No assigned disks

[Herdo]

I'm installing a new UPS, and when I rebooted my unRAID server I couldn't access the web gui (webpage was unresponsive) after about 20 minutes I hard shut down the server.

 

Upon rebooting the server, I've found that none of the disks are assigned!  The only thing left is the cache drive.

 

Not sure what the safest way to proceed is.  I know all the data is there, but I'm not sure if fixing this is possible.

 

Any ideas?

 

 

unraid-diagnostics-20160829-1508.zip

[Herdo]

Nevermind.  I think that was easier than I thought it would be.

 

I found another post which said I just need to identify the parity drive and then re add them all.

 

I've got them all back online now with sdc as the parity, and sdd and sde as the data drives.

 

Doing a parity check now.

 

 

For the future, is there a better way to shutdown the server when it times out like that?  This is at least the third time this has happened to me.  Luckily the first two times was before I had any data on the array when I was initially setting it up.

[JonathanM]

I've got them all back online now with sdc as the parity, and sdd and sde as the data drives.

I certainly hope you picked the correct drives, as the sd? designations can move around depending on the order they get recognized. You should only be identifying drives using the serial numbers, that way you can't mix them up. If you accidentally put a data drive in the parity slot, it will get irretrievably erased.

[Herdo]

Sorry, I should have been more clear.

 

I assigned the drives as data drives, then SSHed into the unRAID server and checked their contents.  disk1(sdd) had data, and disk2(sde) had data.  sdc was the parity drive.

 

 

EDIT:  Also, from the web gui while it's doing the parity sync I can navigate to "Main" and click the little folder icon labeled "View" for disk1 and disk2 and see the shares.  I have "Movies" assigned to only disk1 and "TV" assigned to only disk2, and they are both showing their expected contents.

 

Thanks jonathanm, I'm going to catalog their serial numbers for when this happens again.

[Herdo]

Well the parity-sync completed without issue so I went back to test out my new UPS.  Same issue again.  The web gui is completely timed out and inaccessible so I tried powering down the server using:

 

/sbin/powerdown

 

It initiated a shutdown, but then got stuck on "Starting Diagnostics Collecting..."  It was stuck like that for a good 30 minutes before I pressed ctrl+C, which then caused the terminal to display a warning saying "SERVER WILL HALT IMMEDIATELY!"

 

I left it like that for another 20 minutes or so before I gave up waiting and I held the power button down.

 

 

 

I found a thread where someone else seemed to be having a similar issue and they deleted their super.dat file which seemed to fix the problem.  https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=47659.0

 

I'm currently rebuilding parity again without the UPS hooked up.  I had this issue, or at least a similar issue before the UPS so I'm fairly certain that isn't the problem, but I'm going to test it anyways.  I'm also going to remove the flash drive tomorrow morning and run chkdisk.

 

Is there anything else I should be looking at?  Is it possible the server is just busy doing something?  I think I read a thread where someone mentioned the server could take a couple hours doing something (can't remember what) when initially started and the web gui might be unresponsive.

 

 

 

 

EDIT:  OK, the parity-sync was going extremely slow.  It usually runs at about 150MB/sec but was running at about 15MB/sec.  I noticed there were several "streams" running on my shares, which was weird because I wasn't accessing them in any way.  I decided to stop the parity-sync and check the flash drive right away.

 

I plugged it into a Windows machine and immediately I got a prompt saying "There are issues with this device".  I clicked on the "Scan and Fix" button and Windows did its thing.  It finished, said it fixed the device, and there were no errors.  I ran chkdsk on it anyways which also showed no problems.

 

I then plugged it back in to the unRAID server and everything booted up perfectly.  It's rebuilding parity right now at 165MB/sec so I'm going to leave it overnight to finish. 

 

I'm not sure what this means exactly.  Maybe I need a new flash drive, or maybe it just got shutdown wrong or something?

[Frank1940]

OK, the flash drive can cause problems on shutdown as it updates several files (and if your have the powerdown plugin installed, it will write the syslog file to the flash drive).  So if your flash drive was unwriteable, you can see why it is possible for the shutdown process to fail. 

 

When you allowed Windows to 'Scan and Fix', it essentially did a chkdsk at that time.  Your subsequent chkdsk  essentially verified that it did the job. 

 

One thing I would suggest you do (after the rebuild is done) is to stop the array and copy the entire contents of your flash drive back to your computer as a backup! 

 

As to what caused the problem with the flash drive.  One possibility is that the server went down while it was in the process of writing to the flash drive.  This should have been repaired by the 'Scan and Fix'.  Second possibility is that the Flash Drive is failing.  That is why you want a copy of the contents!  (Having that backup, it takes less than five minutes to have a new flash drive ready and your server booting with the new drive.  You do then have to update your .key file but you  can usually do that on-line from the GUI.)

[Herdo]

 

Thanks Frank1940, I've made a backup of the flash drive.

 

I've also found the problem, and unfortunately it IS the UPS. 

 

Parity-sync completed fine.  I shutdown and restarted the server 3 times without any issue before I decided to try the UPS again.  It actually booted and allowed me into the web GUI this time, but all the disks were listed as "missing".  I did a clean shutdown and tried again.  Same problem; all disks missing.

 

So I unplugged the USB and the power cords from the UPS and started up the server.  This time there were no problems whatsoever.  All disks were there where they should be and the array started on its own.

 

Very weird.

 

Maybe it has something to do with my settings?

 

 

Aside from the "Start APC UPC Daemon" which I normally have set to "Yes", these are the settings I am using.

 

 

Because the server didn't fully lock up like it normally does, I was able to grab a diagnostics report.

 

The UPS I'm using is the CyberPower CP1000PFCLCD.

unraid-diagnostics-20160830-1438.zip

[Frank1940]

IF I understand you correctly, the flash drive will not boot when the USB cord from the UPS is plugged in and it boots perfectly when the USB cable is disconnected.  And all of this is without any repair of the flash drive. 

 

If this is correct, then I suspect the problem is in the USB connection(s).  Are you using a USB3 connector for either the Flash Drive or the UPS?  There have been a number of instances where USB3 does not 'play well' with Flash Drives and also with UPS's UPS connection.  The solution is to use USB2 ports for these devices.  (The problem seems to be an interaction between the MB, its BIOS and the LINUX kernel so the problem does not happen in every case...) 

 

If you need more USB2 ports, there are usually several unused UBS ports on most MB's and there are inexpensive adapters with two or four USB2 sockets that use a card slot to present them at the rear of the case.

[Herdo]

Both the USB flashdrive and the USB UPS cord are connected to USB 2.0 ports. 

 

It's like it's getting stuck mounting the disks.  I can usually SSH in and see /mnt/disk1, but there is no /mnt/disk2 and disk1 is empty.

 

 

EDIT:  I thought I'd try a USB 3.0 port because I'm out of ideas.  So far, it's working perfectly.  I first tried the NUT plugin instead of the default APC plugin, but it had the same issue.  After switching to the USB 3.0 port, the NUT plugin is working beautifully.

 

I haven't tested the APC plugin yet, but I think I'm going to keep using the NUT plugin anyways as it can actually shut down the UPS immediately after the server is shutdown.

 

I still have no idea why this would be happening.

[Frank1940]

Both the USB flashdrive and the USB UPS cord are connected to USB 2.0 ports. 

 

It's like it's getting stuck mounting the disks.  I can usually SSH in and see /mnt/disk1, but there is no /mnt/disk2 and disk1 is empty.

 

 

EDIT:  I thought I'd try a USB 3.0 port because I'm out of ideas.  So far, it's working perfectly.  I first tried the NUT plugin instead of the default APC plugin, but it had the same issue.  After switching to the USB 3.0 port, the NUT plugin is working beautifully.

 

I haven't tested the APC plugin yet, but I think I'm going to keep using the NUT plugin anyways as it can actually shut down the UPS immediately after the server is shutdown.

 

I still have no idea why this would be happening.

 

This is a new one for me.  However, I have a Yubikey (a second-factor authentication device) that I have plugged into one of the USBs port on the front of my main computer.  Whenever I plug in a USB drive into the other one, the Yubikey goes offline, and I have to remove it and replug after I take the drive out.  (The key has a LED on it so I know when it happens.)  It could be something similar...

[Herdo]

Both the USB flashdrive and the USB UPS cord are connected to USB 2.0 ports. 

 

It's like it's getting stuck mounting the disks.  I can usually SSH in and see /mnt/disk1, but there is no /mnt/disk2 and disk1 is empty.

 

 

EDIT:  I thought I'd try a USB 3.0 port because I'm out of ideas.  So far, it's working perfectly.  I first tried the NUT plugin instead of the default APC plugin, but it had the same issue.  After switching to the USB 3.0 port, the NUT plugin is working beautifully.

 

I haven't tested the APC plugin yet, but I think I'm going to keep using the NUT plugin anyways as it can actually shut down the UPS immediately after the server is shutdown.

 

I still have no idea why this would be happening.

 

This is a new one for me.  However, I have a Yubikey (a second-factor authentication device) that I have plugged into one of the USBs port on the front of my main computer.  Whenever I plug in a USB drive into the other one, the Yubikey goes offline, and I have to remove it and replug after I take the drive out.  (The key has a LED on it so I know when it happens.)  It could be something similar...

 

I was thinking the same thing, but I tried the APC daemon again using the USB 3.0 port and it screwed up again.  That may have been my fault though because I forgot to plug the UPS back in and it immediately got the "shutdown" command when I booted it back up, haha.  I'll try it again later tonight.  Either way, the NUT plugin is working great.

 

Thanks for the help.