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Can't create folders in my backups share

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Hi

I woke up this morning to an error with my appdata backup plugin saying that it couldn't create a destination folder. I tried creating files and folders manually in the backups share using terminal but received an 'invalid argument' error. The same applies to a couple of my other shares but no all of them

I've tried scrubbing my cache and running some short SMART self tests on my drives but haven't noticed any issues

Any advice on how to troubleshoot this would be appreciated, the diagnostics are attached below

unraid-diagnostics-20251005-0930.zip

Edited by rama3124

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  • LT believes they have found the problem, and it will be resolved for 7.2.1

  • Actually think I found the problem. I also run duplicacy, which backs up my backup share on Sundays at 2am but we just switched over to daylight savings time a few weeks ago in Australia. My suspicion

  • I continue to have this pop up on one of my servers. Have disabled all backup plugins/services and switched from SABnzbd to NZBget (on a hunch that didn't turn out to be true. Still think it may be

  • Community Expert

Oct 5 09:16:56 Unraid shfs: /usr/sbin/zfs create 'cache/backups' 2>&1

Oct 5 09:16:56 Unraid shfs: cannot create 'cache/backups': dataset already exists

Looks like you're trying to create a share that already exists; post the output from zfs list

  • Author

Stopping and starting my array sorted the issue. It was really strange though, I couldn't create files or folders in 3 of my shares. All attempts to create files using touch or folders using mkdir prompted an invalid argument error. Could this mean corruption in my drives?

  • Community Expert

Not sure, but note that shares are created as datasets on zfs storages, not regular dirs.

  • Author

It's happening again :(

Can't create files or folders in several of my shares (same ones as last time)

If it try 'touch test' or 'mkdir test', it says invalid argument.

Stopping and starting the array seems to temporarily fix the problem, any tips on how to troubleshoot this?

  • Community Expert

Post new diags and the problem share name once it gets in this state again.

  • Author

I guess new diagnostics now wouldn't help since the problem is temporarily resolved but the old one i posted above was done while the problem was happening. The shares were rama and backup, and I couldn't create any files/folders in either but could create them normally in the other shares

The other strange thing is that both times it happened on Sunday morning. If it happens again next Sunday morning, it would seem it's somehow related to a process that occurs weekly

  • Author

It definitely seems related to the error you mentioned above since I got the same error this morning when I tried to create files and folders in the two shares:

Oct 12 06:50:47 Unraid shfs: /usr/sbin/zfs create 'cache/rama' 2>&1
Oct 12 06:50:47 Unraid shfs: cannot create 'cache/rama': dataset already exists
Oct 12 06:50:57 Unraid shfs: /usr/sbin/zfs create 'cache/backups' 2>&1
Oct 12 06:50:57 Unraid shfs: cannot create 'cache/backups': dataset already exists
  • Author

This is my output for zfs list

cache            56.4G   806G   181K  /mnt/cache
cache/appdata    8.91G   806G  8.91G  /mnt/cache/appdata
cache/user2      128K   806G   128K  /mnt/cache/user2
cache/backups    6.51G   806G  6.51G  /mnt/cache/backups
cache/data        826K   806G   826K  /mnt/cache/data
cache/domains    20.7G   806G  20.7G  /mnt/cache/domains
cache/isos        128K   806G   128K  /mnt/cache/isos
cache/nextcloud   128K   806G   128K  /mnt/cache/nextcloud
cache/rama        128K   806G   128K  /mnt/cache/rama
cache/system     20.1G   806G  20.1G  /mnt/cache/system
  • Community Expert
11 hours ago, rama3124 said:

It definitely seems related to the error you mentioned above since I got the same error this morning when I tried to create files and folders in the two shares:

It does, for some reason it's trying to create new datasets when they already exist, please post new diags when it happens again so that I can compare them to the previous ones and look for something in common, because nothing jumped out at me before.

  • Author
On 10/6/2025 at 8:47 PM, JorgeB said:

Not sure, but note that shares are created as datasets on zfs storages, not regular dirs.

Only my cache drive is zfs but my main array is xfs, the shares affected should be moving to the main array as secondary storage

No prbs, I hadn't upgraded my zfs pools after upgrading from unraid 6.x to 7.x but now I've done that too, hoping that will somehow help but will post diagnostics next week if it happens again

  • Community Expert
12 hours ago, rama3124 said:

Only my cache drive is zfs but my main array is xfs, the shares affected should be moving to the main array as secondary storage

They will still be created as a dataset, since the primary is zfs, but when moving to the array, they will be created there as regular folders.

I've got the same error with two of my shares.

I've deleted the named folders "media" and "backups" on my cache drive ( both were empty ). I have to deleted it twice (??) and created a Test-Folder for every share via samba to test mover.
No error accured!

  • Community Expert
14 minutes ago, HiveLeader said:

No error accured!

So what is the issue?

I was having this same problem with a few of my shares that use a cache (only ZFS volume on my server). I was getting the same errors shortly after rebooting multiple times. Found this post from a beta support thread and used the

zfs mount -a

command from the console. I haven't seen the issue again. I'm not sure the underlying cause but I hope this helps!

19 hours ago, ccruzen said:

I was having this same problem with a few of my shares that use a cache (only ZFS volume on my server). I was getting the same errors shortly after rebooting multiple times. Found this post from a beta support thread and used the

zfs mount -a

command from the console. I haven't seen the issue again. I'm not sure the underlying cause but I hope this helps!

I ran into this today and also had to do this. What is causing this? I couldn't create directories (mkdir) in several shares which all use a zfs cache pool. What alerted me to this problem is that suddenly all my nzbget downloads failed because it couldn't create subdirs.

  • Community Expert

Please post the diags when this happens to see if there' something in common or visible, all my pools are zfs and I've never seen that issue.

  • Community Expert
Oct 16 05:00:04 CruzunRAID move: move: /mnt/cache/downloads/nzb/nzb/The***X.nzb.gz Success
Oct 16 05:00:04 CruzunRAID shfs: /usr/sbin/zfs destroy 'cache/downloads' 2>&1
Oct 16 05:00:04 CruzunRAID shfs: cannot destroy 'cache/downloads': dataset is busy

Oct 16 05:11:49 CruzunRAID move: move: /mnt/cache/videos/tv/The Diplomat/Season 03/The***.mkv Success
Oct 16 05:11:49 CruzunRAID shfs: /usr/sbin/zfs destroy 'cache/videos' 2>&1
Oct 16 05:11:49 CruzunRAID shfs: cannot destroy 'cache/videos': dataset is busy

The problem appears to be caused by the datasets being in use after the mover runs, and then it tries to create them again:

Oct 16 05:20:28 CruzunRAID shfs: /usr/sbin/zfs create 'cache/videos' 2>&1
Oct 16 05:20:28 CruzunRAID shfs: cannot create 'cache/videos': dataset already exists
Oct 16 05:28:05 CruzunRAID shfs: /usr/sbin/zfs create 'cache/downloads' 2>&1
Oct 16 05:28:05 CruzunRAID shfs: cannot create 'cache/downloads': dataset already exists

You should try and find what is using the datasets after the mover finishes running, preventing them from being destroyed.

A possible scenario: are you still downloading/writing to that share while the mover is running?

Thanks for looking into this @JorgeB . Any idea on a best way to try and monitor/find out what's happening? My guess would be either SABnzbd or the *arr stack I'm running based on the folders/datasets I'm having issues with.

  • Community Expert

You can try running the mover manually when there's some data in one of those shares, but make sure nothing new is being added. You can stop the Docker service, for example, and then retest with a container writing to that share; that should confirm if that is causing the issue.

I'm sure that is the issue thinking back to when I've noticed it happening now - is there some tweaking that needs to be done with the mover to account for this when running or some scripting that could be added to run after the mover finishes?

  • Community Expert

I'm not sure, but I'll do some investigating.

  • Community Expert

Not having luck reproducing the issue, tried running the mover while unzipping or copying some files to the same share.

Please try to find out in which exact circumstances this happens to see if I can then reproduce.

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