just installed 4.3-beta6 (temperature readings are back on the Promise controllers), and hooked up a Western Digital MyBook 500GB drive to the eSATA port of the P5E-VM DO...now, i am a total Linux noob, so keep that in mind...

 

if this were to be OSX or Windows, i'd expect the drive to show up without a reboot, but not so...i might add, it's still formatted as HFS+, but i'm ready to have unRAID reformat it, if i can get unRAID to see it...i rebooted twice, but i still can't seem to get unRAID to list the drive as an option for the Cache drop-down.

 

is there anything obvious that i'm missing? do i need to go into the BIOS and enable eSATA or something?

 

just thought i'd ask, before i pull out my monitor, get into the BIOS and/or starting pulling stuff apart...maybe there is a Terminal session i need to start and do some command line work before unRAID will let me chose that drive? or do i need to delete the partition on another machine first and hook it up as a virgin drive? but i didn't have to do that for any of the other drives that i added into the server, which were also formatted as both HFS+ and some as NTFS/FAT32 drives...

just installed 4.3-beta6 (temperature readings are back on the Promise controllers), and hooked up a Western Digital MyBook 500GB drive to the eSATA port of the P5E-VM DO...now, i am a total Linux noob, so keep that in mind...

 

if this were to be OSX or Windows, i'd expect the drive to show up without a reboot, but not so...i might add, it's still formatted as HFS+, but i'm ready to have unRAID reformat it, if i can get unRAID to see it...i rebooted twice, but i still can't seem to get unRAID to list the drive as an option for the Cache drop-down.

 

is there anything obvious that i'm missing? do i need to go into the BIOS and enable eSATA or something?

 

just thought i'd ask, before i pull out my monitor, get into the BIOS and/or starting pulling stuff apart...maybe there is a Terminal session i need to start and do some command line work before unRAID will let me chose that drive? or do i need to delete the partition on another machine first and hook it up as a virgin drive? but i didn't have to do that for any of the other drives that i added into the server, which were also formatted as both HFS+ and some as NTFS/FAT32 drives...

 

I have the same MB and just added an eSATA drive for my Cache... I had to enable the JMicron Controller in the BIOS and I have it set to ACHI.  I think I disabled originally when I setup the unRAID box.  Not sure what the default setting is, and I don't recall for sure which BIOS section it's in, but it's there...

just shutdown the system to check the BIOS, although i was pretty sure that those were the settings in already had (since i'm using the parity drive on the JMicron controller internally)...and yeah, sure enough that's what i have as well (AHCI)...wiggled the eSATA cable (just purchased it), rebooted once more for good measure, but the bloody drive acts all "i'm not here".

 

i'll have to inquire further...now that i drove cross-town to pick up the eSATA cable and have the "Cache drive" on my mind, it's going to have to be resolved.

thanks for your info.

I'm sure you already tried this, but make sure the eSATA cables are pushed in all the way.  One of mine needed a little extra push to get it on securely.

 

I've had a problem with some of the eSATA cables that are too long.  They seem to work under windows, but when you try to push high speed traffic through them, wind up hanging the computer.  This was espeically evident when I used one of thiose cables/brackets that converts an internal SATA port to an eSATA port.  The internal cable length + esternal cable length is just too long.  But I also had the problem with just a plan eSATA cable running to an external eSATA drive enclosure.  I swapped the longer cable to a shorter one that came with something else and the problems went away.

 

I also noticed on Newegg complaints about a certain brand eSATA to SATA cable that was flakey.

 

Bottom line, my first guess is your eSATA cable is bad.

 

BTW, keep an eye on the drive temp in the eSATA enclosure.  They have no fans and I have had bad experieces with them getting hot.  Although it may work fine, if it gets too hot it will reduce the lifetime of the drive.  If it gets into the high 40s or hotter (degrees C) I'd start to get worried.  I have cracked open a few external drives to harvest the internal drive.

 

Good luck!

Do you see the esata drive mentioned by your BIOS when booting?

 

If so, post a copy of your syslog.  That will help for the analysis of what is happening.

 

If the drive was seen, it would be in the drop-down lists as your think it would.  I would first suspect the bios options, then the cable.

 

Joe L.

well, as for the cable and cable length, i'll have to take a look at whether it could be that...it's a 6 foot eSATA cable i purchased yesterday...i think i have both ends in there as solidly as they can be, but i will triple check...there is not extra cable-length on the inside of the machine, since it's a "true" eSATA port.

 

the drive is a Western Digital MyBook 500GB with USB and eSATA...since i've used it with USB successfully for over a year, i don't foresee heat to be a problem...the MyBook's do a decent job at that...it may even be a WD Green drive in there, as that is what's in all my 1TB MyBooks.

 

as for seeing the drive in the BIOS, i'm not sure...the BIOS reads out so quickly, and i have 15 internal drives plus this external drive, so in the split-second the BIOS scrolls its acknowledgments over the screen, i've had a hard time making out what's what...and when i go into the BIOS and go through all of the settings, i get feedback that doesn't make total sense...in one section it tells me that i have six disk slots (disk0-disk5), which i assume refers to the onboard INTEL chipset and its 6 SATA ports...it says that disk0 is not present, but i know i have 6 disks hooked up on those and working...i also have 8 disks on the two Promise PCI controllers, and the parity disk on the JMicron controller...when i go into the BIOS's settings where you can set the boot order, it curiously only shows me 12 disks to choose from, which also makes no immediate sense to me...if i remember correctly, 8 of them are WD 500GB drives (of which there are actually 9 internally and the one i hooked up via eSATA) and 4 WD 1TB drives (of which there are actually 6 internally - 5 data and 1 parity)...so the 12 drives listed don't make much sense to me any which way i think about it (and i have thought about it in terms of chipsets, etc.).

 

i am inclined to guess that it's a cable issue as well...even though it's a brand-new cable, it's also the very first eSATA cable i ever bought and used (it's been all SCSI, firewire, USB in the past)...and i know that cables can be screwy, even if new...or i really overlooked something silly with the connectors.

 

i'll give it another try when i'm back at the studio, and if need be, post the syslog.

 

well, thanks for your time, as always...it would be much less fun without all of you.

The syslog is useful for verifying exactly what the kernel sees and what it does about it.  All of the fixed disks are listed in a section entitled 'Device inventory', near the bottom of a normal syslog.  Search from the top for inven or inventory to go right to it.  The list is in a technical form, but quite readable.  To find the USB drive(s), search from the top for removable, and the USB drive setup will be just above that.  Removable drives are not listed anywhere though.

 

another stupid question, that would be downright pathetic if i wouldn't ask it at all: how do i get the syslog? i puttied into the unRAID and am at the prompt...do i get it from there by means of some command, or is it written automatically to somewhere on the USB stick? or is it best to FTP into the unRAID server and get it from there (if it's been written to the array)?

alright...i get it...it's one of those "go and use the search function" kind of silences...fair enough...i did and finally came across the answer in the wiki myself (the question being: "how do i get a copy of my syslog"):

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Viewing_the_System_Log

 

i attached the current syslog...but i might have to attach another one after i try the cable-wiggling some more, and/or get a new cable, just to eliminate that culprit.

till-

This line of your syslog:

 

Apr  6 12:12:15 unRAID kernel: ata7: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)

 

is for the eSATA port on the P5B-VM DO (with on-board SATA in ahci mode which yours is apparently set to).

 

You're right, no drive is detected.  I do know this works because we have an MD-1500 running in our lab right now with 15 drives installed an eSATA drive hooked up as a cache disk.  We're using a cheap NetStor enclosure.

 

If you watch the screen when the system boots you should see in this order:

1. The on-board hard drives being detected,

2. The Promise hard drives being detected,

3. The JMicron hard drives being detected.

 

This all runs by fairly quickly, but you should certainly be able to see each set of hard drive detection take place.

cool...thanks for reading through my syslog and taking the time to clarify this...i'll do another reboot while firmly pressing the cable into the back of the drive enclosure, while trying to look out for those BIOS post lines...i am pretty sure that the MyBook enclosure only does that blue circle thing on the front when firm pressure is applied, which makes me think the contact there is at fault.

 

and just so i understand this correctly: under Linux/unRAID, a drive has to be connected and recognized at the BIOS first before it can be seen by the OS? or is this behavior just the a result of this particular implementation of Slackware (no automount, or whatever)? the reason i'm asking is to make sure i'm not rebooting over and over, when i could be accomplishing the same with something simpler/quicker...the "stop array"..."reboot" routine can get old, especially when kneeling in the server room.

 

but i'm sure i'm close to getting it to work...at worst, i'm another cable and enclosure away from success.

Sorry, missed your question about getting the syslog, and too tired to respond last night.  Probably good, because Tom got to see your syslog, and there is a tiny issue at the bottom I was hoping he would see.

 

One small nit, not very important, but it looks like drive sdl (Seagate 500GB - ST3500630AS_9QG0BL38) probably has a jumper on it, limiting it to SATA 1.5Gbps, instead of 3.0Gbps like the others.