[Solved] Upgrading an unknown unRAID server

[bkasten]

I have a problem, and I would like some advice on how to proceed.

 

Background:

A number of years ago, I installed an unRAID server for a photographer friend of mine. The server ran flawless for a number of years (3+ ??)

 

Now, after closing his studio, he has asked be to "fix" his server.

 

The computer had been moved to his house. At first, I thought it would be just a matter of plugging it all in and booting it up. However, once I got to his house, I discovered that the USB thumb drive was gone. I mean gone, and he has no recollection of it ever having a thumb drive (it did, but he has NO idea where it is).

 

I have little idea what version of unRAID was installed. It has to be after 4.5, but before 5.0.

 

My ultimate goal is to get this up to 5.05.

 

I have three drives (free version of unRAID).

 

Problem:

1. How can I tell what drives are data, and what drive is parity.

 

2. Is there a way to tell the version of unRAID on the missing thumb drive was?

 

It seems to me that best procedure would be to:

 

a. install 4.7 on the thumb drive (the new one I am providing),

 

b. fine the correct assignments for the drives. Verify that the parity and drives are OK,

 

c. With the above two completed, upgrade to version 5.05.

 

The biggest deal is to figure out the drive assignments I think. Any help on that would be much appreciated! Any other observations / guidelines would also be valuable. It has been so long since I messed with any of the version 4.x's of unRAID that I can hardly remember any of it.

 

I have the server in my possession till I get this "fixed".

 

Thanks for any help in advance.

 

Bruce

[JonathanM]

Assign all drives as data drives, LEAVE THE PARITY SLOT BLANK. Start the array. There should be only one unformatted drive, which is the parity drive. If there are more, STOP, collect the full current syslog, and post it here. If I were you, I'd probably just go ahead and set up a 5.05 flash and go from there. I don't think there is any point in trying to get the array running on 4.7 and then upgrading, since you have no config files to worry about.

 

If you don't have a licensed key to play with, you can assign the drives 2 at a time to the data slots, and see if those are the data drives. You really can't hurt anything if you don't assign parity until you know for sure which one it is. After you know, you can assign all the drives correctly, and check the box that says parity is already valid, and start a non-correcting check. If you get huge parity error numbers, stop and collect the syslog to zip and post.

 

Are you sure the thumb drive isn't mounted internally? All my servers have either motherboard mounted USB ports, or I added a USB header board internally so the drive couldn't get gone. Maybe the CMOS battery died and the boot order changed?

[bkasten]

Sweet!

 

You got me going jonathanm!

 

Here I thought there was some big deal about making sure you upgraded from 4.7 to 5.05, and all it is is just config files?

 

No problem, went straight to 5.05, assigned the drives as data drives. One showed as unformatted, the other two are showing as data.

 

I think I am good to go!

 

Thanks again

 

Bruce

[JonathanM]

Here I thought there was some big deal about making sure you upgraded from 4.7 to 5.05, and all it is is just config files?

Not quite that simple, there are some edge cases that I think can cause big issues if you upgrade from old versions, but those cases would have been discovered by the simple "assign all drives as data and see what happens" scenario. As long as you only have one drive showing unformatted, you are pretty much golden.

 

Now, if you are handed 10 unlabeled drives, and the information that there is 1 failed data drive, and 1 cache drive, and parity was valid when the array went down on some old version, the recovery gets much more complex. Theoretically doable, but way complex.