Unraid 5: red ball before user shares

[Helmonder]

What is the significance of a red ball before a user share ?  All my disks have green balls, the red suggests something is wrong but I cannot find a reference to what it might be ..

[Joe L.]

usually, it is orange, and indicates there is data on the cache drive destined for that share.

[chuck23322]

usually, it is orange, and indicates there is data on the cache drive destined for that share.

 

WOAH!  Potential serious bug.  Or at least some WARNING is needed!!!!

 

I decided to add a cache drive to my system to "play" with one before I bought a Caviar Black that's on sale....  {$75 from NewEgg through 7/4 with coupon code... 500mb - 2.5" size, but great speed ratings from various websites}

 

Turns out, the cache drive I added was an old 500gb drive I had laying around.  Removed a long time ago from an Unraid build...  (I'm all 1tb, 2tb, and 3tb drives now)

 

It still had a ReiserFS file system on it, and bunch of old files on it...  And old directories that exactly matched what was in my working unraid system.

 

Did a windows "dir \\unraid\cache" to confirm... 

 

I had just done a simple "add" as a Cache drive...

 

Noticed that most of my shares were now "red-balled" -- with two of them "green"....

 

Couldn't figure out why.  Searched for why.

 

Came up with this thread... I've posted in.

 

*IF* the reason is what I think it is -- "indicates there is data on the cache drive destined for that share" --- then had I just let things run until the mover script kicked in -- I'd have COPIED all this "old" data from the Cache drive, overwriting the same named files on my UnRaid server.

 

*POTENTIALLY* destroying "newer" files on my Unraid box with the year-old-or-older files on my "Cache" drive...

 

Not Cool.  The only "Green-ball" shares were shares in my Unraid build that didn't exist on the Cache drive.

 

I've got the heebie jeebies....  this scared the heck out of me -- if I'm right on what would have happened....

 

Now, I caught it within about 30 minutes --- and I've 'removed' the "cache" drive from the list of assigned drives.

 

So I have three questions:

 

1) Am I wrong on the "cause" of the red-ball?

 

2) Am I wrong on what would have happened had the mover script run?

 

3) How can I re-use a drive with a ReiserFS on it as a Cache Drive?  {I guess I can pre-clear it,  but for testing, there ought to be a easier way -- I'm starting a pre-clear for "fun" }

 

...Chuck

 

{ Running version: 5.0-rc5-r8168 }

[Joe L.]

You are correct with everything, except the indicators were probably "orange" and not "red"

 

An orange indicator says that there is data on the cache drive that has not been moved to the equivalent user-share on the protected array.

 

You are right, it is a subtle way to overwrite accidentally new files with old versions.  If you had let the "mover" run, it would have done just that.

 

Since you are not the first to have this issue of the too alike indicators...

I think the first "bug" is having an indicator that looks too similar to a drive-disabled indicator. (should be probably be green, with perhaps a different shape, perhaps a green ball with a plus sign after it.  Something not easily confused with "red",especially for those people with red/green color blindness.)

 

I think the second bug (the risk of accidentally overwriting newer files)  is that there is no option to erase (re-format) the cache drive when initially installing it.

 

Joe L.

[limetech]

A cache-only share will also have an orange indicator.  I think SimpleFeatures uses rollovers to give a textual description of the indicators as well.

 

Yes this is a use case I never envisioned or encountered before (yikes).  I'll have to think about how to deal with this.  A similar thing could happen if you just added the drive to the array and rebuilt parity - depending on which drive slot it could have resulted in 'duplicates' in the user share file system, giving access to the version on this "new" disk, which would have been the "old" files - of course the previous files would still be there though.

[chuck23322]

A cache-only share will also have an orange indicator.  I think SimpleFeatures uses rollovers to give a textual description of the indicators as well.

 

Heh heh...  I didn't wait long enough to check the colors   At my age, orange and red look pretty close

 

{For the record -- I think like Green check-mark Balls, Red Exclamation points balls, and Orange question mark balls - makes more sense) -- eg, both colors and symbols...)

 

I figure somebody 'braver' than I, and with a stand-by play system, can reproduce it... And they can check the colors

 

But I think this is a REAL situation that ought to be addressed.

 

Probably not a 5.0 specific issue -- but a real issue.  IMHO.

 

Thanks for hearing me out.  Preclear in-progress (which will of course, wipe the cache drive)  - and I will be fine....  Mover never ran for me.

 

But others, well... it ought to be at least "checked" when a Cache drive is added, and some explanation given to the user.

 

I mean, a Cache drive ought (in 99% normal situation) not have "files" ready to copy on top of an existing Unraid system.

[tyrindor]

A cache-only share will also have an orange indicator.  I think SimpleFeatures uses rollovers to give a textual description of the indicators as well.

 

Heh heh...  I didn't wait long enough to check the colors   At my age, orange and red look pretty close

 

{For the record -- I think like Green check-mark Balls, Red Exclamation points balls, and Orange question mark balls - makes more sense) -- eg, both colors and symbols...)

 

I figure somebody 'braver' than I, and with a stand-by play system, can reproduce it... And they can check the colors

 

But I think this is a REAL situation that ought to be addressed.

 

Probably not a 5.0 specific issue -- but a real issue.  IMHO.

 

Thanks for hearing me out.  Preclear in-progress (which will of course, wipe the cache drive)  - and I will be fine....  Mover never ran for me.

 

But others, well... it ought to be at least "checked" when a Cache drive is added, and some explanation given to the user.

 

I mean, a Cache drive ought (in 99% normal situation) not have "files" ready to copy on top of an existing Unraid system.

 

With all the critical bugs that need fixed (MVSAS issues, NFS, etc), why is this a real issue? It's a dot next to a share. It does no harm and some people use this to see if a share has files on the cache drive. As for the cache drive moving files over, it does this on your set scheduled time. A cache drive is going to move files over to the array if they are on it, that's the whole purpose of it. You wouldn't throw on a data disc on it without preclearing it right? So why any different with a cache drive you plan on adding? You saw/knew there were existing files on it, so of course it's going to move those over during the next scheduled mover run. You have plenty of time to delete the data before it moves the files, and you can always wipe the disk before adding it.

 

I don't see the problem.

[Joe L.]

Long ago, we discussed better icons for disk indicators:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3354.msg29782#msg29782

 

It can be done more easily these days then in the past with an installable package to copy into place the better graphics in place of the existing ones.

(Just need a talented person to create the animated .gif files)

 

Joe L.

[BRiT]

Not having read the other discussion threads, but seeing the mistaking of Orange for Red happen all too often ... Why not use Yellow as the caution color since it shouldn't be mistaken for Green or Red? That is if you're strictly sticking to color only for indicators.

[chuck23322]

A cache-only share will also have an orange indicator.  I think SimpleFeatures uses rollovers to give a textual description of the indicators as well.

 

Heh heh...  I didn't wait long enough to check the colors   At my age, orange and red look pretty close

 

{For the record -- I think like Green check-mark Balls, Red Exclamation points balls, and Orange question mark balls - makes more sense) -- eg, both colors and symbols...)

 

I figure somebody 'braver' than I, and with a stand-by play system, can reproduce it... And they can check the colors

 

But I think this is a REAL situation that ought to be addressed.

 

Probably not a 5.0 specific issue -- but a real issue.  IMHO.

 

Thanks for hearing me out.  Preclear in-progress (which will of course, wipe the cache drive)  - and I will be fine....  Mover never ran for me.

 

But others, well... it ought to be at least "checked" when a Cache drive is added, and some explanation given to the user.

 

I mean, a Cache drive ought (in 99% normal situation) not have "files" ready to copy on top of an existing Unraid system.

 

With all the critical bugs that need fixed (MVSAS issues, NFS, etc), why is this a real issue? It's a dot next to a share. It does no harm and some people use this to see if a share has files on the cache drive. As for the cache drive moving files over, it does this on your set scheduled time. A cache drive is going to move files over to the array if they are on it, that's the whole purpose of it. You wouldn't throw on a data disc on it without preclearing it right? So why any different with a cache drive you plan on adding? You saw/knew there were existing files on it, so of course it's going to move those over during the next scheduled mover run. You have plenty of time to delete the data before it moves the files, and you can always wipe the disk before adding it.

 

I don't see the problem.

 

First, my issue was not the colors.  Somebody else brought that up.  And apparently it is a problem. 

 

Second, I hear the terseness in your tone, and I understand your perspective. 

 

My point was -- I darned near had my unraid box destroy data, with no warning, no "are you sure?", type "Yes", etc... etc....  And if I can do it, and I'm reasonably smart, others can too.  It's like why the "restore" button got removed -- too many people destroyed data.    That made it sufficiently important to share, and address.

 

I leave it to the Unraid folks to decide it's criticality.  The 'colors' of dots, are a side-issue.

[BRiT]

Completely agree. The color is a lower issue since it has no impact other than a flood of users wondering wtf is up with their drive being marked as bad.

 

The real issue is in how unRAID handles the addition and creation of the cache drive. There are many pros and cons to having unRAID force a new filesystem on the cache-drive when assigning it to the array. The biggest con would be losing all the data on the drive when someone is reassigning or rebuilding their array configuration.

 

I think a decent approach to real issue be to have a pre-assignment cache-drive check. It would examine the directory structure on the cache drive and on the array drives. If there are any overlap of files (similar to existing duplicate file check in shfs?) or directories (would duplicate directories be a warning event?) it would prompt the user with a warning message indicating that the following files/directories will be updated when the cache-drive is assigned and the mover is kicked off.

 

[bbqninja]

A cache-only share will also have an orange indicator.  I think SimpleFeatures uses rollovers to give a textual description of the indicators as well.

 

Heh heh...  I didn't wait long enough to check the colors   At my age, orange and red look pretty close

 

{For the record -- I think like Green check-mark Balls, Red Exclamation points balls, and Orange question mark balls - makes more sense) -- eg, both colors and symbols...)

 

I figure somebody 'braver' than I, and with a stand-by play system, can reproduce it... And they can check the colors

 

But I think this is a REAL situation that ought to be addressed.

 

Probably not a 5.0 specific issue -- but a real issue.  IMHO.

 

Thanks for hearing me out.  Preclear in-progress (which will of course, wipe the cache drive)  - and I will be fine....  Mover never ran for me.

 

But others, well... it ought to be at least "checked" when a Cache drive is added, and some explanation given to the user.

 

I mean, a Cache drive ought (in 99% normal situation) not have "files" ready to copy on top of an existing Unraid system.

 

With all the critical bugs that need fixed (MVSAS issues, NFS, etc), why is this a real issue? It's a dot next to a share. It does no harm and some people use this to see if a share has files on the cache drive. As for the cache drive moving files over, it does this on your set scheduled time. A cache drive is going to move files over to the array if they are on it, that's the whole purpose of it. You wouldn't throw on a data disc on it without preclearing it right? So why any different with a cache drive you plan on adding? You saw/knew there were existing files on it, so of course it's going to move those over during the next scheduled mover run. You have plenty of time to delete the data before it moves the files, and you can always wipe the disk before adding it.

 

I don't see the problem.

 

Sweet, so there's an included GUI preclear in 5.0, and it prompts you to do so when you pop in a drive it doesn't recognise?

 

This has the potential to critically destroy data without warning, and the reason people use unraid instead of ubuntu/slack/debian setting up the disks by hand is that it's an appliance, and therefore should not do "bad things" requiring manual intervention.