No automatic spin up over nfs (5.0rc3 and 5.0rc4)


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My situation is as follows:

I have a storage server with unraid 5.0rc4 (on a full slackware distro) which runs 24x7. Disk spin down is 1 hour.

I have a htpc (ubuntu with xbmc) which mounts a couple of user shares over nfs.

However, when the disks are spun down, and the htpc boots it doesn't spin up the disks in the unraid array.

Then when I want to start a show (tv series) on xbmc I get the message/question that the file doesn't exist anymore, and if i want to remove it from my library.

No matter how many times I try to start it (waiting 10-30 secs between attempts) it keeps giving the error.

The problem goes a way when i either click the 'Spin up' button in the unraid menu or manually browse in the console (on the htpc) to the folder AND do a `ls` in there.

 

I partially fixed the problem by adding a post-network-up script on the htpc that "clicks" the 'Spin up' button in the unraid menu (using curl). However when the htpc is on for a longer period without any activity the disks spin down again and the original problem start over again.

 

Does anyone have this same problem? Or a better solution for this?

 

ps. Disabling the spin down is not really an option (energy consumption / disk lifetime) as you may know ;)

 

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My situation is as follows:

I have a storage server with unraid 5.0rc4 (on a full slackware distro) which runs 24x7. Disk spin down is 1 hour.

I have a htpc (ubuntu with xbmc) which mounts a couple of user shares over nfs.

However, when the disks are spun down, and the htpc boots it doesn't spin up the disks in the unraid array.

Then when I want to start a show (tv series) on xbmc I get the message/question that the file doesn't exist anymore, and if i want to remove it from my library.

No matter how many times I try to start it (waiting 10-30 secs between attempts) it keeps giving the error.

The problem goes a way when i either click the 'Spin up' button in the unraid menu or manually browse in the console (on the htpc) to the folder AND do a `ls` in there.

 

I partially fixed the problem by adding a post-network-up script on the htpc that "clicks" the 'Spin up' button in the unraid menu (using curl). However when the htpc is on for a longer period without any activity the disks spin down again and the original problem start over again.

 

Does anyone have this same problem? Or a better solution for this?

 

ps. Disabling the spin down is not really an option (energy consumption / disk lifetime) as you may know ;)

most use the cache_dirs script I wrote, sometimes in combination with a spinup_when_active script that spins up the drives on the unRAID server when it detects the htpc is online (by pinging it)

 

Joe L.

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  • 1 year later...

Found this thread as I have the same issue.

 

I've been using SMB for years, but with my new build and some testing I've found NFS to be faster on my network as all my machines are unix based. However, once unRAID puts a share to sleep, my server's are unable to access those shares over NFS.

 

On one of my Ubuntu Server 12.04 machines, I mount my movie NFS share as a local drive. I then have Plex scan that drive when a new movie is added so that Plex can be up to date. Plex was able to scan that directory right after I mounted it, but after the movies share spun down, Plex was able to find any of the new movies I added. I tried navigating the the mount point via SSH, but the share couldn't be accessed.

 

I've used SMB for years now and switched back to mounting via CIFS and everything is working well again. unRAID spins up the needed disks when a CIFS mount is accessed. The downside here is performance. SMB doesn't perform as well as NFS on my network. But, right now it's the only thing that works 100% of the time.

 

I was hoping there was a setting of some sort I can set in my fstab file on my remote servers that would inform unRAID when one of those mounts is being accessed and that unRAID needs to spin up those drives. But looking over the man pages for NFS, I don't see a setting that would do that. It appears that this may be a limitation of NFS? CIFS is likely making a network request for the data on those shares when they're accessed (which causes the drives to spin up), but NFS is probably only checking the locally mounted volume (which means unRAID isn't being contacted, and therefore not spinning up the disks).

 

Joe's spinup_when_active script would probably work but it isn't ideal. I have a number of media players and servers that access these shares, and since the server's would be online 24/7, the drives would never spin down anyway with that script.

 

Is there any other work around for using NFS with unRAID disks being spun down?

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  • 4 months later...

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