i have small writes to all disks whenever i'm reading from them, causing the parity drive to be spun up as well continusly. is this normal?

Its not normal for my setup..  What operating system are you using to access the share? The only reason why it would write to the disk is if it was adding "date read" or "date modified" time stamps.

2 vista ultimate's, and a xp mce

It's not normal for my setup either, and I think I can say others would have noticed that too.  You need to determine what is new (most recent modification dates) on your data drives, and that should help you figure out what Windows application is doing it.

Never seen this happen.  I am using WinXP SP2.

 

The writing of last access info certainly seems plausible - but would expect to have seen others commenting if this were the case.

 

I use a program called nlite that allows you to make certain configuration changes to Windows before installing.  I turned off this tracking of last access date (it does track last update date) using nlite, as well as turning off the index service and several other default services and features that hurt performance.

 

I am not sure if nlite works with Vista or not, but I really like the tool.

Another situation could be a program or open file that is periodically being updated by a workstation.

 

Try the following script to see what programs/files are active/open on the file sytems.

 

#!/bin/sh

 

for fs in /mnt/user /mnt/disk*

do

    if [ ! -d ${fs} ] ; then continue ; fi

    echo "[$fs]"

    for pid in $(fuser -cu $fs 2>/dev/null)

    do  ps --no-headers -fp ${pid}

    done

done

 

 

Here's an example of my output.

 

 

root@Atlas:/boot/custom/bin# ./findactive.sh

[/mnt/user]

[/mnt/disk1]

[/mnt/disk2]

root      684  681  0 Jul14 pts/1    00:00:00 -bash

root      6044  684  0 Jul22 pts/1    00:00:00 screen -x 12418.pts-1.Atlas

root    12419 12418  0 Jun20 pts/0    00:00:00 /bin/bash

root    17068 12418  0 Jun25 pts/3    00:00:00 /bin/bash

root    21076 12419  0 Jun30 pts/0    03:42:09 rtorrent

root    29434 29431  0 Jul09 pts/4    00:00:00 -bash

[/mnt/disk3]

 

 

To find open files, You could install lsof from http://packages.slackware.it/package.php?q=current/lsof-4.78-i486-1

 

syntax would be

 

lsof /mnt/user or lsof /mnt/disk? where ?=number of disk to check.

 

 

 

 

If you suspect one of your window PCs, then another really easy way to get more clues, without having to add any package, is to log in as root and simply type

 

smbstatus

 

It will show the files currently being accessed by your PCs.

 

Joe L.

didnt know about that command VERY handy.

 

So handy in fact it should be in the GUI i reckon

i have small writes to all disks whenever i'm reading from them, causing the parity drive to be spun up as well continusly. is this normal?

 

Do you happen to be using iTunes with your music stored on unRAID?  Here a very old thread indicating some potential issues, but it's not very definitive.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=227.msg1532#msg1532

i have small writes to all disks whenever i'm reading from them, causing the parity drive to be spun up as well continusly. is this normal?

 

Do you happen to be using iTunes with your music stored on unRAID?  Here a very old thread indicating some potential issues, but it's not very definitive.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=227.msg1532#msg1532

 

I've got a similar setup. iTunes will only write changes if the library folder is on Unraid as well. It won't spin up parity if you've only got the music folder stored there, as iTunes only reads the music, and writes changes its database.

 

 

I am not sure if nlite works with Vista or not, but I really like the tool.

 

 

http://www.vlite.net/about.html

ok, i've never used itunes so it's not that,

 

i just did a screen shot of the server page, then opened up media center on vista, went to my video files, and opened up a few files, then took another screen shot...

 

here is teh before and after

 

 

 

i did that smbstatus in putty, and it showed a couple of folders, as for that script, i have no idea how to do that, i'm not linux savy

Have you checked directory listings yet, to see what is changed, what has the most recent dates?  From your screen shots, you are only interested in checking Disks 1, 2, and 4.

ok i think i know what you mean, i went into the mc command thing, and the file ehthumbs~ista.db, has a MTime of an hour ago.

 

edit: googled that ehthumbs_vista.db file, and from what i've come up with it's for media centre to display the previews and it does write to it everytime it gets used, nothing can be done about it

i'm guessing you found your culprit, but just a heads up on ehthumbs_vista.db

 

ehthumbs_vista.db is a file mostly found and used by vista media center for Pictures...it requires WRITE access, or vista will try to recreate that file every time, which takes a long time (a topic i created on this a while back)

After reading this and the linked thread, it doesn't look like there's an easy answer, as Tom (limetech) also said.  A file that is kept read/write really should be on a local drive.  How does it deal with pictures on a CD?

 

One suggestion:  keep these media folders on a local drive, and configure Vista media center to only look there, then configure a backup or sync process to periodically copy them to your server for wider access.  This won't work if you are running multiple VMC's.

Perhaps configure and enable the "cache" drive, then let Vista create the ehtumbs_vista.db file on it.   Then... to keep it from being moved from the cache drive, change the mover script to ignore it.

 

It should then stay on the cache drive, and let the data and parity drives spin down.

 

In /usr/local/sbin/mover

Change this line:

\( -type f  -regex '[.]/.*/.*'  ! -exec fuser -s {} \;  -exec mv -v {} /mnt/user0/{} \; \)   \

to

 

\( -type f  -regex '[.]/.*/.*'  ! -name ehthumbs_vista.db ! -exec fuser -s {} \;  -exec mv -v {} /mnt/user0/{} \; \)   \

 

Make a copy of the modified mover script, keep it on your flash drive, copy it into place in /usr/local/sbin in the "go" script.

 

Or

 

Add a line like this to your go script to edit the mover script in place

sed -i -e "s/-exec fuser/-name ehthumbs_vista.db ! -exec fuser/" /usr/local/sbin/mover

 

Joe L.

ok thanks joe, i'll give that a try, i actually did the plus to pro upgrade last night, cause i'm getting another 750 tomorrow, and i was going to make the 120 into a cache. so i can do that now.

 

i dont have pictures on vmc, it's all videos, movies, it's the thumbnail prievew of the movies, so theres no having it localy, like i could of with just still pics.

 

but the using the cache drive will have to do i spose, would rather it not spinning up either, but better an old drive wearing out then a new drive for nothing so to speak