For the most part the cache works fine for me. I'm not having a major problem with it filling up and not emptying, not being used at all, etc.

 

But every now and then a few files seems to get stuck in the cache and the mover won't move them out. I click the Move button and nothing happens. Today that happened to me with five MKV files totaling around 113 GB stuck in the cache. These files were not open or in use by any process.

 

Instead of manually moving these files out of the cache to some /mnt/diskXX disk, I tried something new. Since copies of the files were readily available elsewhere (in my main video storage array -- this was a backup array I was trying to clean up) I simply deleted the files from the share where they resided (that is, I accessed the files via the share path, not directly by the cache drive path).

 

This emptied the cache drive, as expected, but under Main/Pool Devices, the cache drive showed up still having 113 GB in use. Refreshing my browser didn't fix that, nor waiting a few minutes and refreshing again.

I next rsynced the deleted files back into place. Displayed cache usage went up to 226 GB, as if two copies of everything were now there.

Clicking the "Move" button finally worked,. These fresh file copies were moved off the cache drive into array storage. The Shares tab no longer showed any warnings about share contents not being fully protected.

But the cache drive was now showing 113 GB in use again. I'm guessing this is just some weird bookkeeping error. Taking the array offline and starting it up again cleared that up, with the cache drive now showing only 4.3 MB of usage (essentially empty).

trantor-diagnostics-20250108-1806.zip

Not what you are asking about, but your appdata, domains, system shares have files on the array. Ideally, these shares would have all files on cache or some other pool so Dockers/VMs will perform bettter, and so array disks can spin down since these files are always open.

4 hours ago, trurl said:

Not what you are asking about, but your appdata, domains, system shares have files on the array. Ideally, these shares would have all files on cache or some other pool so Dockers/VMs will perform bettter, and so array disks can spin down since these files are always open.

What you're saying might help a performance problem that I haven't noticed and wasn't asking about. I'll worry about that another time. I have no Docker apps or VMs anyway.

Even if there are files I should keep on the cache drive, my concern is specifically about files that should NOT hang around on the cache drive longer than necessary, and about the odd and inconsistent reporting of space consumed by files that are no longer be on the cache drive anymore.

9 hours ago, RasterEyes said:

But every now and then a few files seems to get stuck in the cache and the mover won't move them out. I click the Move button and nothing happens. Today that happened to me with five MKV files totaling around 113 GB stuck in the cache.

Next time this happens, enable the mover logging, run the mover, post new diags.

14 hours ago, RasterEyes said:

These files were not open or in use by any process.

 

You 100% sure about that? Plex didn't have them open running tasks on them?

 

You verified with the "Open Files" or "File Tools" plugins these were not being accessed?

 

Mover does not move files which are open for read. Just because you weren't watching them does not mean they were not being accessed by another docker doing maintenance or something.

 

Also if you have the Mover Tuning plugin installed, remove it because it doesn't work on Unraid 7. It breaks mover entirely.

Edited January 9, 20251 yr by MowMdown

4 hours ago, MowMdown said:

 

You 100% sure about that? Plex didn't have them open running tasks on them?

I'm not using Plex, Docker, any VMs or anything else. I'm using Unraid as a simple file server, nothing more.

 

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You verified with the "Open Files" or "File Tools" plugins these were not being accessed?

I can only verify that the next time this situation arises, but it seems highly unlikely given how my Unraid array is used.

 

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Also if you have the Mover Tuning plugin installed...

Nope, not installed.