I was using my actual monitor hooked up to my unraid box. Since pre-clearing 4TB disks appears to be a multiday task I installed putty.

 

Attempting to access the pre-clear status per the tutorial I logged in and entered screen -r - which led to nothing what the tutorial said it would.

 

So I spent a couple hours searching and am having no luck closing screens, etc....

 

There is no support in the tutorial should something like this happen.

 

I'm at a loss. Is there any step by step instructions to close out all screens, one by one, so that i can use the screen -r command to view my preclear status?

 

I don't even care at this point if I have to start over. But first and foremost is closing all these screen sessions I seem to have open.

 

We had a power outage today, two days into my pre-clear of two drives, so I imagine that's where these extra screen windows came from.

 

I would like to put the NAS box in its place so I can get my office back together and get on with life.

 

Any instruction is greatly appreciated. Pretty frustrated at this point. I'm normally pretty good at computers but I can't even seem to make this work with any set of instructions I can search up.

 

Here are a couple that sound solid, but aren't working for me.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=16393.0

 

Also this from the tutorial-

 

Step 10 As your drives finish preclearing, you can close their screens by pressing

 

CTRL-D

 

to logout of that screen. or you can simply type

 

exit

 

You will then be taken to the next or the previous screen in the buffer. When the last drive finishes and you close its screen you will get a message that screen is terminating. At this point it is recommended that you save your preclear results for future reference or so you can post them to the forum if you have any questions regarding the results.

 

 

I can terminate one screen, but can't seem to terminate them all. I am guessing it's because I'm not properly logging into to each one.

 

I'm so lost.....

Ahhh.... heck.

 

I give up. I hope one of the more knowledgeable people can help me here, because I've tried everything to get that progress window back up.

 

I did manage to pull it up in unmenu under the 'my main' tab.

 

And another odd thing. Putty won't let me log in. I type root and it asks for a password. It was working fine then just stopped.

 

 

When you say you had power outage, do you mean that the power went down while the preclears were running? If you didn't have an UPS in place the power outage would have caused the whole machine to shutdown. The machine would have started when power came back if it was set to do that in bios. If the machine was restarted this way, all the preclear processes should/would have disappeared for ever. There is nothing in unRAID to somehow resume them.

 

If the machine was restarted due to power outage, your only option to restart the preclear process. I very strongly recommend using and APC UPS with unRAID. You get direct support through different plugins/unMenu and can configure system to shutdown in managed way when battery level reaches certain value.

 

Regarding telnet login asking for password; by default there is no password for root account. However this can be set in the web gui. So perhaps you have set it there. The web gui should also ask for the same password if you have set it.

When you say you had power outage, do you mean that the power went down while the preclears were running? If you didn't have an UPS in place the power outage would have caused the whole machine to shutdown. The machine would have started when power came back if it was set to do that in bios. If the machine was restarted this way, all the preclear processes should/would have disappeared for ever. There is nothing in unRAID to somehow resume them.

 

If the machine was restarted due to power outage, your only option to restart the preclear process. I very strongly recommend using and APC UPS with unRAID. You get direct support through different plugins/unMenu and can configure system to shutdown in managed way when battery level reaches certain value.

 

Regarding telnet login asking for password; by default there is no password for root account. However this can be set in the web gui. So perhaps you have set it there. The web gui should also ask for the same password if you have set it.

 

Oh no..... the computer turned off and stayed off after the power went out. Kind of a bummer, but it is what it is. I simply restarted the pre-clear process.

 

I had both pre-clear windows up where I could scroll through them using the cntrl a p command. I then exited so I could bring the pre-clear progress screens up on putty/telnet. From this point on I could never get back to the pre-clear progress screens using putty or direct connection to the box.

 

I can login with unmenu and view the pre-clear process under the mymain tab.

 

I plugged my monitor back into the unraid box

 

Sreen -r returns

 

 

 

There are several suitable screens on:

29121.tty1.Wakeling  (Detached)

8275.tty1.Wakeling      (Detached)

13118.pts-2.Wakeling  (Detached)

6660.pts-2.Wakeling      (Detached)

1897.tty1.Wakeling        (Detached)

 

Type "screen [-d] -r [pid.]tty.host" to resume one of them.

root@Wakeling:~#

 

 

 

 

-----------------

 

I can type the command string "screen [-d] -r [29121.]tty1.Wakeling" 

 

I then get this -

 

>

 

That's it. Typing screen -r results in another

 

>

 

typing cntl d nets and error message and drops me off at root@wakeling:~# exit eventually logs me out.  I log back in

 

From root@wakeling:~# I can type screen and get the above with the added line of (in bold)-

 

There are several suitable screens on:

13571.tty1.Wakeling (Attached)

29121.tty1.Wakeling  (Detached)

8275.tty1.Wakeling      (Detached)

13118.pts-2.Wakeling  (Detached)

6660.pts-2.Wakeling      (Detached)

1897.tty1.Wakeling        (Detached)

Type "screen [-d] -r [pid.]tty.host" to resume one of them.

root@Wakeling:~#

 

Typing screen -r returns the exact same thing as above-

 

There are several suitable screens on:

13571.tty1.Wakeling (Attached)

29121.tty1.Wakeling  (Detached)

8275.tty1.Wakeling      (Detached)

13118.pts-2.Wakeling  (Detached)

6660.pts-2.Wakeling      (Detached)

1897.tty1.Wakeling        (Detached)

Type "screen [-d] -r [pid.]tty.host" to resume one of them.

root@Wakeling:~#

 

 

No matter what I enter I cannot get back to the pre-clear progress screen, but I know it's running because I have it pulled up on unmenu.

 

Very frustrating.... and I have no idea what to do next.

 

Heck, at this point I can't even log in using putty/telnet. Everything I do has to be from the box connected to my monitor.

 

Do you have a UPS?  If so I take it the power was out long enough for it to signal unRAID to shut down then?

Do you have a UPS?  If so I take it the power was out long enough for it to signal unRAID to shut down then?

 

No UPS

Do you have a UPS?  If so I take it the power was out long enough for it to signal unRAID to shut down then?

 

No UPS

I would consider getting one.  For momentary power outages they would prevent this problem.  Also had this happened when your array was up and running you would likely have to run a parity check after the power came back on.  Configured in unRAID it will gracefully shutdown the unRAID server so that the parity check is not necessary.

Do you have a UPS?  If so I take it the power was out long enough for it to signal unRAID to shut down then?

 

No UPS

I would consider getting one.  For momentary power outages they would prevent this problem.  Also had this happened when your array was up and running you would likely have to run a parity check after the power came back on.  Configured in unRAID it will gracefully shutdown the unRAID server so that the parity check is not necessary.

 

Thanks for the tip. Any input to help resolve my current issue??

Thanks for the tip. Any input to help resolve my current issue??

Sorry I don't use screen for my preclears.  I use unRAID in VMs so have console access from the ESXi web GUI.  And I also have a separate computer upstairs that I go to the keyboard and monitor to preclear drives.  The only time I ever access an unRAID server from putty/telnet is to my N40L and I haven't had to use something that took a long time there so just haven't learned anything about screen.

 

If you have unMenu installed you can use the MyMenu screen to get a status on the preclear progress.  It doesn't display the WHOLE screen just the mode (Pre-Read, Clear, Post-Read), the % done and the MB/s.  But that is usually sufficient for me even when I use my preclear box that is upstairs.

 

Hope that helps!

The correct command for re-attaching to an existing screen is:

screen -D -r 29121.tty1.Wakeling

 

When pre-clearing I normally do the following:

1. start screen with command "screen"

2. start a preclear for the first drive

3. create a new window within the screen with "ctrl-a c"

4. start a preclear on the second drive

5. repeat steps 3-4 as many times until all drives are pre_clearing

6. detach the screen (with n windows) with "ctrl-a d"

 

If I wish to re-attach to this single screen, I can simply type "screen -r". Within the screen I can cycle through different windows I hit "ctrl-a n" (or "ctrl-a p" for the other direction).

The correct command for re-attaching to an existing screen is:

screen -D -r 29121.tty1.Wakeling

 

When pre-clearing I normally do the following:

1. start screen with command "screen"

2. start a preclear for the first drive

3. create a new window within the screen with "ctrl-a c"

4. start a preclear on the second drive

5. repeat steps 3-4 as many times until all drives are pre_clearing

6. detach the screen (with n windows) with "ctrl-a d"

 

If I wish to re-attach to this single screen, I can simply type "screen -r". Within the screen I can cycle through different windows I hit "ctrl-a n" (or "ctrl-a p" for the other direction).

 

Thanks. I did exactly as you state, including ctrl-a d. From this point i have not been able to reattach to my screen to see stats of each pre clear using the cntrl-a n or p command.

 

I will try your first command listed in this post asap and report back. Thank you!

The correct command for re-attaching to an existing screen is:

screen -D -r 29121.tty1.Wakeling

 

When pre-clearing I normally do the following:

1. start screen with command "screen"

2. start a preclear for the first drive

3. create a new window within the screen with "ctrl-a c"

4. start a preclear on the second drive

5. repeat steps 3-4 as many times until all drives are pre_clearing

6. detach the screen (with n windows) with "ctrl-a d"

 

If I wish to re-attach to this single screen, I can simply type "screen -r". Within the screen I can cycle through different windows I hit "ctrl-a n" (or "ctrl-a p" for the other direction).

 

Nope... all I managed to do was create more screens. Only one can be attached using your command "screen -D -r 29121.tty1.Wakeling"

 

For example I attached the above by entering the command exactly as you see it. Great, it now says attached.

 

Next type screen -r and all it does is spit out a list of 'several suitable screens on: and proceeds to list like this -

 

29121.tty1.Wakeling  (Detached)

8275.tty1.Wakeling      (Detached)

13118.pts-2.Wakeling  (Detached)

6660.pts-2.Wakeling      (Detached)

1897.tty1.Wakeling        (Detached)

 

Typing your command of screen -D -r 29121.tty1.Wakeling ,,, but using say 8275 in stead of 29121 spits out the error "cannot find terminfo entry for 'vt100'

 

I have to un attach the 29121 before I can attach 8275. In any event once attached the command "screen -r" does nothing.

 

Nothing I seem to do allows me to get back to the pre-clear progress screen.

 

From reading it would seem like I have several screens that need to be closed, and I need to figure out which two are the active pre-clear screens. But I can't figure out a way to get detached screens to disappear from the list.

 

As a matter of fact I seem to be adding screens, with only one at a time being able to be attached.

 

 

 

Well I actually got to one of my preclear screens, but it would not let me scroll using cntr-p or cntrl -n

 

I had cntrl a cntrl d out.

 

While trying to get rid of all these screens that read detached I some how got kicked off and now nothing works. I can type all the text in the world on my monitor that is connected to the box, but I can't get a log in prompt.

 

I can't log in using Telnet via Putty. I can get to the prompt of Wakeling (my substitute for Tower) but when I type root it asks me for a password.

 

Is this really as finicky as it is seeming to be or my I have something going on with my SD card or another problem I need to address?

 

If it's this finicky I'd rather just spend the big bucks on a large expandable NAS drive. That's all I want is a place to store our movies and pictures.

 

Thanks all for your help this far. Any future input and/or help is greatly appreciated.

 

Pulling hair out.

 

all i can do is laugh.

 

It seems some how I was logged out. I am going to get a recommended USB thumb drive today, and start over. Again.

 

any specs on the UPS I need to look at so I'm fail safe should the power go out, which I might add is less than 1x a year where I live. Geeze...

Really depends on the specs of your server.  I got a CyberPower CP1000PFCLCD for a ESXi server with 22-24 drives and 6 PCI/e cards installed and it was just large enough but no headroom.  It had 9-14 minutes of run time which is just barely enough to shut everything down correctly and run on batteries long enough to survive the short power outages.  For me I should have gotten the CP1350PFCLCD or CP1500PFCLCD models.  Suspect the CP1000PFCLCD might be enough for your needs if you are not using as many disks and PCI/e cards as mine.

Well this is not in the budget at this time. Is there another way to protect the machine in case of a power outage?

 

I'm finding it hard to believe that a power outage or the sudden unplug of a power cord would possibly render all of my drives and content useless.

When you start over I suggest you first try practising with the screen with just some text inputted into prompt of each screen window so that you know which screen you are looking at. If you follow the basic steps I listed above and use Putty to telnet into unRAID you should be ok.

 

I don't think the issues you are seeing have anything to do with the flash drive you are using.

 

When you are building your unRAID setup by installing unMenu or other addons, do it in steps and take a full copy of your flash drive when you have something working nicely. You can do it just by copying all the files through windows explorer from \\tower\flash. You can then restore the backup by simply deleting all the files from the flash and then copying them back.

 

Preclearing drives does not affect the unRAID setup/config in any ways and you can also manually cancel a preclear by hitting ctrl-c at any time. Preclearing is not part of the unRAID product but a community supported add-on. Since it's very much used and recommended I just wish it had a complete web gui. Having to use CLI has way too many pitfalls...

Well this is not in the budget at this time. Is there another way to protect the machine in case of a power outage?

 

I'm finding it hard to believe that a power outage or the sudden unplug of a power cord would possibly render all of my drives and content useless.

It won't render it unusable (most likely).  But you will find that because it wasn't shutdown cleanly it will require a parity check when it starts up.  If you only have one momentary power outage a year then you would only have to do an unneeded parity check once a year.  So it could wait (most likely). 

 

I just don't feel safe and buget for it.  I don't want something I could prevent causing me a problem later.  Lately I've seen an almost daily several second drop in power voltage that would cause this.  Most don't even go to 0 volts but the longer ones do.  So I have MANY UPSs for my equipment.

Well this is not in the budget at this time. Is there another way to protect the machine in case of a power outage?

 

I'm finding it hard to believe that a power outage or the sudden unplug of a power cord would possibly render all of my drives and content useless.

It is very unlikely that power outage would cause total data loss. But at a cost of a single 3TB drive an UPS is a very inexpensive insurance. I have all my servers and none of my workstations on UPS.

 

And no, there is no other way except on UPS to protect the machine of a power outage.

Well this is not in the budget at this time. Is there another way to protect the machine in case of a power outage?

 

I'm finding it hard to believe that a power outage or the sudden unplug of a power cord would possibly render all of my drives and content useless.

It won't render it unusable (most likely).  But you will find that because it wasn't shutdown cleanly it will require a parity check when it starts up.  If you only have one momentary power outage a year then you would only have to do an unneeded parity check once a year.  So it could wait (most likely). 

 

I just don't feel safe and buget for it.  I don't want something I could prevent causing me a problem later.  Lately I've seen an almost daily several second drop in power voltage that would cause this.  Most don't even go to 0 volts but the longer ones do.  So I have MANY UPSs for my equipment.

So the worst that can happen with an unexpected shutdown (press the power button, power outage, etc) is a possible parity drive corruption?

 

And, if that happens I rebuild the parity drive?

 

Best case is a parity check and all is OK?

When you start over I suggest you first try practising with the screen with just some text inputted into prompt of each screen window so that you know which screen you are looking at. If you follow the basic steps I listed above and use Putty to telnet into unRAID you should be ok.

 

I don't think the issues you are seeing have anything to do with the flash drive you are using.

 

When you are building your unRAID setup by installing unMenu or other addons, do it in steps and take a full copy of your flash drive when you have something working nicely. You can do it just by copying all the files through windows explorer from \\tower\flash. You can then restore the backup by simply deleting all the files from the flash and then copying them back.

 

Preclearing drives does not affect the unRAID setup/config in any ways and you can also manually cancel a preclear by hitting ctrl-c at any time. Preclearing is not part of the unRAID product but a community supported add-on. Since it's very much used and recommended I just wish it had a complete web gui. Having to use CLI has way too many pitfalls...

 

Thanks for this info.

 

And Bob, thanks for yours.

 

All of a sudden the machine rebooted and it appears both drives completed their pre-clear session, which was only one pass.

 

From the reading I've done I believe three passes is ideal.

 

So I am going to double check my settings (bios etc), and get a new USB stick. The one I currently have in the machine is a stick that a card slides into.

 

It can't hurt to have a nice new thumb drive stick. Less than 15.00. I'll use the slot stick to back up the settings as suggested.

 

For some reason I wasn't notified via email during any part of the pre-clear process, so I'll re-visit that again as well.

 

I'll leave this thread open until I get done with the pre-clear process and up and running. I have two 4 TB drives so we're talking a couple days.

 

Again, thanks both for your help this far. Hopefully this next set of steps will go a bit smoother, although it seems the first step might have gone better than I was starting to expect.

Well this is not in the budget at this time. Is there another way to protect the machine in case of a power outage?

 

I'm finding it hard to believe that a power outage or the sudden unplug of a power cord would possibly render all of my drives and content useless.

It won't render it unusable (most likely).  But you will find that because it wasn't shutdown cleanly it will require a parity check when it starts up.  If you only have one momentary power outage a year then you would only have to do an unneeded parity check once a year.  So it could wait (most likely). 

 

I just don't feel safe and buget for it.  I don't want something I could prevent causing me a problem later.  Lately I've seen an almost daily several second drop in power voltage that would cause this.  Most don't even go to 0 volts but the longer ones do.  So I have MANY UPSs for my equipment.

So the worst that can happen with an unexpected shutdown (press the power button, power outage, etc) is a possible parity drive corruption?

 

And, if that happens I rebuild the parity drive?

 

Best case is a parity check and all is OK?

Actually the worst case would be data drive corruption if a write to the drive was happening when the power outage happened.  In that case you might be able to fix the file system corruption.  Less likely would be to loose all data on that drive in a worse case scenario.  It is highly unlikely that you would loose more than one drive and it would probably be closer to your best case if the power outage wasn't too extreme (like a surge before a blackout).  That might fry components in the computer PSU, MB, etc... like a lightning strike.  This brings up another use for the UPS that you should at least consider: a surge suppressor.  Get a surge suppressor if you can't afford a UPS.  Then you should be safer from surges on the line during storms.  Nothing would help if the lightning strike hit your house.  Even a UPS wouldn't likely protect everything if lightning hit your house.  Just too much power for something like that and computers have more than just power cords as entry points.

 

My parents had 240 volt input on a 120 volt line to the house when power lines got crossed.  Whole neighborhood had TVs, Microwaves etc die (back in the 80s).  Power company replaced them but that wouldn't cover data loss.  That's why a backup is always a good idea for critical data as well.  Since mine are all just TV recordings, DVD & BluRay rips I don't bother.  I'm just out the time to record again or rerip.  Inconvienent but cheaper than maintaining 100+TB backups.

So the worst that can happen with an unexpected shutdown (press the power button, power outage, etc) is a possible parity drive corruption?

If you are writing a file, that file will be corrupt, and possibly the file system would need to be checked. Worst case software wise, you would need to compare the files on that particular disk to your backups, and possibly restore them over the corrupted files.

 

Power blinks are hard on electronics, and a typical power outage isn't a clean shut off, it's one or more sags, and possible surges, before the power is completely out. That can burn out drives, PSU's, and motherboards. The more drives, the more a risk you can hurt something permanently.

 

I consider a properly sized UPS part of the server, not an item to be budgeted for later.

 

(ninja'd by Bob, posting anyway just because.)

So the worst that can happen with an unexpected shutdown (press the power button, power outage, etc) is a possible parity drive corruption?

 

No, the worst that can happen is that the outage occurs during a write and a disk gets corrupted ... if that happened to be a directory write the corruption can be pretty bad (loss of a lot of data).    And the automatic parity check that occurs after the next reboot won't fix that -- you'll simply have good parity on bad data.

 

MOST of the time (given typical UnRAID usage scenarios) nothing bad will happen -- you'll simply have an automated parity check done on the next reboot.

 

Nevertheless, I consider a UPS a mandatory part of the server.    Do without an extra drive for now ... but get a UPS !!

 

By the way, "... press the power button ..." is not an unexpected shutdown => that will cause a proper shutdown of the server.  But a power outage; yanking the power cord;  turning off the physical power switch on the PSU; etc. are indeed unexpected shutdowns.    A UPS not only provides protection against these; but also against power spikes and brownouts.    Do NOT buy a UPS that doesn't have AVR (automatic voltage regulation) ... the very inexpensive units often don't.