So my USB died, but the server is still running and most things are working fine. I don't know what my most up to date USB backup is though. I have all my important data backed up, but restoring would be a pain.

• Clicking the flash backup button gives me a 404. 
• navigating to /boot via ssh shows /boot to be empty
• trying to gunzip the backup-flash-backup...zip located in / gives "Too many levels of symbolic links"
• /etc /lib /sys /usr /bin /dev /lib64 /opt /sbin and /var show contents as expected

What is the best procedure here? Can I back up all the settings from RAM somehow? 

Should I just take screenshots of every settings page, create a new install and copy the settings over?

Right now it's only a mild annoyance that unraid doesn't let me export the shares and that I'm scared of restarting the server,  but everything I 100% need to work works (a few important dockers that access the shares in /mnt/user). So I'm scared of fucking it up even more than it is.

Any ideas?

 

EDIT: should clarify, I'm not 100% sure that the USB died. But unraid doesn't detect it anymore and I'm scared of rebooting or pulling the USB.

Edited April 6, 20242 yr by ChalkyChalkson

Take a screenshot of main just in case, and then try rebooting with the flash drive in a different port, ideally USB 2.0, if it doesn't work try redoing the flash drive, and if that doesn't help replace it.

On 4/7/2024 at 8:46 PM, bmartino1 said:

make a downlaoded backup if you can while it is still running

Yeah that doesn't work sadly, I tried that already  It throws a 404

 

On 4/7/2024 at 9:58 AM, JorgeB said:

Take a screenshot of main just in case, and then try rebooting with the flash drive in a different port, ideally USB 2.0, if it doesn't work try redoing the flash drive, and if that doesn't help replace it.

Yeah that's what I thought I should do but was scared of. If it doesn't end up working in another port, but I assign all drives to the same spots, will all the data, dockers etc be fine?

 

(also sorry for the delayed reply, it appears my notification settings weren't what I thought they were)

Edited April 20, 20242 yr by ChalkyChalkson

Having dealt with flash drive replacement (not failures) I can indeed say it's stressful and sometimes confusing / hard to get the unraid key to transition. The config folder on that flash drive is the heart of your configurations.

The disk setup can be trickery to maintain name schemes and not reformat the DATA to keep array alignments.

That being said, as long as you assign the disk the way they are in the new flash drive and "don't format" place in maintenance mode.

All your data is still on disk in that setup.

ZFS can be a pain to re-add the array. If using unraids disk1/parity and cached, no data loss is there, just configuration of where to point to xyz data paths.

The bet we can recommend is making a support ticket for flash drive GUID replacement. Take pictures of what HD is in what configuration under the Main tab. Take pictures of network settings. Edit any vm and copy XML data. Edit and take pictures of any docker templates.

^Normally this is all saved on the flash drive in the config folder.
In the future I recommend making a flash drive backup and saving it on disk 1 of the array to be mounted later on(such as a bootable ubutu/linux distro to see the contents on the drive.) a new Unraid flash drive without data loss and the ability to restore from that backup.

 

Document what you can with what you have, as you may need to start over and recreate much in the system. Some option to get this data may be dead or broken, as it can't talk or see the flash drive.

17 hours ago, ChalkyChalkson said:

Yeah that's what I thought I should do but was scared of. If it doesn't end up working in another port, but I assign all drives to the same spots, will all the data, dockers etc be fine?

Yes.