than this so it 'just works'. 

 

I have thought of making the monitor checks more frequent but this just adds a (small) extra load to the system for what looks like little gain.  There is a 'hidden' option to change this frequency by manually editing the plugin's parity.tuning.cfg file on the flash drive but as this has no GUI support I would not recommend doing it unless you are careful and want to experiment.

[daTroll]

On 2/12/2023 at 6:00 PM, itimpi said:

If you cancel too quickly or look to soon after cancelling then then this might happen.  The plugin runs a monitor task every 17 minutes by default if it is not specifically monitoring an increment (it is more frequent when actively monitoring an increment).   You need to give this task time to spot that the check started and later that it finished. 

 

I ran a new test for 26 minutes, cancelled, then waited 20 minutes. The history is still not showing whether I had enabled corrections or not, it now just says "Manual Parity-Check". 

 

Secondly, installing a plugin that does a whole lot more than I want is increasing the complexity of my setup and therefore also the risk for undesirable side effects later. I only want the history display to be a little more informative. I don't have any need for incremental parity-checks etc.

 

Thirdly, the plugin provides a link to a support thread that is invalid: https://unraid.net/forums/topic/78394-parity-check-tuning

 

Cheers,

T

[itimpi]

2 hours ago, daTroll said:

I ran a new test for 26 minutes, cancelled, then waited 20 minutes. The history is still not showing whether I had enabled corrections or not, it now just says "Manual Parity-Check". 

There should be a progress.save file in the plugins folder on the flash drive.   If you PM me that I might be able to work out why you do not get the correcting/non-correcting indicator.    The fact that it is being flagged as a Manual check shows the plugin HAS updated the history as that is not done as standard.   There is also a config/parity-checks.log file on the flash drive that is of interest so I can see if the correcting status WAS recorded there but not displayed when you invoked the history so you could PM me a copy of that as well.

 

2 hours ago, daTroll said:

Secondly, installing a plugin that does a whole lot more than I want is increasing the complexity of my setup and therefore also the risk for undesirable side effects later. I only want the history display to be a little more informative. I don't have any need for incremental parity-checks etc.

If you do not activate any of the extra functionality then the plugin will not be doing anything in those areas so any side-effects should be minimal/unlikely.   The plugin does not install any new binaries which are the commonest reasons for plugins causing instabilities.   You can see if Limetech will enhance the history without the plugin but not sure if they have any plans in that area so good luck with that.

 

2 hours ago, daTroll said:

Thirdly, the plugin provides a link to a support thread that is invalid: https://unraid.net/forums/topic/78394-parity-check-tuning

That is because of changes at the forum level and many previous links have recently been broken by the changes.    The link in the plugin has been updated for the next plugin update (as part of getting ready for the 6.12 Unraid release).

[daTroll]

The new version of the plugin is showing the correction/noncorrection mode and the support link is working!