unRAID Server release 4.5-beta12 available

[erikatcuse]

SAS still not working properly.  Ok I have a  LSI SAS3081E-R see this post:  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3109.0

 

The drive is recognized in by linux and unraid sees it.  The problem is when I assign it to a disk in unraid and start the array it doesn't show up.  The error that comes up is

 

"Dec  2 17:25:03 Backup kernel: md: import disk4: HDIO_GET_IDENTITY ioctl error: -22"

 

I think it's still a bug with the driver but can't find any info on what the error -22 is.  I've sent Tom an email with my syslog for his review.  Anyone else have any ideas?

 

Thanks

 

Erik

 

 

[ClunkClunk]

I attempted to go from 4.5b7 to 4.5b12 today, and ran in to an issue where only one of my 7 or 8 user shares showed up.

 

I had a few minutes of a racing heart, but I reverted to 4.5b7, and all is good. Running a parity check now, since I couldn't get the damn thing to finish unmounting (though this problem is in 4.5b7 as well, I probably have something running that's causing it).

[NAS]

Am i correct in saying the group of disk spinup means that when one disk on a controller is needed they all spin up.

 

If so how do i turn this off. I would rather have more disks spun down at the expense of some delay. Heat is my major issue.

[madshi]

Yes, may be able to do that.  Another way to prevent having to spin up disks for User Share directory listings is to use JoeL's excellant 'cache_dirs' addon.

 

I already have JoeL's addon running, but it doesn't always seem to work for me. At least I still often get this "spin up one disk after the other" problem. The most annoying thing about it is that if I do some processing while this problem happens, and if the delay caused by drive spin up is too long (i.e. more than maybe 20 seconds or something), the processing aborts with a read/write error. That's a bad thing especially if the processing is an operation which take 1-2 hours to complete (like remuxing a Blu-Ray). If all drives span up at the same time, the delay caused by the spin up would be small enough to not let processing abort.

 

Funnily enough I've been finding the same issue with the new beta...

 

FWIW, the effect I was talking about is not new to 4.5-beta12. It has always been there.

[Joe L.]

Am i correct in saying the group of disk spinup means that when one disk on a controller is needed they all spin up.

 

If so how do i turn this off. I would rather have more disks spun down at the expense of some delay. Heat is my major issue.

On the main page in unRAD, click on the names of the disks in turn to open up their respective settings screen.

 

In it is the Spin up group name for that disk.  Tom said you should blank them out if you do not want spin-ups to occur in pairs..

[madshi]

I'm having some problems and I don't know if they are related to beta12 or whether they are related to a few new harddisks I added in during the last couple days. Basically adding in the new harddisks seems to have worked and everything seems to be fine. But today I started a parity check and it showed 4 errors right when it started. So I've checked out the syslog and found a few things that worry me. Here's the full syslog:

 

http://madshi.net/syslog.txt

 

Dec  2 13:09:01 Tower kernel: ata10: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
Dec  2 13:09:01 Tower kernel: ata10.00: ATA-7: SAMSUNG HD154UI, 1AG01113, max UDMA7
Dec  2 13:09:01 Tower kernel: ata10.00: 2930277168 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
Dec  2 13:09:01 Tower kernel: ata10.00: configured for UDMA/133
Dec  2 13:09:01 Tower kernel: ata10: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0xf t4
Dec  2 13:09:01 Tower kernel: ata10: hotplug_status 0x2
Dec  2 13:09:01 Tower kernel: ata10: hard resetting link
Dec  2 13:09:01 Tower kernel: ata10: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
Dec  2 13:09:01 Tower kernel: ata10.00: configured for UDMA/133
Dec  2 13:09:01 Tower kernel: ata10: EH complete

 

Is that "exeption" supposed to be there? Same thing for ata11 and ata12. And then I have 6 exceptions like these, all for ata8:

 

Dec  2 16:24:07 Tower kernel: ata8.00: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x780100 action 0x6
Dec  2 16:24:07 Tower kernel: ata8.00: irq_stat 0x08000000
Dec  2 16:24:07 Tower kernel: ata8: SError: { UnrecovData 10B8B Dispar BadCRC Handshk }
Dec  2 16:24:07 Tower kernel: ata8.00: cmd 25/00:f8:0f:98:b8/00:03:22:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 520192 in
Dec  2 16:24:07 Tower kernel:          res 50/00:00:0e:98:b8/00:00:22:00:00/e0 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
Dec  2 16:24:07 Tower kernel: ata8.00: status: { DRDY }
Dec  2 16:24:07 Tower kernel: ata8: hard resetting link
Dec  2 16:24:07 Tower kernel: ata8: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
Dec  2 16:24:07 Tower kernel: ata8.00: configured for UDMA/133
Dec  2 16:24:07 Tower kernel: ata8: EH complete

 

Are these ok? Or is it a sign of something bad? How can I find out what disk ata8 is exactly?

[Joe L.]

I think it is a sign the disk cannot communicate reliably with the disk controller.  The UnrecovData 10B8B Dispar BadCRC Handshk error seems to indicate the CRC checksum check failed.

 

I'd run SMART reports on the drives themselves, but odds are you'll need to replace the cables to the drives.  They are most likely to (and least expensive to replace) suspects.

 

Because the data cannot be read from the drives reliably, a bit or two probably was mis-read causing the parity errors.  (In effect, parity now matches the mis-read data.)  If you run another parity check, don't be surprised to see the same errors again as it corrects parity to match correctly read data.

 

Joe L.

[madshi]

I'd run SMART reports on the drives themselves

 

How do I do that? Do I have to remove the drivers from unRAID to do that? Or is there a way to run the SMART report directly in unRAID somehow? Thanks!

 

I'll order some replacement cables...

 

P.S: How can I find out which drive is "ata8"?

[Joe L.]

I'd run SMART reports on the drives themselves

 

How do I do that? Do I have to remove the drivers from unRAID to do that? Or is there a way to run the SMART report directly in unRAID somehow? Thanks!

 

I'll order some replacement cables...

 

P.S: How can I find out which drive is "ata8"?

Since this has nothing to do with the new release, I've started a new thread in the Hardware forum for you.

 

It is here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4800.msg43981#msg43981

 

Please post follow-up post in that thread about resolving your disk errors.  (I answered your questions there)

 

Joe L.

[spinbot]

I've been running 4.5-beta6, since I pretty much started with UnRaid ( as I was told it was a decent , stable , release ).    It has been working great for me, however it's been suggested that their are speed improvements in some of the newer beta's that I would benefit from ( and likely other items as well).    I see many releases since then, however i wanted to see if their is a consensus on one of the current beta releases being stable and requiring little more than me replacing bzimage and bzroot files on my flash and rebooting ?

[madshi]

Since this has nothing to do with the new release, I've started a new thread in the Hardware forum for you.

 

Thanks for that. However, I think one of the problems in my syslog might actually have to do with the new release, or actually with the linux kernel currently used:

 

Dec  2 13:09:01 Tower kernel: ata10: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0xf t4
Dec  2 13:09:01 Tower kernel: ata10: hotplug_status 0x2
Dec  2 13:09:01 Tower kernel: ata10: hard resetting link

 

There seems to be a patch available to fix this (or a similar) problem. See this thread:

 

http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-ide/msg33402.html

[Jon]

I've been running 4.5-beta6, since I pretty much started with UnRaid ( as I was told it was a decent , stable , release ).    It has been working great for me, however it's been suggested that their are speed improvements in some of the newer beta's that I would benefit from ( and likely other items as well).    I see many releases since then, however i wanted to see if their is a consensus on one of the current beta releases being stable and requiring little more than me replacing bzimage and bzroot files on my flash and rebooting ?

 

Well, since this beta pretty much only introduces the spinup groups, you could go with this release if you have noticed any of the issues that it has been released to resolve it (basically, 2-3 second pauses in playback whenever a disk spins up...it can get more complicated than that, but that is the gist).

 

If this does not affect you, I would just go with the prior beta 11 release.

[limetech]

Am i correct in saying the group of disk spinup means that when one disk on a controller is needed they all spin up.

 

If so how do i turn this off. I would rather have more disks spun down at the expense of some delay. Heat is my major issue.

 

Joe's earlier answer is exactly right.

[purko]

Am i correct in saying the group of disk spinup means that when one disk on a controller is needed they all spin up.

 

If so how do i turn this off. I would rather have more disks spun down at the expense of some delay. Heat is my major issue.

On the main page in unRAD, click on the names of the disks in turn to open up their respective settings screen.

 

In it is the Spin up group name for that disk.   Tom said you should blank them out if you do not want spin-ups to occur in pairs..

 

Well, that's what I meant when I said 'messy'. 

IMO, this new spinup-groups feature should be disabled by default, and only enabled if desired.

That would be much easier on new users too: they won't need to disable stuff they have no idea what it's about.

 

 

[peter_sm]

IMO, this new spinup-groups feature should be disabled by default, and only enabled if desired.

That would be much easier on new users too: they won't need to disable stuff they have no idea what it's about.

 

+1 

[Joe L.]

IMO, this new spinup-groups feature should be disabled by default, and only enabled if desired.

That would be much easier on new users too: they won't need to disable stuff they have no idea what it's about.

 

+1 

minus  1 

 

The interface to enable/disable this feature will evolve...  I can predict that, if only because the whole user-interface will evolve in unRAID 5.0

 

As far as the feature being enabled by default, I expect most people will not want to see the pauses of movies if they can be eliminated.

(I know my wife was very annoyed by them, especially when we had guests in the theater.)

 

The spin-up groups can be disabled by those who are trying to minimize their power consumption.  It is not that hard, and once (if  ) the documentation of them catches up to their implementation, not an issue.

 

Personally I'd like to see each user-share having the ability to spin up its collection of affiliated drives.  In effect, I'd like each user-share to be able to have feature to enable/disable spin-up of ALL the drives it uses when accessed.  Yes, in my case it would mean spinning up all the drives when I start to scan the Movies share.  It would make use of the media clients on the LAN the easiest for me and my family, all to deal with the media player limitations and timeout issues where I have far less control.

 

I can add this feature myself, by monitoring the access of user-shares and spinning up the drives, but it would be nicer if it was in the default interface.

 

Basically, if using the server as a "Media Server" I do not want it to get in the way of my playing media.  I do not want to wait extra time for spin-up.  The caching of directories helps, but eventually I still need to play the movie selected, and unfortunately, the delay spinning up is enough to cause the time-out of my media clients.  I frequently have to re-select the movie once the drive has spun up.

 

For those of you just storing files, the disabling of spin-up groups takes only a few minutes.  You've probably complained about it longer than it takes to set it on your specific config.   

[WeeboTech]

IMO, this new spinup-groups feature should be disabled by default, and only enabled if desired.

That would be much easier on new users too: they won't need to disable stuff they have no idea what it's about.

 

+1 

 

+1 I agree. 

[Joe L.]

IMO, this new spinup-groups feature should be disabled by default, and only enabled if desired.

That would be much easier on new users too: they won't need to disable stuff they have no idea what it's about.

 

+1 

 

+1 I agree. 

We could argue this both ways.  If delivered disabled then newly installed server gets a poor review by family members because it pauses when playing media and other family members access files.   Yes, it saves a few pennies of cost of power, but if you've spent as much as I have in my theater, that is not where I'm focused.    The poor review by family member when used might lead the user to a different solution, other than unRAID, rather than to purchase a license for more drives.

 

A informed user can disable the feature to save heat/power, after understanding the effect.

 

In my opinion, it should be as Tom has it currently... Initially enabled for the best media playing experience, disabled (for WORSE overall performance/user experience) by choice.

 

On my server, the spin-up groups ended up being the master/slave pairs for all my IDE controllers, so at worst case for me, two drives spin up instead of one.  On an SATA based system, I don't expect to see many spin-up pairs.

 

I did notice one item in the release note that did not get much attention.  Of the three causes of "data freeze", one was in the share file-system.  Tom apparently identified it once the others that might have been masking it were corrected.

It only had one line in the release notes.  I expect it was the cause of many of the data freeze issues in many of the newer systems.  It was only identified because of the feedback in the beta11 thread and tests performed by users.

2. User Share access to a spundown disk causes I/O to freeze on a stream from another User Share disk.  This was caused by a bug which is now fixed.

 

Joe L.

_{edited to add quote from release notes.}

[Guzzi]

Also we shouldn't forget we're evaluating beta versions - and Tom needs feedback if this features works or not; so at least for the beta it is "mandatory" to have it enabled by default.

I am personally not yet sure, if I will use it in the future, will need some more tests. Currently I am dealing with stuttering of mediaportal TV-server via RTSP - while movies from UNraid are fine ;-)

[limetech]

Also we shouldn't forget we're evaluating beta versions - and Tom needs feedback if this features works or not; so at least for the beta it is "mandatory" to have it enabled by default.

I am personally not yet sure, if I will use it in the future, will need some more tests. Currently I am dealing with stuttering of mediaportal TV-server via RTSP - while movies from UNraid are fine ;-)

 

Yes, feedback is what I'm after.

 

The reason spinup groups was created was to solve a hardware problem.  Some users with the right h/w will never need to use spinup groups, and indeed in those cases, the fact that each disk is in it's own unique 'spinup group' will have no effect on the system.

 

On the other hand, it's easier to explain to someone why 2 disks always seem to spin up when they play a movie, rather than try and troubleshoot why video freezes for many seconds - freezes are very bad.

 

Having now implemented the core functionality of spinup groups, there are other uses, e.g., Joe makes a good case for ability to automatically spinup all drives of a user share.

 

So, I like the way it's set up now, in that the initial 'group' each disk is placed in is derived from the linux hard disk driver (via /sys/block).  This eliminates need for the user to somehow figure out if multiple disks are on the same host.

 

I could put a checkbox somewhere that says, "Enable spinup groups".  Yeah, I think I'll do that...

[limetech]

I did notice one item in the release note that did not get much attention.  Of the three causes of "data freeze", one was in the share file-system.  Tom apparently identified it once the others that might have been masking it were corrected.

It only had one line in the release notes.  I expect it was the cause of many of the data freeze issues in many of the newer systems.  It was only identified because of the feedback in the beta11 thread and tests performed by users.

2. User Share access to a spundown disk causes I/O to freeze on a stream from another User Share disk.  This was caused by a bug which is now fixed.

 

Joe L.

_{edited to add quote from release notes.}

 

Yes indeed there was a bug which could cause an I/O stream on a user share to stall when access to a spundown disk via user share occurred.  This was introduced with, of all things, Active Directory support & identified while I was trying to reproduce all the spinup-induced freezes people were reporting.

 

Turns out there were three distinct issues, all causing the same 'freeze' - anytime there is a single symptom being generated by multiple causes, you have a difficult debugging session in store:

 

1. Aforementioned bug - now fixed.

2. Hardware issue with multiple drives on same host controller (addressed now by spinup groups), and

3. Windows single-connection-to-server issue - this one is what made me think issue 1 didn't exist 

 

So as I identified each cause above, and didn't explain all the freezes, well it just got frustrating...

[purko]

I could put a checkbox somewhere that says, "Enable spinup groups".  Yeah, I think I'll do that.

 

Nice!

 

 

[spinbot]

Well, since this beta pretty much only introduces the spinup groups, you could go with this release if you have noticed any of the issues that it has been released to resolve it (basically, 2-3 second pauses in playback whenever a disk spins up...it can get more complicated than that, but that is the gist).

If this does not affect you, I would just go with the prior beta 11 release.

 

I only have one IDE drive, that isn't being used yet ( its will be my cache drive some day ), so I don't believe the spinup issue is a concern for me.  That being said, I will go with your suggestion and install beta 11.

 

I've never upgraded my UnRaid, so from what I've read, all i should have to do is copy the two files over to the flash drive and reboot.    All the other packages/items I've installed should still work .. right?  It took me a while to get the powerdown / email notification working with my APC UPS, so I hope to never have to go through that again

 

[WeeboTech]

I could put a checkbox somewhere that says, "Enable spinup groups".  Yeah, I think I'll do that...

 

I think that's a great idea.

PS> I got a great laugh out of the frustrating animated gif!!! 

[Joe L.]

Well, since this beta pretty much only introduces the spinup groups, you could go with this release if you have noticed any of the issues that it has been released to resolve it (basically, 2-3 second pauses in playback whenever a disk spins up...it can get more complicated than that, but that is the gist).

If this does not affect you, I would just go with the prior beta 11 release.

 

I only have one IDE drive, that isn't being used yet ( its will be my cache drive some day ), so I don't believe the spinup issue is a concern for me.   That being said, I will go with your suggestion and install beta 11.

not true.. you ARE affected by the problems fixed in beta12, even if you have no IDE drives..

The beta12 release fixes two different causes of data freeze.

   (1) it implemented spin-up pairs on IDE drives, and on SATA controllers that are internally operating like IDE drives, to work around their hardware limitations AND

  (2) it fixed a bug that affects you if you access files through user-shares, as the user-share file-system locked while a drive was spinning up. 

  This affects nearly everybody... (unless you do not use user-shares)

 

I've never upgraded my UnRaid, so from what I've read, all i should have to do is copy the two files over to the flash drive and reboot.    All the other packages/items I've installed should still work .. right?   It took me a while to get the powerdown / email notification working with my APC UPS, so I hope to never have to go through that again

 

Yes, you are correct, just replace those two files.  You can even rename the existing two to bzimage.442 and bzroot.442 in case you want to revert. (You'll just need to rename them back to their original names)