April 24, 201313 yr So this probably sounds completely crazy but everyday my parity drive and the newest drive in my array, drive 8, issue a spindown command at 11:11 and 14:39. I have no idea why. I have verified that no files are being written to the server by anyone in the house at those times. I have no idea why this is occurring. If anyone has any ideas please let me know. I should also add that when this happens the drives will not spin down again until I spin them down myself. I am using 5.0rc11 on my server with simple features, apcupsd, mysql, and mount drives. The spindown commands at 14:39 have been occurring for a longer time than the 11:11 commands. I am not sure if that is at all helpful but I did notice that when looking through the log myself. syslog.txt
April 24, 201313 yr Yes, it sounds a bit crazy A couple of questions that MAY provide some clue ... (a) Are spinup groups enabled on your server? ... and if so, are these two drives in the same group? (b) Is this a native server, or is virtualized? © Is spindown enabled? ... and if so, what is the spindown delay?
April 24, 201313 yr Author Spin down groups are not enabled on the server. The server is native, not virtualized, and the spin down delay is set at the default 1 hour.
April 24, 201313 yr Wow! This really is strange. I thought perhaps you had another VM in a virtualized environment that may be causing some activity that spun up drives on a controller ... and you were just seeing them spin down an hour after that activity. But clearly that's not the case. It would seem this has to be something associated with one of your plugins, but I don't use any of the plugins you've installed except APC UPS (which I'm sure is not the issue), so you'll need to wait until experts on the specific plugins you use read this and see if they can think of anything. You may want to list your config info for simple features, as that may have some impact. One final thought, r.e. "... using 5.0rc11 on my server with simple features, apcupsd, mysql, and mount drives." ==> Probably not likely to change the behavior, but just to be sure, it wouldn't hurt to upgrade to 5.0RC12a and confirm you still have the issue.
April 25, 201313 yr Author I have considered updating to the newest rc. I can't think of anything of value from my simplefeatures configuration but I have mover scheduled in the middle of the night. Notification service runs once a day, around 08:00. Background polling for spun down disks is off. I use only smb for network. No itunes, no web server, no ftp server, etc. I use cache directories for all but my cache drive. MySQL is stored and run from the cache drive only. None of the plugins I use store any data on any of the drives other than the cache drive. Not sure what other information might be helpful.
April 25, 201313 yr I'd go ahead and do the RC12a update, just to confirm that doesn't change anything. CacheDirs could be spinning up a drive to update the directory cache; but (a) that wouldn't spin up the parity drive (unless it was on the same controller and you had spinup groups enabled) ... and even if the drives are somehow configured so they both spin up at once, the strange timing still isn't explained. The mover could, of course, cause both the newest drive and parity to spin up ... but with a 1 hr spin down setting they should have spun down LONG before the times you're seeing. I don't use and haven't studied SimpleFeatures, so I don't know if it has anything that could potentially explain this behavior -- but I doubt it. In short: I'm stumped [i will, however, note, that I've also noticed occasional unexplained spin-up and spin-down activity where a drive seems to spin up for no apparent reason ... but certainly not with the regularity you're seeing !!]
April 25, 201313 yr Author Would mover cause it to spin up at a time other than what is specified? I really don't even need mover because I don't actually write anything to my cache drive. I write all my files directly to the array. I only use the cache as an app drive really.
April 25, 201313 yr Would mover cause it to spin up at a time other than what is specified? I really don't even need mover because I don't actually write anything to my cache drive. I write all my files directly to the array. I only use the cache as an app drive really. Instead of guessing, why not look to see what file exactly is being accessed (one hour prior to the spindown command) That might lead you to the program accessing it. You can download and invoke inotifywait as described here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=17613.msg165651;topicseen#msg165651 Another method can be used if the array is otherwise idle. It turns on disk subsystem logging and writes to the syslog. It is described here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4193.msg37084#msg37084 Don't forget to turn it off, otherwise it will fill the syslog and crash the server when you run out of memory. Joe L.
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