Ok, so first off I hope this is the right forum, but I'm using this version so I think so. So I moved my unraid up to my attic and I'm going to be accessing it from a DVI KVM switch. In previous posts I talked about how it takes about 5-8 minutes for my unraid to boot up. Joe and some other nice people told me there are a couple of weird looking things in my syslog, nothing major but might help with the few areas that have hangups upon booting. I did nothing about it. Mainly because i couldn't update my BIOS easily and so forth, but basically because the unraid worked just booting was slow, don't mess with it if it ain't broke.

 

So upon moving it up to my attic I added a new video card with DVI so I could use it with the new DVI KVM switch. Which means it now has keyboard and mouse hooked up as well. Upon booting for the first time it took like 10 seconds....WOW. Then I opened up my tower html page and it said 2 drives were missing...S**T. I rebooted and watched the boot screen...again it took 10 seconds to boot...awesome if the thing works. I went to my tower html page...eveyrhing is working fine.

 

So I guess my question is what changed? All I did was add a video card, mouse and keyboard. It was never hanging on my BIOS boot screen so video card, mouse and keyboard shouldn't make a difference, right?

 

Anyway I've included my old syslog and my new syslog I would appreciate if someone would compare the two briefly and see if everything is working correctly. Thanks.

 

P.S. I just shutdown to reboot to make sure everything's working well and even the Stop Parity is working much faster, usually it took a few seconds for the page to refresh, but now it's like instant. The only other thing I changed was when I moved all my computers around I redid all the networking cables to Cat6 for future inplementation and I relocated my router and switch. I did no new configurations except plugging in the cables to different spots. Weird.

Nothing jumped out in looking at your logs.

 

As far as moving and getting better performance...  I strongly suspect the LAN cabling in the old location.

 

As far as an intermittent disk(s) missing, after you moved the server, I suspect a loose interface card, or cable.

 

Was your old keyboard a USB keyboard?  Was it forcing the old USB controller into a USB 1.0 mode? Perhaps the new keyboard is USB 2.0 and much faster.

 

Joe L.

Thanks Joe. Old keyboard was PS/2 and the new one is USB but I didn't have a keyboard hooked up all the time.

I was tied up, or would have responded sooner.  There are several changes between your old and new syslogs, that indicate a considerable improvement in performance.

 

The first is that you have gained 32MB in upper memory, not that that makes it faster, but it indicates a configuration change involving the initial memory setup.  Although that could be memory caching turned off (seems unlikely), it seems to me it could indicate you had onboard video using shared memory of 32MB, which you may now have disabled, before adding the video card.  It is possible that the previous video settings *may* have been hanging up the startup.

 

The big change is that your 2.53GHz CPU is now performing at 2.53GHz, not at 1.9GHz, as it was previously.  Since it seems unlikely that you had been intentionally underclocking, I think the clockings may have been very wrong, or perhaps a chip was loose?  It now is running correctly, and ALL of the speed calibrations are much faster, BogoMIPS rising from 3819.68 to 5059.51, and xor function running at 4131.6 MB/sec instead of 3098.4 MB/sec.

 

Another big improvement is the setup of the networking.  Previously it took over a minute and a half, now less than a second.  I don't know why.  I don't know if bad cabling could have been affecting the networking chipset, but good cabling is always vital to good performance.

Thanks Rob, I really appreciate it. A chip loose you say...I don't like the sound of that. The only thing I did was move the server from downstairs to the attic and replaced the video card, hooked it up to a KVM so it now has keyboard and mouse...and whatever else I mentioned in my original post. I don't like things working just for the hell of it.

 

i guess as long as it boots and the parity is intact and my drives are functioning I'll be all right.

 

Rob, is there anything I should preventively? I've checked all cables but not chipsets.

I was speculating about a loose chip, because I really don't know what could cause such a large drop in performance, if you haven't made any changes in the CMOS.  The next time you have the machine open, I would ground myself first, then 'rock' every socketed chip and card (but not the CPU!), and pull and re-attach every single connector, especially each of the power connectors.  The fact that it is running fine now, may mean that you have already corrected the problem.

Will do, maybe I'll just leave it alone...LOL Thanks for the help.