March 26, 200818 yr Hi, newbie unraid Pro user here I'm getting the error "You may not add new disks when there exists missing, wrong, or disabled disk(s)." when trying to add new discs into the array. Currently I have 2 drives with no parity (was using the trial version before buying the pro) and both are showing as green in the "Main" page. I've added 4 disks into the system now and all are detected and listed in the Devices page. However as soon as I try adding one I get the above error. I have a feeling this is related to swapping the port of one of the 2 original disks which I did first before trying to add any new ones. unRaid showed me that the port had changed, so I simply re-assigned the correct disc to that port in the devices screen. (Should I have done this?) Anyway the array starts and works fine with just the two disks assigned, showing green lights on the Main page. Can anyone shed light on why I can't add any more drives?
March 26, 200818 yr That message makes perfect sense when a parity drive is in place, but I can't think why it would be necessary with no parity drive, but Tom may know of a reason for it. Anyway, unRAID does prefer dealing with one change at a time, and that is always safer. I think if you have only the 2 drives assigned and reboot, so that they come up green, you should then be able to add your drives.
March 26, 200818 yr Author That message makes perfect sense when a parity drive is in place, but I can't think why it would be necessary with no parity drive, but Tom may know of a reason for it. Anyway, unRAID does prefer dealing with one change at a time, and that is always safer. I think if you have only the 2 drives assigned and reboot, so that they come up green, you should then be able to add your drives. Thanks for the reply. I have rebooted and both drives are showing green, however I still cannot add any new drives to the array as I get the error.
March 27, 200818 yr Author Does Tom check these forums? I've emailed but no reply as yet. I'm a bit stuck.. can't do anything with the tower at the moment. :'(
March 27, 200818 yr Does Tom check these forums? I've emailed but no reply as yet. I'm a bit stuck.. can't do anything with the tower at the moment. :'( Tom checks in on occasion, but there have been times where he did not for many days. To help everyone, please attach a copy of your syslog to this thread. It will give important clues as to what is happening. See the wiki for instructions on how to save a copy of the log to your flash drive so you can then attach it to a message. http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Viewing_the_System_Log What version of unRaid are you attempting to add a disk to? (you posted in the 4.2 forum) If it is version 4.2.x, it would probably help to upgrade it to the 4.3-beta3. (A fairly big parity-swap bug was identified and fixed in 4.2.3) There is no need to reformat you flash drive, or go through any complicated set-up. All you need to do to upgrade to the newest release is to download 4.3-beta3 from here: http://lime-technology.com/dnlds/ Then unzip the 4.3-beta3 distribution on your PC, Next, on the flash drive rename bzroot and bzimage to bzroot42 and bzimage42 (do this so you can undo the upgrade if you want to, by re-naming them back to their original names ) Last, copy the bzroot and bzimage from where you unpacked them on your PC to the flash drive and reboot the unRaid server. Joe L.
March 27, 200818 yr Author Hi I'm running 4.2.4. I'll try the upgrade as you suggest, but for now here is the syslog attached.
March 27, 200818 yr OK I upgraded and have the same issue now on 4.3-beta3. :'( OK... Does your management screen show just the two drives, and they are both "green" ? If so, you can probably get the unRaid software back to sanity by stopping the array and with just the two drives assigned (don't assign any new drives) using the "Restore" button. If it shows your existing drives as "unformatted" and asks you to check a box to format them, STOP. Do not check the box, do not press "Restore' (unless, of course the data is ok to be wiped away) As you might suspect, the "Restore" button does not restore anything. It instead Stores a NEW configuration based on the currently assigned drives. If you had a parity drive, it would also proceed to generate a new set of parity data based on those same currently assigned drives. From what you have described, the process of replacing a drive with a bigger one is broken when a parity drive is not present. If a parity drive was present, the software would deal with the re-creation of the contents from Parity and the other data drives. Since you have no parity drive, this cannot happen. Now, it is probable that the error message you are getting is simply not specific to the case where the parity drive has never been assigned. It "thinks" there is a data drive missing (true, since you replaced it) and it knows that the parity drive is also missing so it will not let you add new drives until it thinks it is safe once more. (Also true, but in your case, parity never existed, and there is no way to "rebuild" the contents of any drive) Now, I'm just guessing here... but I'll bet you stumbled on a sequence of upgrade actions Tom had not tried in his tests. I'm guessing 99% of the time, he has a parity drive assigned during his tests. So... give the "Restore" button a try. Joe L.
March 27, 200818 yr There's one other anomaly apparent in his syslog, that may be confusing unRAID. Drive sdg (Maxtor 250GB, serial ending in GCH) has a partition that is recognized as valid by the kernel, but then fails an attempt to read near the end of the partition, at about the 750GB point, on a 250GB drive! I have to assume the partition table is corrupted. Why is it trying to access the drive out there? Probably it is a consistency check, whether the end of the partition numbers agree with the size stated. It is the first time I have seen this in a syslog, and it may possibly be leaving the state of the drive in a condition that is confusing unRAID. Perhaps if you try to assign it, it immediately is marked Disabled, and that is why you see that error, even though none show as Disabled or Missing. Try adding/assigning sda or sdd only, both appear unpartitioned, and Start the array, and see if it works correctly at least for one or both of those. (See Joe's warning above about checking that only the correct drives appear unformatted.) It is the first time I have seen the sata_sil driver supporting 4 ports. Is that possibly a Sil3124 based addon card? It has 2 drives attached, sdf and sdg, at SATA link speed of 1.5Gbps. (just my curiosity) I noticed an MTU change, from 1500 to 9014, so I'm guessing you are attempting to test jumbo frame support? I and others would like to hear your comments, as to any performance improvements you may see with and without the jumbo frame mod.
March 27, 200818 yr Author OK I upgraded and have the same issue now on 4.3-beta3. :'( OK... Does your management screen show just the two drives, and they are both "green" ? If so, you can probably get the unRaid software back to sanity by stopping the array and with just the two drives assigned (don't assign any new drives) using the "Restore" button. If it shows your existing drives as "unformatted" and asks you to check a box to format them, STOP. Do not check the box, do not press "Restore' (unless, of course the data is ok to be wiped away) As you might suspect, the "Restore" button does not restore anything. It instead Stores a NEW configuration based on the currently assigned drives. If you had a parity drive, it would also proceed to generate a new set of parity data based on those same currently assigned drives. From what you have described, the process of replacing a drive with a bigger one is broken when a parity drive is not present. If a parity drive was present, the software would deal with the re-creation of the contents from Parity and the other data drives. Since you have no parity drive, this cannot happen. Now, it is probable that the error message you are getting is simply not specific to the case where the parity drive has never been assigned. It "thinks" there is a data drive missing (true, since you replaced it) and it knows that the parity drive is also missing so it will not let you add new drives until it thinks it is safe once more. (Also true, but in your case, parity never existed, and there is no way to "rebuild" the contents of any drive) Now, I'm just guessing here... but I'll bet you stumbled on a sequence of upgrade actions Tom had not tried in his tests. I'm guessing 99% of the time, he has a parity drive assigned during his tests. So... give the "Restore" button a try. Joe L. Hi again thanks for taking time to reply. I tried your suggestion taking the following steps: 1) Pressed STOP 2) Clicked I'm sure I want to do this (as Restore button was disabled until i did this) 3) Clicked restore 4) Clicked Start As before the two drives show green and 'configuration valid' Unfortunately I still get the same error trying to add any of the disks to the array. I've tried choosing each different disk on its own and as soon as I go back to Main page I get "Invalid Expansion". I even tried the same again with a reboot at the end, with the same result.
March 27, 200818 yr Author There's one other anomaly apparent in his syslog, that may be confusing unRAID. Drive sdg (Maxtor 250GB, serial ending in GCH) has a partition that is recognized as valid by the kernel, but then fails an attempt to read near the end of the partition, at about the 750GB point, on a 250GB drive! I have to assume the partition table is corrupted. Why is it trying to access the drive out there? Probably it is a consistency check, whether the end of the partition numbers agree with the size stated. It is the first time I have seen this in a syslog, and it may possibly be leaving the state of the drive in a condition that is confusing unRAID. Perhaps if you try to assign it, it immediately is marked Disabled, and that is why you see that error, even though none show as Disabled or Missing. Try adding/assigning sda or sdd only, both appear unpartitioned, and Start the array, and see if it works correctly at least for one or both of those. (See Joe's warning above about checking that only the correct drives appear unformatted.) It is the first time I have seen the sata_sil driver supporting 4 ports. Is that possibly a Sil3124 based addon card? It has 2 drives attached, sdf and sdg, at SATA link speed of 1.5Gbps. (just my curiosity) I noticed an MTU change, from 1500 to 9014, so I'm guessing you are attempting to test jumbo frame support? I and others would like to hear your comments, as to any performance improvements you may see with and without the jumbo frame mod. Hi. The sata card I'm using is an MRI 4 port PCI. Yes it has just the two drives connected to it at the moment. Dunno about Sil2124?? I assume thats the chip manufacturer you mean? Yeah I'm playing with jumbo frames, but not really tested it yet. I was getting pretty good read/write speeds with no parity installed, I was waiting to get the parity installed to do some proper testing.
March 27, 200818 yr Author Attached screenshot of the drives how I would like to see them, but showing the error
March 27, 200818 yr I just want to confirm, if you were to un-assign Disk 4, Disk 5, and the Parity drive, does it still show 2 green balls, 1 blue ball for Disk 3, and the error 'Invalid Expansion'? And if you then reboot, does it come up the same?
March 27, 200818 yr Author I just want to confirm, if you were to un-assign Disk 4, Disk 5, and the Parity drive, does it still show 2 green balls, 1 blue ball for Disk 3, and the error 'Invalid Expansion'? And if you then reboot, does it come up the same? Correct yes it does. Screenshot attached.
March 27, 200818 yr That particular Maxtor (serial ending in GCH) is the one with the partition corruption, that I was trying to avoid. Would you mind trying one more time, but with ANY other drive than that one? When you have a chance, you should try to remove all partitions from that drive (the GCH one). I don't know what utilities or experience you have, but any partitioning tool can be used, even fdisk or Windows Disk Management.
March 28, 200818 yr Author That particular Maxtor (serial ending in GCH) is the one with the partition corruption, that I was trying to avoid. Would you mind trying one more time, but with ANY other drive than that one? When you have a chance, you should try to remove all partitions from that drive (the GCH one). I don't know what utilities or experience you have, but any partitioning tool can be used, even fdisk or Windows Disk Management. I've tried added all of the drives individually, not just the GCH one. I've added a screenshot of the same error with a different drive. Is there any way of removing partitions via telnet? I don't really want to have to go fishing about to find that particular drive and remove it
March 28, 200818 yr Can you confirm one more thing, will the 'I'm sure I want to do this' box accept a check mark by clicking on it?
March 28, 200818 yr Author Can you confirm one more thing, will the 'I'm sure I want to do this' box accept a check mark by clicking on it? Yes, thats how the restore button becomes available.
March 28, 200818 yr That particular Maxtor (serial ending in GCH) is the one with the partition corruption, that I was trying to avoid. Would you mind trying one more time, but with ANY other drive than that one? When you have a chance, you should try to remove all partitions from that drive (the GCH one). I don't know what utilities or experience you have, but any partitioning tool can be used, even fdisk or Windows Disk Management. I've tried added all of the drives individually, not just the GCH one. I've added a screenshot of the same error with a different drive. Is there any way of removing partitions via telnet? I don't really want to have to go fishing about to find that particular drive and remove it Yes, there is. Stop the array, on the drive assignment page you will see the "device" id of a given drive (in parenthesizes). for SATA drives, it will be sda, sdb, sdc, sdd, etc...) for IDE drives hda, hdb, hdc, hde, ... Once you know the device of the drive you can log in via telnet and type: fdisk /dev/sdX where "X" is the letter corresponding to the drive. (For IDE based drives, it would be "fdisk /dev/hdX" where hdX = hda, hdb, hdc, etc...) Once in fdisk, the "m" command will give help. Basically, the "p" command will print the existing partition table... the "d" command will delete a partition, and finally, once you get the partitioning as you want, the "w" command will write the new partition table to the disk. If you do not want to change anything, the "q" command will exit without writing any changes to the disk. It is very important to make sure you are on the correct disk when deleting partitions. If done to one of your data disks, you would loose access to your data. fdisk -l /dev/xxx will print the existing partitioning A drive that has been partitioned by unRaid will look something like this disk on my array: root@Tower:~# fdisk /dev/hdd The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 15504336. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups cause problems with: 1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO) 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK) Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/hdd: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 1 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15504336 cylinders Units = cylinders of 63 * 512 = 32256 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdd1 2 15504336 488386552+ 83 Linux Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary. Command (m for help): q Joe L.
March 28, 200818 yr Author oh my... you prompted me into trying something else, which has worked! I have a feeling this is what I was asked to do before but I did something subtly different: with the two drives showing green, I added the third then got the "invalid expansion". At this point I did a restore. Now the drive is showing as unformatted What I did previously was do a restore with just the two drives showing green without the error message showing.
March 28, 200818 yr Author Oh ok, so there is still something odd, although its working now. Every time I add a drive I get the "invalid expansion" message, however clicking restore after each one seems to clear it and allow me to add the drive. Anyway, thank you to everyone who helped, I think I have it working now!
March 28, 200818 yr I think the error message is just mis-leading you because you do not yet have a parity drive installed. Until you install one, keep adding drives as you are now, using the "Restore" button to save a new configuration. Once you install a parity drive, that message, when presented, will be worded correctly if you ever see it when you try to expand your array when it is in a degraded state.. It could probably use a little bit better logic. That's up to Tom to implement. Joe L.
March 28, 200818 yr That definitely was mis-leading, and so was the apparent 'grayness' of that check box in the screen captures. Thanks Joe for the fdisk info. I'm gaining, but I can see that I still have a lot of very basic Linux info to learn.
March 28, 200818 yr oh my... you prompted me into trying something else, which has worked! I have a feeling this is what I was asked to do before but I did something subtly different: with the two drives showing green, I added the third then got the "invalid expansion". At this point I did a restore. Now the drive is showing as unformatted What I did previously was do a restore with just the two drives showing green without the error message showing. The "Restore" button saves a new configuration based on the currently assigned drives. When you pressed it with only the original two drives assigned, it saved a configuration exactly the same as it already had. Basically, it did nothing. If you had a parity drive installed, it would have re-calculated parity on those same two drives. After you assigned a third drive and THEN used the "Restore" button, the new configuration with three drives was then saved. "Restore" should really be named "Set New Configuration based on Currently Assigned Drives" ... but that is probably too long to fit on a button. It does not "Restore" anything. Now, you can shut down, add ALL your remaining drives, power up, ASSIGN the new drives to your array, check the check-box and press Restore. They should all be displayed as "unformatted" and you prompted to check a box to continue with start-up and their clearing and formatting. Joe L.
March 30, 200818 yr I'm getting the error "You may not add new disks when there exists missing, wrong, or disabled disk(s)." when trying to add new discs into the array. Currently I have 2 drives with no parity (was using the trial version before buying the pro) and both are showing as green in the "Main" page. I've added 4 disks into the system now and all are detected and listed in the Devices page. However as soon as I try adding one I get the above error. This is a software bug - well kinda. Normally, when you have an array with parity and N data disks, and one of the disks is disabled, then s/w does not let you add new disk(s) to the array until you have first replaced the existing bad disk. The 'bug' is that it should go ahead an let you add new disks when it's Parity that's not valid (instead of a data disk). The workaround, as described in this thread, is to 'Restore' a fresh array config by clicking the Restore button. This will not cause any data loss. We'll try to get this fixed in the next beta.
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