This is getting really frustrating. My unraid server keeps locking up at random times and won't respond without a reboot. I enabled syslog server and nothing is raising red flags to me, but I would appreciate whatever guidance you all might be able to provide. From what I can gather from the syslog, the server went down early this morning (7/28/2025) at 3:52am.

Things I've tried:

Memtest - passed

IPVlan switched to macvlan

syslog-192.168.0.10.log tower-diagnostics-20250728-0853.zip

Edited July 28, 2025Jul 28 by ttttubby

9 minutes ago, ttttubby said:

IPVlan switched to macvlan

This is no longer an issue since 6.12.11

Unfortunately, there's nothing relevant logged, this can also be a hardware issue, one thing you can try is to boot the server in safe mode with all docker containers/VMs disabled, let it run as a basic NAS for a few days, if it still crashes it's likely a hardware problem, if it doesn't start turning on the other services one by one, including the individual docker containers.

Also, memtest is only definitive if it finds errors, since you have multiple RAM sticks, try using the server with just one, if the same try with the other one, that will basically rule out bad RAM.

Unfortunately this happens pretty randomly. It will be fine for weeks and then one day be randomly unresponsive. Also, is there a trick to make memtest run multiple passes until it fails? When I tried using the memtest that comes with unraid, I couldn't figure out how to make it run continuously to stress test.

I also swapped out my USB flash drive a few months ago with a USB microSD card reader. That seemed to solve my problem... until it didn't.

Had 12gb of DDR3 ram in the form of three mismatched sticks (two from a 2x4gb set and one stick from a different set). Amazon had a 16gb set (2x8gb) for less than $20 so I pulled the trigger and replaced them all. Hope that will sort out my issue. Fingers crossed.

Well, I just had my first crash (unraid became unresponsive) since installing the new ram so I don't think that was the problem. Syslog again doesn't say much. Looks like things locked up while the mover was doing its thing. I've attached the syslog and the diagnostics again.

I'm trying to figure out what might be the failure point without shutting down all of my dockers etc as they are all doing mission critical work.

Most recent upgrades/hardware changes:

Cache Drive: swapped an old mechanical 500GB model to an ADATA 512gb SSD

Oct 2024 - HDD upgrade: my most recent hard drive upgrade involved adding two 12tb refurbished HUH721212ALE601 hard drives - both of which passed preclear and show no errors

Nov 2024 - HDD Interface: swapped out two PCI-E 2x SATA expansion cards for one LSI SAS2008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 controller (which my cache drive is currently plugged into - but my 12tb drives are not)

Dec 2024 - Flash Drive: swapped from a failing USB stick to a sandisk microUSB adapter with a sandisk microUSB for easier swapping in case of future failure

I swapped in the SAS controller and the new hard drives at the same time. The flash drive swap came shortly after system reboots (because unraid was becoming unresponsive like it does now) started stalling on boot (some daemon wasn't starting - biz something). At the time I thought replacing the flash drive solved all of my problems and it did fix the daemon stalling but now that I think about it, the reason for the reboots was never quite clear - and it seems to be the same problem that I am currently running into.

I can't remember if I was running into these stability problems with UNRAID before swapping out all of these parts in and around November 2024. The reason for all of the hardware changes was because I needed more space on the server, but I think the server was stable before that. I'm starting to think that the LSI SAS controller might be causing the issue, or at least that is what I'm hoping given that replacing the hard drives would be prohibitively expensive at the moment.

Since the latest system freeze happened while the mover is running, I wonder whether moving my cache drive off of the SAS controller and onto one of the onboard sata ports might fix the problem.

I would appreciate any input anyone might be willing to provide.

syslog-192.168.0.10 (1).log tower-diagnostics-20250807-1015.zip

This appears to be an unassigned device?

Aug 7 10:09:37 Tower kernel: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 2 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 3 prio class 2

Aug 7 10:09:37 Tower kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 UNKNOWN(0x2003) Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=DRIVER_OK cmd_age=0s

Aug 7 10:09:37 Tower kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 Sense Key : 0x5 [current]

Aug 7 10:09:37 Tower kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 ASC=0x21 ASCQ=0x4

Aug 7 10:09:37 Tower kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 CDB: opcode=0x28 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00

Aug 7 10:09:37 Tower kernel: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 2

This should not make the server crash, but if anything else it's spamming the log, so it should be resolved.

I also noticed in my BIOS that my onboard SATA controllers are running in IDE mode rather than AHCI. Two questions:

1. is there any chance this might be causing my issues?

2. will changing from IDE mode to AHCI cause any issues with my current setup? Or would I need to reformat the drives etc?

1 minute ago, JorgeB said:

This appears to be an unassigned device?

Aug 7 10:09:37 Tower kernel: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 2 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 3 prio class 2

Aug 7 10:09:37 Tower kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 UNKNOWN(0x2003) Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=DRIVER_OK cmd_age=0s

Aug 7 10:09:37 Tower kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 Sense Key : 0x5 [current]

Aug 7 10:09:37 Tower kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 ASC=0x21 ASCQ=0x4

Aug 7 10:09:37 Tower kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 CDB: opcode=0x28 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00

Aug 7 10:09:37 Tower kernel: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 2

This should not make the server crash, but if anything else it's spamming the log, so it should be resolved.

Yeah, I have a couple of unassigned devices - my old 500gb cache drive and one of my old 2tb drives - which was replaced with a 12tb drive. I will pull both of those when my parity check has finished (so tomorrow).

38 minutes ago, ttttubby said:

is there any chance this might be causing my issues?

It should not make the server crash, but it's not good for performance.

39 minutes ago, ttttubby said:

will changing from IDE mode to AHCI cause any issues with my current setup?

You can and should change; it should not cause any issues.

Took out the extra drives, moved my cache to the onboard controller and switched my SATA settings to AHCI. Hopefully this puts an end to my issues. Will check back if I continue to run into problems.

Well I've been stable for three weeks knock on wood but I think the mistake was putting my cache on the LSI SAS card. Probably something to do with sleep states.

I'm starting to think that there is something wrong with this LSI SAS card. Had a hard drive start to show bad sectors and used unbalance to move things off of it. I suspect that either the problem drive or the target drive was attached to the LSI card and caused things to freeze up again.

Quick troubleshooting with Gemini and I think I've discovered the culprit. My target drive was hooked up to the LSI card which was causing the issue... what is wrong with my LSI card you ask? I don't have active cooling installed! Ordered a 60mm fan to ziptie to it and I expect all of my stability problems will disappear