Hello again,

 

Well its been an adventure so far having managed to get the system up and running yesterday I had a quick play around created  a few shares loaded some data, created the parity etc then set up everything from scratch again today ( reformatted USB and started again) and then the fun started!.

 

The shares do not seem to be working properly, well as I would expect them to is more precise.

 

I created 3 shares, movies, music and pictures, all to span both disks ( 3 disk test array) and use most free with a split level of 2. This as I understand will put each second level folder on the same disk.( save spinning up all disks just watching one film) exported them as read write and all was well.

 

Then I copied some additional music to the music share by mistake ( finger trouble) and decided to access the share and delete the folders, ( now that was a mistake), it started out fine then basiallly said that I could not delete the folder XXXX as it was already open or the disk was full ( usual meaningless Windows message). so I OK out of that and then had a sit and think. OK  the parity must be updated for each change to the disk so that maybe it was simply running out of resources and throwing a bit of a wobbly trying to delete a lot of small mp3 files.

 

no problem I will go into the disk directly and delete them from disk1 and disk 2 separately( in smaller chunks) and then we should be OK, now that's all hunky dory and we are good to go.

 

went back to copy the correct music via the share, and it hung my XP PC, when trying to find the share!!, so quick reboot( PC) and a bit more reading and decided to stop restart the array. this looked fine but it came back up minus the parity disk!!!  and all the shares were showing that they were allocated to no disks, and to use high water as an allocation method, time for some more reading!!

 

looked at the 4.3 beta info and it seems that the code behind the shares has been rewritten and sounds to be a bit smarter, so I upgrade to the latest 4.3b3, ( added the files to the flash and rebooted) and it all worked a treat. everyting was just as I could have hoped, shares were back and the disk allocation info was correct.so I mapped then to  drive letters  copied some more media onto it moved some files around etc and it worked a treat. Then being an old fashioned IT person, I wanted to check that everything was indeed OK so stopped the array, and shutdown.

 

The system now running 4.3.b3 simply hung!!! when trying to boot up again it loads the Linux kernel but not the unraid bit at the end fuse etc. ( didn't write down the message!! silly me). so back to 4.2.4 and it boots and comes back up but the share info is wrong again. however the drives mapped to the shares are working OK so it seems that the share info is maybe showing incorrectly and they are in fact working!!

 

OK so on the flash in the config/shares folder there are entries for each share, are these the settings and would deleting them enable me to re create the shares manually again?? ( not a major issue but good background info for me) if not then how can I reset the shares and start them again.

 

Also the hanging problem with 4.3.b3, any thoughts on that one?? I would like to upgrade to that version as it seems to do the shares thing much better than 4.2.4.

 

I am building this small array as a test prior to buying the pro license and thus would like to ensue that things are working as they should before I trust all my data to it.

 

I am rebuilding the parity at the present time, and thus have the time to write this diatribe.

 

All help/thoughts greatly received.

 

Sorry its a bit long winded!!

 

Cheers

 

Chris

 

 

Ok after a bit more reading and thinking, I tracked the problem down ( I hope) and fixed it ( again I hope)

 

I had a look at the shares info in the config folder and they were not being updated when any changes were entered via the console, so based on the fact that most folks are not having these issues then the shares must work as documented.

 

This means that there is either an issue with the USB key or Unraid has an issue with the USB controller on my MB.

 

So a quick change in the bios to only allow support for usb 1.1 a reboot and things are now working as they should.

 

changed some settings in shares and they were being updated on the flash, so that problem was solved.

 

Whilst I was on a roll I also re upgraded to 4.3b3 and a couple of reboots, power downs etc to ensure that the previous hangs were gone and hey its cured that as well.

 

So I can happily say that thinsg are looking up, parity is still there and Beta3 is running happily.

 

Watch this space

 

ChrisP