Thanks in advance for any help you may provide. 

 

I am running 4.4.2 and I am attempting to add three new disks to my array.  It currently has four 750 gig drives (three storage and one parity) plus a cache drive.  I am trying to add 3 new 750 gig drives.  I shut the array down, installed the disks, powered back up, assigned the disks and clearing began.  Twenty four hours later clearing finally reached 100 percent and I clicked the start button to bring the array back online.  Much to my dismay the clearing started again but at 92%.  Does anyone know why this happened?

 

I tried to attach my syslog but I received an error saying it was too large.  Pasting the text into this message went over the max number of characters.  So any tips on handling that would be appreciated.

 

 

Thanks again.

You can use pastebin.com to post it.

 

The first 200K or so is the most important - and the last 50K.  The stuff in the middle is likely repeated messages.

 

Taking smartctl reports for your drives (follow the troubleshooting link in my sig).  If you have reallocated sectors on one or more, you have drive problems.  Otherwise you may have a cabling issue or something else.  The syslog should provide clues that I am sure our ace sleuth RobJ can unravel.

 

Post some details on your system (MB, controllers, memory, PSU, etc).  Clearing 3 750G drives - even if they are on the PCI bus - should not have taken more than 10 hours - much less 20+.

 

Joe L. wrote a very useful "preclear" script.  It will test out a drive thoroughly and also leave it in a special precleared state that unRAID understands.  This prevents the need of unRAID to have to clear the disks when they are added to the array.  Using Joe L.'s tool not only checks out the drive, but also all elements of its connection to the controller, power, etc.  If you are adding disks to an array - it is a much better method than just unbagging several drives and hoping they are good and properly connected.

Sorry for the omitted info.  I have an AB9Pro, 4gig of Corsair memory, and PCP&C 610W power supply.  All of the existing drives and one of the new are running off of the onboard sata ports 1 through 6.  Two of the new drives are on ports 8-9.  I remember different chip sets control different sata ports but I will have to dig that info up in the morning if you want to know what controller is controlling what drive.

 

I tried to pull the smart report, but got an error message.  I am wondering if it has to do with the fact that the good drives are currently spun down.  I am going to let the clear finish and see what happens again.  I will try to pull them after that.  I run a parity check monthly and would not suspect a drive failure, at least not in the beginning.

 

I will attach an edited version of the syslog.  Thanks again!

These instructions will get your smartctl working.  Omit step 5 as you already have the newest version of smartctl installed.

OK, not to sound like a complete idiot here but those instructions say to change the extension on a file.  When I follow the download link I download a folder and have not located a file with a tg extension.  What am I missing here?

Not sure what you downloaded.  If you click on the link in the other post, and then pick a server to download from, you'll wind up with a file called:

 

cxxlibs-6.0.8-i486-4.gz

 

which you need to rename to

 

cxxlibs-6.0.8-i486-4.tgz

 

I used the link called "slackware.cs.utah.edu", but I'm sure most of them will work.

Well, last night the server would complete clearing and the GUI would give me the option to start the array but I never got the message that unformatted disks were present.  I had not expanded the array before so I didn't know exactly how the process worked start to finish.  After clicking start three times and having clearing resume somewhere in the 90% range, and after already pulling the syslog I decided to reboot the server and see what would happen.

 

After the reboot, the clearing started again but this time at 0%.  At that point I gave up and went to bed.  The plan was to ask how to safely stop the clearing this morning and then regroup.  I woke up and checked the server this morning and low and behold it had completed clearing and gave me the option to format the unformatted disks in the array!  Finally!  And it didn't take 24 hours to clear.  I started that last around 1 am and it finished sometime before 10 am.

 

The disks have formatted and are online.  I run a parity check once a month, but for safety's sake I just started running one to check things out.  I still want to get the disk help working and see what it has to say about my drives.  With the cost of 1 TB drives at the hundred dollar mark I was thinking of putting one in for parity and bringing the parity disk online for storage so that from now on I can expand in 1 TB increments but this experience may put that off.  I know macs and PCs but I have never invested the time to learn linux and my command line skills are terrible.  I used to be proficient with command line in DOS and even programmed in a few languages, but the old addage use it or loose it applies here.  I suppose I should build a linux box and learn it.

 

Anyway, thank you for your help bjp999.  I will search around and try and figure out the disk health utility.  Thanks again!

Not sure what you downloaded.  If you click on the link in the other post, and then pick a server to download from, you'll wind up with a file called:

 

cxxlibs-6.0.8-i486-4.gz

 

which you need to rename to

 

cxxlibs-6.0.8-i486-4.tgz

 

I used the link called "slackware.cs.utah.edu", but I'm sure more of them will work.

 

I got a folder that showed up as a tar on my mac.  When I uncompress it, it has several directories inside and did not see the file referenced.  I will try your download choice.  Thanks.

The .gz file is similar to a .zip file. You just need to get the file over to the unRAID box.  You do not need to look at the directory structure inside.  The install package uses that.

When I download the file the extension is .tar

 

I copied it to my flash drive unchanged and then once in the appropriate directory changed the extension to .tgz

 

This is the message I get:

 

Linux 2.6.27.7-unRAID.

root@cartman:~# installpkg /boot/custom/usr/share/packages/cxxlibs-6.0.8-i486-4.tgz

Cannot install /boot/custom/usr/share/packages/cxxlibs-6.0.8-i486-4.tgz: package does not end in .tgz

root@cartman:~#

 

I still have not found a file or folder ending in gz.  Everytime I download the file it shows up as a .tar file.  If it helps I am doing this from OSX

 

 

When I download the file the extension is .tar

 

I copied it to my flash drive unchanged and then once in the appropriate directory changed the extension to .tgz

 

This is the message I get:

 

Linux 2.6.27.7-unRAID.

root@cartman:~# installpkg /boot/custom/usr/share/packages/cxxlibs-6.0.8-i486-4.tgz

Cannot install /boot/custom/usr/share/packages/cxxlibs-6.0.8-i486-4.tgz: package does not end in .tgz

root@cartman:~#

 

I still have not found a file or folder ending in gz.  Everytime I download the file it shows up as a .tar file.  If it helps I am doing this from OSX

 

 

Your mac is trying to help you by un-zipping the file for you and showing the ".tar" file in it.

Instead, it is just confusing you, and not downloading the file you need.

 

A .tgz file is a zipped tar file.  Installpkg will not work on a .tar file.  It expects a .tgz file.

 

Normally I'd say use a right hand mouse click to gat a "save-as" on the browser.  I don't think you have that on a Mac, but you must have the equivalent.

 

Joe L.

Well guys, I guess it is not going to happen.  I have downloaded the file in Vista and OSX and they both are .tar folders.  Joe, in Vista I tried right clicking and choosing save as.  It still saves as a tar file.  I am sure this is not as difficult as it seems, but this is the weekend and I should be relaxing.  Upgrading my file server has successfully wasted most of my weekend on a simple chore and I have had enough.

 

Thanks again for trying to help.  Maybe I will come back to this when I am less frustrated.

I just hovered over a number of the sites there, both http and ftp, and they all show as tgz files.  I downloaded a couple of them and they resulted in the identical tgz file (not folder), cxxlibs-6.0.8-i486-4.tgz, of 903,354 bytes.  There is a tar file inside, but if you are seeing it, then your OS is unpacking it from the tgz, wrongly.  You don't want it unpacked/uncompressed at all.  There is no renaming necessary either.  The installpkg command will handle everything, and it wants a tgz file only.

 

I took a look at your syslog sections, and it looks like unRAID is not handling the clearing of multiple drives correctly.  I know there was another case recently where someone was trying to clear a bunch of drives at one time, but after considerable problems and time lost, gave up and added them one at a time.  In your case, it appears as if each drive has to report the countdown to 100%, separately, and when the first one finished 100% of its clearing, the other 2 still had to finish, but their reporting of percentages had been suppressed until the first one finished.  The numbers then go from 0% to about 90% within about a second, and there are apparently 2 drives trying to report at the same time, as the numbers are not completely in order.  I don't know why these 2 drives could not report their progress while the first drive was clearing.  It makes it hard to trust the process.

 

If you get a good parity check now, then it does not matter, and your system is fine.

 

We should probably instruct users, when a syslog is very large with a huge section of repeating stuff, to give us at least the first 100KB or the first 5 minutes through about 50 lines of the repeating stuff, plus the last 100 or so lines.  In this case, although it begins with a lot of lines, it still had not completed booting, not even the first second of the boot.  If there were any errors in the drive setup, I cannot tell as it was not included.  If you can provide the first 150KB of the syslog or the first 5 minutes by the timestamps, I'll be happy to examine it further.

Not sure why but when I download the file it comes down with a .gz extension.  I have to rename it to a .tgz extension.  YMMV

 

I am wondering if laynlow is OPENING the file.  If you open it on my system you see the .tar file, and if you open that you see the folder structure.

 

Also, on my system my syslog is about 120K after a boot.  I  have a bunch of startup items that are logged.  If there were some nasties on boot it could easily get bigger.  I would suggest if we are trying to get enough of a syslog to be of some use, to request the first 200K to be sure.

 

To anyone reading, remember that the preclear script is the best way to test out a drive and clear it as well, so that unRAID doesn't have to!!

Not sure why but when I download the file it comes down with a .gz extension.  I have to rename it to a .tgz extension.  YMMV

That seems odd to me.  Do you possibly have a download related plugin or ActiveX tool that is modifying the file names?  I'd probably be a little irritated if I found something interfering with my downloads.  I expect to get exactly what I request.

 

Also, on my system my syslog is about 120K after a boot.  I  have a bunch of startup items that are logged.  If there were some nasties on boot it could easily get bigger.  I would suggest if we are trying to get enough of a syslog to be of some use, to request the first 200K to be sure.

 

You are right.  I forget about the new stuff being added / echoed to the log.

I booted my mac into vista and went to download the file again.  With a standard right click I was allowed to save the file as a tgz.  I copied the file to my flash drive and ran the installer again and I still get an error saying the file does not end in tgz.  I'm not sure why it still rejects the file.

 

 

 

 

I booted my mac into vista and went to download the file again.  With a standard right click I was allowed to save the file as a tgz.  I copied the file to my flash drive and ran the installer again and I still get an error saying the file does not end in tgz.  I'm not sure why it still rejects the file.

Installpkg will give that exact same error message if you mis-spell the name of the file you give as an argument to it and the file does not exist as that name.

 

For example, if I type

installpkg joe.tgz

and the file "joe.tgz" does not exist in my current directory, it will complain it does not end in .tgz rather than saying it does not exist.

 

Check your spelling of the command.  It could be as simple as that now that you have a copy of the file with the correct suffix.

 

Joe L.

I booted my mac into vista and went to download the file again.  With a standard right click I was allowed to save the file as a tgz.  I copied the file to my flash drive and ran the installer again and I still get an error saying the file does not end in tgz.  I'm not sure why it still rejects the file.

 

What browser are you using?  I just tried it on my mac in firefox and Safari (with "open safe files" unchecked).  For me that downloaded the .tgz file just fine.

 

After the download you need to copy the .tgz file to the root of the flash drive.  From there you can run type in a terminal window:

telnet tower (or whatever the IP of your unRAID server is)
cd /boot
installpkg cxxlibs-6.0.8-i486-4.tgz

 

That should get the package installed for you.  I know it works for me.  The only thing you will also need to do is add a line to your go script that reads:

#install cxxlibs-6.0.8-i486-4.tgz
installpkg /boot/cxxlibs-6.0.8-i486-4.tgz

 

Hopefully that helps a little.

I have tried to get that to install a 1000 different ways and always get the same error.  I have even copied the file name and pasted to eliminate the possibility of spelling it incorrectly.  I tried installing from the directory structure referenced in the linked thread and from the root of the flash.  The results never change.  Thanks for everyones help though.  I am always willing to try a new idea.  This has really made me feel stupid.  I install six to seven figure home automation systems and I am very familiar with configuring a whole range of products with processors, serial control and so on but this has me stumped.

 

prostuff1,

 

I am using Safari in OSX and IE in vista.  Once I made the switch to mac I left firefox behind.

From a Telnet or PuTTY box, change to the correct folder you have saved it to, and try

ls -l cxxlibs-6.0.8-i486-4.tgz

 

Then cut and paste the results for us, including the console prompts.

Will do. I am out of town but will try that when I get back. Thanks.