JorgeB Posted February 20 Share Posted February 20 The first diags you posted show both NICs enabled, post new diags. Quote Link to comment
Roscoe62 Posted February 20 Author Share Posted February 20 10 hours ago, JorgeB said: The first diags you posted show both NICs enabled, post new diags. Honestly, I'm not sure how that's even possible. At the time I took that first set no LAN cable was attached (eth1 has never been used up until now), and network settings showed as follows: However, just in case, I've attached the diagnostics file I took this morning. server-diagnostics-20240221-0921.zip Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted February 21 Share Posted February 21 It's normal for the NIC to be inactive unless it has an IP assigned or is part of a bond. Quote Link to comment
Roscoe62 Posted February 22 Author Share Posted February 22 Thanks for confirming that. However, to me, the next question is - what are the steps to create the bond in unRAID? Again, thank you for any guidance you can provide. Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 Settings - Network Settings - Enable Bonding = yes then choose eth0 and eth1 as bond members Quote Link to comment
Roscoe62 Posted February 22 Author Share Posted February 22 This is what it looks like after making this change. Are there any further settings I need to change? Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 To create a bond with both NICs that's it. Quote Link to comment
Roscoe62 Posted February 23 Author Share Posted February 23 Thanks for confirming. I tried doing the file transfer from my PC again with both LAN ports bonded. The failed file transfer was the original reason I started this post. Unfortunately, the file transfer paused twice after which it failed again... Any thoughts as to where to look next? Quote Link to comment
dlandon Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 28 minutes ago, Roscoe62 said: Thanks for confirming. I tried doing the file transfer from my PC again with both LAN ports bonded. The failed file transfer was the original reason I started this post. Unfortunately, the file transfer paused twice after which it failed again... Any thoughts as to where to look next? Network equipment. Cables, router, network switch, etc. Quote Link to comment
Roscoe62 Posted February 24 Author Share Posted February 24 In the very first post in this thread I stated I'd already replaced the switch the server is connected to - along with replacing the network cable (now cables) connecting the server to the switch. Later in the thread I outlined the other testing I've done... - Transferring a large file from my PC to my wife's PC (located in the same room as the server, so routing is the same) - no pausing issue found - Transferring a large file from my wife's PC to the server - it worked the first time I tried it, but it paused several times and then failed the second time I tried it. This, to me, points more to a networking issue on the unRAID server. I'm happy to concede I've missed something in the testing I've described above, but I can't think of what it might be. Again, I'm grateful for any insight you can provide. Quote Link to comment
dlandon Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 2 hours ago, Roscoe62 said: In the very first post in this thread I stated I'd already replaced the switch the server is connected to - along with replacing the network cable (now cables) connecting the server to the switch. Later in the thread I outlined the other testing I've done... - Transferring a large file from my PC to my wife's PC (located in the same room as the server, so routing is the same) - no pausing issue found - Transferring a large file from my wife's PC to the server - it worked the first time I tried it, but it paused several times and then failed the second time I tried it. This, to me, points more to a networking issue on the unRAID server. I'm happy to concede I've missed something in the testing I've described above, but I can't think of what it might be. Again, I'm grateful for any insight you can provide. Go to the Dashboard and look at the network area. Select errors info and see if there are any network errors. Also see if your switch shows any network errors. Quote Link to comment
dlandon Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 On 2/22/2024 at 3:00 PM, Roscoe62 said: This is what it looks like after making this change. Are there any further settings I need to change? Enable bridging also. Quote Link to comment
Roscoe62 Posted February 25 Author Share Posted February 25 Okay, I went to the Dashboard to view network errors. This is before doing anything else here's what I found... My switch is a 16 port unmanaged switch, so there's no interface with which to see network errors. Then I enabled bridging in unRAID, and tried a file transfer again. There were a couple of "slowdowns", but I think this is normal behavior because I don't use a cache drive. Also, a "slowdown" behaves differently in that I can still see the Windows file transfer speed constantly changing. During what I'm calling a "pause" the Windows file transfer speed freezes - showing whatever the speed value was prior to the pause. This time I thought to capture a screenshot of the file transfer during the pause.... Just FWIW, it may also be worth mentioning that during a file transfer "pause" condition, in the unRAID main window I see the number in the Writes column for both the destination drive and the parity drive continue to climb. The numbers cease to climb when the network error message is displayed. Finally, a screenshot of the network errors from the unRAID dashboard taken straight after the above file transfer failure... Hopefully there's some clue here into what might be causing the issue. Quote Link to comment
dlandon Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 27 minutes ago, Roscoe62 said: Hopefully there's some clue here into what might be causing the issue. That's too many drops and overruns on eth0. Is your motherboard fairly new? I would suggest some more things to try: Unplug your eth0 cable so only eth1 works. You have the bond set up as backup, so if eth0 disappears, eth1 will take over. See if your motherboard has a firmware update. In all cases monitor your NIC errors and see what change affects it. Quote Link to comment
Roscoe62 Posted February 26 Author Share Posted February 26 Sorry, it took a bit longer to action these tasks...sometimes it takes a while before I'm able to delete the failed file from unRAID. I unplugged the eth0 cable and tried the file transfer. It eventually paused, and then failed. I checked the network errors in the dashboard and it appears exactly as it did in the above screenshot - with the same count of eth0 drops and overruns. this outcome confused me a little, so I reversed the cables - unplugging eth1 and reconnecting eth0, and ran the test again. Again, a few pauses and the network error message. Oddly, when I checked the network errors section of the dashboard, the count of eth0 drops and overruns hadn't changed at all...and the other counters still remained at zero. I have NO clue what's going on. To answer some of your other questions... - No, the motherboard is not new. It's been used successfully for at least the last 5 years. - With motherboard firmware updates, do you mean BIOS update, or BMC Firmware updates? Drivers and utilities are also available, but they're based on OS (Microsoft, Redhat or SuSE). I'm not sure exactly what you had in mind. Quote Link to comment
dlandon Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 14 minutes ago, Roscoe62 said: - With motherboard firmware updates, do you mean BIOS update, BIOS. Quote Link to comment
Roscoe62 Posted February 29 Author Share Posted February 29 OK. Will take me a little while to organise this. I'll post back when it's done. Quote Link to comment
Roscoe62 Posted March 5 Author Share Posted March 5 Sorry it took so long to get this done, but BIOS has now been updated to latest version (BIOS dated 9 June 2021). I must admit I was nervous updating the BIOS - lots of stories about turning the mothboard into a brick - but it went smoothly enough, and unRAID came up again afterwards. Unfortunately, I still have the issue with larger file transfers pausing several times, and ultimately failing. Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted March 6 Share Posted March 6 Do you have any other PC you use temporarily with an Unraid trial key and test? That could help rule out the server or LAN being the issue. Quote Link to comment
Roscoe62 Posted March 6 Author Share Posted March 6 Unfortunately not. However, earlier in this thread I did a large file transfer from my wife's laptop to the unRAID server. Her laptop is in the same room as the unRAID server - so the file is sent out the laptop network cable into the same switch the unRAID server is plugged into, and through the LAN cable to the unRAID box, and the same issue was observed. Also, I've already swapped out both the switch and the unRAID LAN cable with new ones. Didn't make any difference. Based on the results from these tests, I don't believe it's a LAN issue. Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted March 7 Share Posted March 7 This is a very strange issue, certainly not a common one, and without anything relevant being logged in the syslog, IMHO unlikely that the OS is the problem, best bet is to try and rule out all the other things. Quote Link to comment
Roscoe62 Posted March 7 Author Share Posted March 7 11 hours ago, JorgeB said: This is a very strange issue, certainly not a common one Hi JorgeB, you are not wrong! This is causing endless frustration for me. 11 hours ago, JorgeB said: IMHO unlikely that the OS is the problem, best bet is to try and rule out all the other things. I hear you but, honestly, I think I've had a pretty good shot at eliminating 'the other things' in my earlier testing. The below post is a decent summary of what I've tried up to this point... On 2/25/2024 at 11:13 AM, Roscoe62 said: In the very first post in this thread I stated I'd already replaced the switch the server is connected to - along with replacing the network cable (now cables) connecting the server to the switch. Later in the thread I outlined the other testing I've done... - Transferring a large file from my PC to my wife's PC (located in the same room as the server, so routing is the same) - no pausing issue found - Transferring a large file from my wife's PC to the server - it worked the first time I tried it, but it paused several times and then failed the second time I tried it. This, to me, points more to a networking issue on the unRAID server. I'm happy to concede I've missed something in the testing I've described above, but I can't think of what it might be. In addition to the above, at the direction from @dlandon, I've tried forcing the server to use eth1 only (and eth0 only), and now upgraded the server's BIOS to the latest version. So far none of these things have uncovered the cause of the underlying issue. If you can see a test I've missed please let me know. As awesome as this forum has been through trying to resolve this issue it's beginning to feel like I'm close to exhausting the knowledge on offer. I'm now starting to consider whether paying for some 'one-on-one' unRAID support might be the only option left for me to try. It's an expensive option but it's gotten to the point where I can't put any new content on the server - not anything over 15Gbs or so...which is MOST of it. For me this defeats the purpose of having a server in the first place...so it's fast becoming a matter of either paying for professional help to find and correct the issue, or abandoning the concept of having all content on a central server altogether. Anyone with any further ideas of things to try (not already listed above), now is the time. Quote Link to comment
dlandon Posted March 8 Share Posted March 8 Based on all you've been through, I think it might be time to look at hardware issues: Do a memory test. As @JorgeB suggested boot Unraid on an old laptop or another computer and test the file transfer. Replace motherboard and processor? Quote Link to comment
Roscoe62 Posted March 13 Author Share Posted March 13 Okay..... I'm now going through these suggestions one at a time. I'm currently 40 hours through a 48 hour memory test run. So far the server has successfully completed 26 passes of the memory test and, unless something changes dramatically, it's likely to complete the full 48 hours without showing any errors. The next suggestion involves setting up another computer to run an instance of unRAID and try to transfer a larger file through the network to it. I've got some questions as to how to view the results, and then some further questions on how to set this test up specifically. Here's the scenario followed by some questions on what the outcomes mean. Please let me know if I've misunderstood anything here... As I stated earlier, I don't have a spare computer with which to run this test, so I'm going to have to purchase a second-hand PC and some new HDD's to mimick setting up a new unRAID instance. I believe the purpose of this test is to attempt to identify whether the file transfer issue is being caused by unRAID, or something else on the network. Is that correct? The high level conclusions that can be drawn from this test are as follows: If I can successfully transfer a number of larger files over the network to the new (trial?) instance of unRAID, this would infer the fault lies within my existing unRAID system. Correct? Alternatively, if I cannot successfully transfer a number of larger files over the network to the new (trial) instance of unRAID, this would infer the fault lies elsewhere in my network. Are these outcomes correct? Are they a fair representation of what this test is trying to show? And now for some specific questions on how to properly set this test up.... What is the minimum number of drives I'll need to have in the test PC to run unRAID? I'm hoping it's 2. Can someone confirm? Am I able to set up a trial version of unRAID on a spare USB stick to run this test? I'm not keen to pay for another unRAID licence JUST to run this test. Is this correct? I may have more specific questions later, but this should be enough to get the ball rolling. Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 12 minutes ago, Roscoe62 said: What is the minimum number of drives I'll need to have in the test PC to run unRAID? 1, no need for parity just for this test 13 minutes ago, Roscoe62 said: Am I able to set up a trial version of unRAID on a spare USB stick to run this test? yep, trials are good for 30 days plus a 15 day extension IIRC Quote Link to comment
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