March 22, 201412 yr OK, I will try today to upgrade from 4.7 to 5.0.5 I need to add a data drive, so I want to install at least a 3TB drive (well, I will probably start with a new 3TB for parity, and reuse the current 2TB parity drive as a data drive) I will strictly follow the instructions from the wiki: Version 4.7 1) Prepare the flash: either shutdown your server and plug the flash into your PC or Stop the array and perform the following actions referencing the flash share on your network: - Copy the files bzimage and bzroot from the zip file to the root of your flash device, overwriting the same-named files already there. - If present, delete these files from the flash (sorry, you will have to re-enter all your users after booting this release): config/passwd config/shadow config/smbpasswd 2) Reboot your server. Once boot-up has completed, you should see "Stopped. Configuration valid." array status with all disks assigned correctly except for the Cache disk. If you previously had a Cache disk assigned, you will need to re-assign it manually and re-apply any unique configuration settings for it. 3) Carefully examine the Identification strings for each disk. If you see "MBR: error", or "MBR: unknown" for any disk, do not Start the array; instead post your finding in the Forum announcement thread for this release. If everything looks ok, click Start to bring the array on-line. Note: there is a new configuration setting on the Disk Settings page called "Enable auto start". If you set this to "Yes", then upon next server boot, if the array is valid, then it will be automatically Started (this is the old behavior). 4) Go to Utils/New Permissions and execute that utility to change file ownership and permission settings. This is necessary for proper operation of the 5.0 security model. 5) Go to Users page and re-enter all of your users. If you plan on using SMB and/or AFP with either Secure or Private security mode, you must enter at least one user because the 'root' user name is no longer permitted for network share authentication. For step (1), bzimage and bzroot files must be extracted before being copied on the flash, is that right?
March 22, 201412 yr Copy the files after uncompressing the zip archive. See the readme.txt in the download for correct instructions.
March 22, 201412 yr You've probably already done this upgrade (hopefully with complete success) by now, but just in case ... BEFORE you start, it'd be a good idea to do the following: (a) Copy the entire current contents of your flash drive to a folder on your PC, so it's simply to restore everything to the "as was" state if anything goes awry; and (b) Capture a picture of your Web GUI's main page [Alt-PrtScrn in Windows and then paste it to Paint], so you have a complete picture of your drive assignments.
March 22, 201412 yr One thing I would do is to run a non-correcting parity check before you start on the upgrade path. This is to make sure that all of your drives and parity are correct before you do anything. Then do things one step at a time. If your 4.7 parity is good, then do the upgrade to 5.05--- there are reasons for those point issues! Verify that any plugins (that you might have installed are working. Run the system for a few days and make sure it appears to be functioning properly. Run another non-correcting parity check during this period. Once you are satisfied that everything is working properly, you are ready to begin the hardware update. Why am I suggesting such a slow process for upgrading? Because, if you should have a problem, it is much easier to find the cause if you have only changed one thing before it rears up and bites you on the ....
March 22, 201412 yr Good idea r.e. the parity check -- but I'd do a correcting one. If something's wrong, you want it FIXED ... you don't just want to know about it
March 22, 201412 yr Good idea r.e. the parity check -- but I'd do a correcting one. If something's wrong, you want it FIXED ... you don't just want to know about it That is true UNLESS you get a data drive with sectors that can't be read. Then I am not sure what state parity is in. Can it still be used to rebuild the drive that can't be read? With a non-correcting parity, I definitely know that I can rebuilt that data drive. If I get a error in a non-correcting parity check and can't find a hardward reason for the failure, I can then do the correcting parity check.
March 22, 201412 yr Author You've probably already done this upgrade (hopefully with complete success) by now, but just in case ... BEFORE you start, it'd be a good idea to do the following: (a) Copy the entire current contents of your flash drive to a folder on your PC, so it's simply to restore everything to the "as was" state if anything goes awry; and (b) Capture a picture of your Web GUI's main page [Alt-PrtScrn in Windows and then paste it to Paint], so you have a complete picture of your drive assignments. No, i haven't done the upgrade yet.....I've been busy today. But the backup of the flash drive is done, and also the screenshot of the web GUI's main page (i've learned all of that by reading different posts ) I will do a parity check as recommended, but: should i do a non-correcting (if yes, how by the way) or a regular parity check? Thanks
March 23, 201412 yr If you haven't seen it, you may also want to read Migrating from unRAID 4.7 to unRAID 5.0.
March 23, 201412 yr I will do a parity check as recommended, but: should i do a non-correcting (if yes, how by the way) or a regular parity check? I'd do a "regular" check, but as you can see from a variety of posts, many prefer to do non-correcting checks. This is simple with v5, but v4.7 does not provide for a non-correcting check. If you want to do a non-correcting check, you need to install UnMenu (unless you already have it installed) ... and there's an option on the Array Management page to do a non-correcting parity check.
March 23, 201412 yr Author I will do a parity check as recommended, but: should i do a non-correcting (if yes, how by the way) or a regular parity check? I'd do a "regular" check, but as you can see from a variety of posts, many prefer to do non-correcting checks. This is simple with v5, but v4.7 does not provide for a non-correcting check. If you want to do a non-correcting check, you need to install UnMenu (unless you already have it installed) ... and there's an option on the Array Management page to do a non-correcting parity check. I do have UnMenu installed, but I don't see where to select a non-corrective parity check !!!
March 23, 201412 yr ....... I do have UnMenu installed, but I don't see where to select a non-corrective parity check !!! In my version of unMENU (Ver 1.6), it is on the 'Array Management' page. Called "Verify Parity but do NOT Correct it"
March 23, 201412 yr ....... I do have UnMenu installed, but I don't see where to select a non-corrective parity check !!! In my version of unMENU (Ver 1.6), it is on the 'Array Management' page. Called "Verify Parity but do NOT Correct it" That's what I was referring to ... and it's very prominent on the Array Management page (as I noted before). If you don't see it, you likely have an older version of UnMenu. You can either upgrade your UnMenu version before you start with the UnRAID upgrades (you'll want v1.6 anyway with v5 UnRAID) ... or you can simply run the normal parity check (which is what I'd do).
March 23, 201412 yr Author ....... I do have UnMenu installed, but I don't see where to select a non-corrective parity check !!! In my version of unMENU (Ver 1.6), it is on the 'Array Management' page. Called "Verify Parity but do NOT Correct it" That's what I was referring to ... and it's very prominent on the Array Management page (as I noted before). If you don't see it, you likely have an older version of UnMenu. You can either upgrade your UnMenu version before you start with the UnRAID upgrades (you'll want v1.6 anyway with v5 UnRAID) ... or you can simply run the normal parity check (which is what I'd do). What is impacting the parity check duration? Is it CPU, or the speed of the drives? I've approximately 4Tb of data....How long should it last, roughly?
March 23, 201412 yr What is impacting the parity check duration? Is it CPU, or the speed of the drives? I've approximately 4Tb of data....How long should it last, roughly? The speed (and size) of the drives is the major factor. The parity check can never run faster than the slowest drive CURRENTLY INVOLVED in the check. i.e. if you had a very slow 250GB drive, then for the first 250GB of the parity check, that would be the limiting factor. After the check got past the 250GB point, that drive would no longer be involved, so your next-slowest drive would limit the speed. Etc. In your specific case, with 3 1.5TB drives and a 2TB drive, your check will start off okay; will slow down as the 1.5TB drives get close to the inner cylinders (i.e. as the check gets to ~ the 1.2 or 1.3TB point); and then will speed back up a bit after 1.5TB ... but slow down again as the 2TB drives get close to the inner cylinders. The CPU has little impact -- even the slowest CPUs are typically fast enough to keep up with the data from your drives. The amount of data has ZERO impact -- the parity check is checking every bit on every drive ... it would take the same amount of time with ZERO data on the drives or with the drives completely full of data. As for the total time -- depends on the specific drives you have. With 2TB to traverse, it'll definitely be several hours ... I'd guess between 6 and 10 hours, depending on the areal density of the drives you have.
March 23, 201412 yr Note, by the way, that the time will be the same regardless of whether you do a non-correcting check or a normal correcting check. If, however, you do a non-correcting check and then find errors, you'll have to do a correcting check afterwards Also, regardless of which type of check you do, IF there are any errors corrected, you should run ANOTHER parity check afterwards to ensure everything is now good before you start your upgrade. So ... what I'd recommend is to run a normal parity check; and if there are zero sync errors you're ready for your upgrade. If it corrected any sync errors, run it again ... and confirm that there are no errors during the 2nd pass. Then do the upgrade.
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