I use my unRAID as a 24/7 music server. This morning iTunes quite playing.  Tried to manually reconnect to server (Tower) on my Mac Pro and it failed. I tried to log on in Firefox and it couldn't find.  I then tried on my Vista PC and same results. Went to the console and it was logged in. Did not know how to restart from the console or any way to check the status so had to hit the reset button. Then after it reset I connected the Tower to my Mac Pro but only had the Flash drive and no shares.  Looked at the web page and it said mounting by each disk (all were solid green). After a couple of minutes 1 HD mounted then a minute or 2 later another. It took over 5 minutes for all the HDs to mount and start the unRAID. Now it's doing a parity check (though music is playing and at 14% no errors). 

 

1. Does the unRAID need to be reset every so often?

2. How do you reset, restart and shutdown from the console?

3. Does it usually take that long to mount all the HDs after a crash/lost networking or hard reset?

I use my unRAID as a 24/7 music server. This morning iTunes quite playing.  Tried to manually reconnect to server (Tower) on my Mac Pro and it failed. I tried to log on in Firefox and it couldn't find.  I then tried on my Vista PC and same results. Went to the console and it was logged in. Did not know how to restart from the console or any way to check the status so had to hit the reset button. Then after it reset I connected the Tower to my Mac Pro but only had the Flash drive and no shares.  Looked at the web page and it said mounting by each disk (all were solid green). After a couple of minutes 1 HD mounted then a minute or 2 later another. It took over 5 minutes for all the HDs to mount and start the unRAID. Now it's doing a parity check (though music is playing and at 14% no errors). 

 

1. Does the unRAID need to be reset every so often?

I am not aware of any reasons that suggest a periodic reboot would be helpful.  I believe many users often leave their unRAID servers running for months at a time.

 

2. How do you reset, restart and shutdown from the console?

* Install Power Down (an UnRAID Add On)

* As of unRAID v4.5-beta5 or later, and assuming compatible hardware, pressing the machine's power button will gracefully shut down the system, including stopping the array.  I am not positive that the stop routine that Tom has hooked to the power button is as robust as WeeboTech's PowerDown scripting, so it may not be perfect, it may not correctly handle files that are still open.  Unfortunately, I don't believe that the Reset button is using any of these improved shutdown scripts, so I would avoid using it.

 

3. Does it usually take that long to mount all the HDs after a crash/lost networking or hard reset?

Stopping by the Reset button would be similar to a power outage (I believe), so all of the drives would have to replay transactions on reboot, before they would be ready again.  Plus, a parity check would begin immediately upon starting the array, which would greatly slow down the replaying of transactions and the mounting of the drives, especially if some or all of them required the use of the PCI bus.

Thanks RobJ,

 

I just wonder what caused the Tower to quite communicating over the network (after over a month of contentious operation) and not be assessable requiring a reset?  I know Widows gets kinked up over time and needs a reset ever so often but I'm also use to OS X running stable until a update requires a reset and thought the unRAD would be at least if not more stable. Everything is working correctly now. No errors were found and I have moved several GB of data to it while running the music server.  How often should you do a parity check?  It had been over a month for me (adding a new parity drive and 3 HD next week so was going to do before that), could this be a problem?  Also if it does find errors does it correct them?

* Monthly parity check

 

Many unRAID users recommend a monthly parity check as a good preventive maintenance item.  The script above will schedule it for automatic operation each month.  A parity check verifies the readability of every sector of every drive, and verifies the correctness of the parity info.  If it finds any errors, it automatically corrects them.

 

A sudden loss of networking is NOT normal, indicates a real problem at that moment on the server, but there could be a number of causes.  A syslog prior to the reboot is necessary to diagnose it, and/or diagnostic commands entered at the server console.

 

For now, I would check the syslog once a week, and see what kinds of messages may be accumulating in it from week to week.  Feel free to attach a syslog, to allow us to examine and advise.  See the Troubleshooting link in my sig for instructions in capturing the full syslog.

I had a similar problem some time ago when I first had my unRAID box setup, in addition I was having SABnzbd (Newsgroup Downloader) "crashing", until I saw one SysLog message stating due to low memory it was killing off 'python' which SABnzbd runs under. So my issue was competely due to low RAM and eventually it was killing off the SMB shares, and the WebGUI. I ended up adding a SWAP file to a small 40GB HDD I had in there already and all was peachy (1GB RAM + 1GB Swap). It might be worth taking a look at how much RAM is in there, but by the sounds of it, you're not running anything crazy on it (I was burning the candle at both ends at the time with my setup).

 

Hopefully it was a one-off issue, or you cna narrow it down and fix the problem.

 

Good luck,

 

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