Preclear plugin

[mikedpitt420]

Clear the stats from the drive, and you can preclear again.

[csimmons222]

Clear the stats from the drive, and you can preclear again.

 

Thanks,

 

I restarted the server and was able to access the preclear option. 

[jeffreywhunter]

Clear the stats from the drive, and you can preclear again.

 

You mean to click the Red "X"?

[mikedpitt420]

Yes, the red X after the preclear next to the drive, that when you hover over it says "Clear Drive Stats".

[jeffreywhunter]

Just an observation - and no comment on the last response intended. 

 

It appears to me that unRaid wants to become more mainstream in order to reach a broader market/increasing sales - and in doing so, things (i.e. documentation and tolerance of the less educated) have to become more self explanatory.  "Clear Drive Stats", while perfectly understandable to a seasoned IT guy, has little if any meaning to noobs and the less educated.  I would encourage everyone to write the level of documentation and terms that reach the level of customer you want to attract to and grow the community. 

 

That said, unRaid will not probably be a consumer level product - especially since most folks want to build and explore the technology - all cool stuff.  But I do see a lot of posts from semi-technical (or less)folks on the site from reaching up from the "consumer cloud".  There's a lot of revenue to be made in the "consumer cloud", but much more handholding and anticipation of difficult-to-understand concepts/noob questions are required.  And don't get me wrong, I've personally experienced an unbelievable level of support from this community.  Amazing really and a testament to everyone involved.

 

So I said all that to say this (and for the benefit of other less experienced folks coming along)...documentation and usability are key components to success.  Up until the last couple of posts, I, a 30 year veteran in the tech industry (although on a management track for the past 15 years), did not understand that "Clear Drive Stats" meant the mechanism through which I could "Clear the PreClear" off a drive.  In fact, in my most recent experience, I actually had this same problem (ergo my question), because it was a new server, I just hit "new config" to allow me to run PreClear on the drive again.  I'm not one to randomly click on buttons without knowing what they actually do. 

 

Now I know, I can "Reset Preclear (allows Preclear on a previously precleared drive)" by clicking "Clear Drive Stats".  I'd love to see a new standard/practice in UI development with unRaid that would incorporate the power of browsers to imbed knowledge and understanding into the UI.  It would be very easy to put a question-mark icon after each field which then converted techno speak into noob-speak.  So a little question-mark after the red X (or the hover comment) could say, "Clear Drive Stats (clears PreClear drive statistics so that the drive can be pre-cleared again)" would be ever so helpful.  And I can personally think of several dozen places in the unRaid GUI that would be the perfect place to do this.

 

Is there a sub-group in the community that focus on UI development for unRaid?  I'm aware of such groups within other communities (i.e. Joomla, Wordpress, etc), whose sole purpose is to guide the development of the UI to reach the "consumer cloud"...

[trurl]

...  It would be very easy to put a question-mark icon after each field which then converted techno speak into noob-speak...

Not much help in this particular plugin, but the UI has a global Help toggle in the upper right that will give you help (if it exists) for any page. Obviously whether unofficial addons such as this provide much help is up to the individual developers.

[mikedpitt420]

I agree with your sentiment. However, why not take it a step further and say every single piece of software made by everyone has to have a little ? next to every option, explaining every function of every button in plain, non-technical speak? There would be nothing but "?" buttons and hovering explanations as far as the eye could see. Not trying to offend only playing devil's advocate. I think it's pretty well assumed that if you've decided to build and administer your own NAS, that you'll also spend some time learning the in's and out's of the system itself. Could some stuff be explained a bit better? Sure. Does every single button need ? with a non-tech explanation as well? I think not... They've gone as far as making a pretty darned conclusive manual for 6. That being said, it doesn't encompass plugins and add-ons but it sure does get into quite a bit of detail. Like Trurl stated, these plugins are user written. So it's at the user's end to decide whether or not they wish to venture outside of the published unRAID OS and add plugins. Plugins that are distributed knowingly without manuals and actual support from unRAID itself. To me this would be like adding a user generated script to SABNZBD and then being less than thrilled when it doesn't do exactly what it's supposed to, then trying to get the SAB authors to clean it up and write documentation for it.

[RobJ]

It appears to me that unRaid wants to become more mainstream in order to reach a broader market/increasing sales

This is not the first time comments like this have been made, and I shudder every time!  Yes, it would be great for unRAID and LimeTech, but then I think of the accompanying support nightmares!  Trying to support non-technical users is HARD(!), and costly!  I remember someone saying something like, "if X was easier, then LimeTech could make an extra 25 million!".  And it's possible that's true, but I personally believe that gain would be completely or mostly eaten up by the support costs.  Support is generally the most expensive part of software development, I believe.

 

When I look at the General Support board, I get overwhelmed very quickly (I overwhelm easily!).  With the increase in users lately, there is also a big increase in support requests.  I do appreciate however the increase in helpful people there, providing good help too!  A good thing too, because some of us older helpers aren't there as much as we used to be.  I'd love to help, but find myself almost avoiding that board because of the volume.  I'd like to see some stratification of the infra-structure, those who like doing first-line support (welcoming, reassuring, dealing with the simple problems, requesting the needed info, categorizing and passing on the harder issues), and the more specialized helpers who deal with the different categories of harder issues.  I have no idea how to make it happen though.

 

I'd love to see a new standard/practice in UI development with unRaid that would incorporate the power of browsers to imbed knowledge and understanding into the UI.  It would be very easy to put a question-mark icon after each field which then converted techno speak into noob-speak.  So a little question-mark after the red X (or the hover comment) could say, "Clear Drive Stats (clears PreClear drive statistics so that the drive can be pre-cleared again)" would be ever so helpful.  And I can personally think of several dozen places in the unRaid GUI that would be the perfect place to do this.

 

Is there a sub-group in the community that focus on UI development for unRaid?  I'm aware of such groups within other communities (i.e. Joomla, Wordpress, etc), whose sole purpose is to guide the development of the UI to reach the "consumer cloud"...

 

These are great ideas, probably the kind of thing that happens as a product matures.  We're at that point I think, and UI and infrastructure standards would be a good thing to begin building.  I do think that LimeTech developers (and I especially include bonienl in that list) have the primary lead here, because the one thing that helps the most in UI consistency and style is the tools and guidance provided by them (think 'Material Design').  If the current Help system was made easily available to plugin developers, that would go a long way towards making the Help system more universally used.  If a little question mark was wanted, for either click-on or hover-over help, then they would need to provide the tool, in a way that plugin authors (and perhaps even third party writers) could easily and consistently use.  As an example, Squid's work (templates, etc) has been forcing consistency on container preparers.

 

I particularly hope that third party help would be possible, as none of us are universally gifted.  Those who are great in authoring plugins and dockers are not necessarily good at the help needed by beginners.  Others here would be much better at adding the hand-holding and readable detail needed, guided by the original authors of course.

 

And I can personally think of several dozen places in the unRaid GUI that would be the perfect place to do this.

Can you list those?  Collecting suggestions like this would be a start to smoothing the rough edges.  Perhaps we need a common place for users' UI suggestions, where current wording is awkward or wrong, and where help improvements are needed.  But as was said above, probably the best place is in the relevant thread.  I think most authors welcome such suggestions.

[Squid]

If the current Help system was made easily available to plugin developers, that would go a long way towards making the Help system more universally used.

It is easily available to all plugins. 

 

Here's the HTML code for a button within Dynamix

<input type='button' value='This is a Button'></input>

Here's the HTML code for a button that also has Dynamix Help Text

<input type='button' value='This is a Button'></input>

> This is a sample help text

 

I really don't think that it can get much easier than that.  The problem is that adding the help is almost an after thought for most plugin authors.  And that is something that LT cannot enforce.  (Although that I can speak from experience that jonp does try and get the plugin authors to add the help text in)

 

CA ( and its predecessor CR ) had an additional problem however with the help system in that it is only designed to display static content (this option does this, that option does something else, etc) whereas CA deals with dynamic displays.  CR experimented with "context aware" help in that the content displayed would adjust itself according to what was currently being displayed on the screen, and additionally included fully functional buttons, etc within the help to try and make things even easier.  But, that was merely an experiment just to see what could be done.  CA however had to completely ditch unRaid's help system altogether simply because of the range of options available and the ever changing content displayed.  I instead went with an online manual for the system (a link displays for it if you hit help).

 

TBH, while the little question marks may be useful, I do feel that the current system suffices in most cases.  Additionally, tooltips can be added to anything in HTML (admittedly not useful for mobile devices).

 

The only thing which I am still rather surprised that is missing from unRaid is a local version of the manual.  jonp went to alot of time and effort to write up a rather decent manual for unRaid 6, and there's not a single place within unRaid itself where you can actually access it from without first going to LT's website. 

 

 

I believe that whenever a good suggestion is made in the forums regarding the UI as a whole the powers that be do take notice.  The operation of the DONE button comes immediately to mind.

[bonienl]

Perhaps people are not used to the way help is implemented in unRAID. Instead of clicking on or hovering over individual fields to get help, there is a general help on/off feature. Once ON, help will be displayed on every page which has help available.

 

As explained by Squid, adding help context is dead easy. Any line starting with "> " is considered help and displayed as such. For many developers however - including myself - help is really the last thing which gets attention, if any attention at all. It can't be forced unless LT starts a plugin approval programme which can reject incomplete or incorrect plugins. Don't think that will ever happen though, so it is really up to the plugin developers to give it the required attention.

 

Back in the days of version 5, there was no built-in help at all in the GUI. When development of version 6 started there was a new approach chosen and this approach is still in force. During further development of version 6, and especially when Dynamix became integrated, at lot of effort was done to get help text on (almost) every standard GUI page.

 

The question was raised before whether another (more intuitive?) approach is possible, the short answer is yes of course, but it requires all existing pages to be converted which is a considerable amount of work, and therfore decided at the time not to pursue any further. Focus was/is on many other aspects in the v6 development.

 

Not sure if already done so, but it can be made a feature request. That way it stays visible and time and priorities permitted, it can be worked at.

 

 

[Squid]

It can't be forced unless LT starts a plugin approval programme which can reject incomplete or incorrect plugins. Don't think that will ever happen though, so it is really up to the plugin developers to give it the required attention.

Agree that it will probably never happen.  (And TBH, I don't think that the lack of any help text is a valid reason for rejecting a plugin if such a system did exist)  Closest thing is the moderation comments / blacklists and unRaid version overrides that CA already has incorporated into it for both plugins and docker apps.

[Frank1940]

 

The only thing which I am still rather surprised that is missing from unRaid is a local version of the manual.  jonp went to alot of time and effort to write up a rather decent manual for unRaid 6, and there's not a single place within unRaid itself where you can actually access it from without first going to LT's website. 

 

 

I have generated a PDF file of the jonp documentation by copying it into MS Word and formatting it to look like a printed manual complete with a Table of Contents.  However it is larger than the 192KB limit (even after I zipped it) so I couldn't upload it to the forum as an attachment.  I am wondering if one of you might know (or have) a website which is free which could host the file (or be willing to host it on your site)?  The zipped file is about 1.4MB in size.

 

In the mean time, if you would like a copy of it, PM me with your e-mail address and I will send it to you. 

[Frank1940]

Does the user community wiki allow for file attachments?

 

My searching found that I could upload a file to the WIKI area and the maximum size file is 8 MB BUT the permitted types are only graphic type files (.jpg, .jnp , etc.).  I guess I could do the old 'trick' of adding a second extension to get around that problem.  But the next issue would be on how to direct people to find it. 

 

If someone has some tips, hints or ideas, I would be willing to try them.

[wgstarks]

I think the best solution would be for LimeTech to host it. They could modify it as necessary for 6.2+. Add graphics as necessary. Etc.

 

You could share it on Dropbox. The free account is 2GB. Would still have a problem with people being able to find it though.

[jeffreywhunter]

Support is generally the most expensive part of software development, I believe.

 

As an example, Squid's work (templates, etc) has been forcing consistency on container preparers.  I particularly hope that third party help would be possible, as none of us are universally gifted.  Those who are great in authoring plugins and dockers are not necessarily good at the help needed by beginners.  Others here would be much better at adding the hand-holding and readable detail needed, guided by the original authors of course.

 

I completely agree with you.  It is the hardest and most difficult/expensive thing to do in software development.  That's why few do it well - for all the painful reasons you describe.  And the crazy thing is customers really do appreciate good support...mostly because they don't get much of it!

 

That said, there is a way and the good news is we don't have to create it from scratch.  We just need to incorporate the strategy, tactics and technology others have built for us - and that combined with the amazing braintrust that the Lime community already enjoys.  What I'd recommend is a three pronged pathway...  1. Knowledge capture/refinement; 2. Best practices in online troubleshooting guidance or wizards and development standards (aka Squid's efforts)...and 3. (and most important) enable the community to make money off the technology.

 

1. Knowledge capture

>> Current Status:  This, in a rough form, is already being done.  As a (more than the average) technical consumer, I know enough about hardware/software and OS's and can use Google and keywords to find/recognize answers.  Usually "unRaid [description of error message or problem]" almost always comes up with a number of links to find answers.  And you guys do a great job of working problems out. 

>>The Problem:  However, that knowledge is not curated and it ages quickly as new versions come out (I see lots of WARNING: DEPRECATED in various places...good to know and A answer, but makes finding THE answer hard).  As a new user, I've been frustrated by that mass of information that is no longer applicable (i.e. Wiki's are great - if they are maintained!  Have you tried to verify if a motherboard or hba is supported lately?).

>>The Challenge of a Solution:  So the challenge is, how to capture that knowledge in a 'newbie friendly' way.  I believe the best least-cost, easiest to implement successfully manner is a three layer support strategy.  Most technical/developer types HATE documentation/support.  It slows them down and wastes their time.  And that is a critical truth.  So part of the solution is to isolate the braintrust from the frustration and challenge of documentation/support and build a layer of trusted second layer of support.  This second layer support team are the ONLY ones who have access to the brain trust.  The point being that 2nd level support is presumed to have enough knowledge to handle most of the customer interfaces (the old 80/20 rule reigns supreme!).  Actually, because of the quality of the individuals involved, unRaid is probably more like 90/10...  So that leaves us with first line support.  This is where technology comes in.

 

2. Best Practices/Tools

>> Best Practices in Customer Support:  Knowledge based systems have really matured in the last 5 years.  I believe that if Lime-Tech were to invest (and I'm speaking of time...) in one of the many open source knowledge management/trouble ticketing systems (for escalation), after a short time of pain (i.e. you have to capture the knowledge and package it/manage it, etc), the payoff would be huge.  Some of the new systems are really sophisticated and designed to capture knowledge at the point of support, turning emails/support tickets into knowledgebase articles, and so forth.  I'd look closely at some of the support tools put in place by other community based products like Joomla, Wordpress, etc.

>> Development Standards:  Making support easier starts with standards.  When many of the open source software started to appear, it was fraught with many issues regarding how people developed - and created support nightmares - and actually killed a few developments.  They finally woke up and built standards committees who guided the process with input from the development community and actually created something beautiful.  Its been done, we just need to capture that knowledge/tools/methods and implement.

 

3. Support created through Monetization

>>Monetizing the community:  I think the most important key to the long-term success of Lime-Tech/unRaid and the growth of the unRaid product/community comes from enabling the the community to make money.  If Lime-Tech can grasp the concept of allowing others to make money from their technology, nearly anything can happen (capitalism is alive and well!).  If you look at some of the parallel open source communities, they have had and beaten the same issue (little market share, no money, no support).  Essentially, Joomla/Wordpress (for example) have built massive support infrastructures which the "common user" can take advantage of.  Plugin providers provide 'free' and 'paid' versions of their plugins (I'm sure you're aware that Plex charges for some of their apps/services), and some companies provide development/support services for systems fee-based (in addition to marketing services/business development strategies, my company does just what I'm talking about, once we build a business strategy for a customer, we use Joomla/Wordpress to create websites, then provide outsourced hosting/support services on an outsourced retainer basis).

 

All this can work, just needs someone to build the strategies/tactics and for Lime-Tech to 'get' the concepts and support the communities ability to make money from the technology.  In the end, this would provide Lime-Tech with the ability/funding to focus even more on making the unRaid technology even better than it is.  This is actually something I'd be interested in discussing with whomever would drive such things...  I see a significant parallel between Joomla/Wordpress (etc) and unRaid.  Thousands of developers/companies WORLDWIDE contribute to the core product (Joomla/Wordpress, etc) and don't get paid a cent, but most if not all of them make a good living using their expertise combined with an intimate knowledge of the core technology to create cool things that excite/envision customers to the point of paying hard cash to have access to working product.

[thestewman]

 

The only thing which I am still rather surprised that is missing from unRaid is a local version of the manual.  jonp went to alot of time and effort to write up a rather decent manual for unRaid 6, and there's not a single place within unRaid itself where you can actually access it from without first going to LT's website. 

 

 

I have generated a PDF file of the jonp documentation by copying it into MS Word and formatting it to look like a printed manual complete with a Table of Contents.  However it is larger than the 192KB limit (even after I zipped it) so I couldn't upload it to the forum as an attachment.  I am wondering if one of you might know (or have) a website which is free which could host the file (or be willing to host it on your site)?  The zipped file is about 1.4MB in size.

 

In the mean time, if you would like a copy of it, PM me with your e-mail address and I will send it to you.

 

Here is a link to Frank1940's PDF file that he has made available to Unraid users

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55205296/UnRAID%20Manual%206.pdf

[Frank1940]

 

The only thing which I am still rather surprised that is missing from unRaid is a local version of the manual.  jonp went to alot of time and effort to write up a rather decent manual for unRaid 6, and there's not a single place within unRaid itself where you can actually access it from without first going to LT's website. 

 

 

I have generated a PDF file of the jonp documentation by copying it into MS Word and formatting it to look like a printed manual complete with a Table of Contents. 

 

......

 

In the mean time, if you would like a copy of it, PM me with your e-mail address and I will send it to you.

 

Here is a link to Frank1940's PDF file that he has made available to Unraid users

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55205296/UnRAID%20Manual%206.pdf

 

Thank you for doing this!!!!  I could see where e-mailing copies could become a bit of a chore if I posted up the offer on separate thread! 

[jeffreywhunter]

Nice Manual, THANKS!

[Josh7890]

I'm running this plugin on a newly-built unRAID 6.1.6 server, but I can't get it to see my unassigned disk(s).

 

I'm running the unRAID free trial because I'm still waiting for delivery of the flash drive that I'll be using long-term. I have an SSD cache drive and two 4 TB HDD data drives. Originally I assigned one HDD as parity and the other as data, but then I realized that I should pre-clear the drives. So, I removed the parity drive from the array since the trial requires one data drive, and that drive is now visible on the Main tab as not assigned to the array.

 

I added the script to the /boot/config/plugins/preclear.disk/, started up the server again, and the web GUI for the plugin tells me it can't find any unassigned disks.

 

(As a side issue, I ran the preclear script through SSH from my Mac overnight, but it stalled after an hour without an obvious error and I'm not sure why. I put my Mac to sleep around the same time, so maybe that's why. I doubt this is related to the plugin since I ran the script without it, but I thought I'd mention it in case it's relevant.)

 

Any ideas?

 

Edit: Screenshots here: http://i.imgur.com/BpYPo2i.png

 

and here: http://i.imgur.com/dDSU913.png - I expect that the disk labelled sdb here would display in the screen above.

 

[thestewman]

 

Not absolutely sure but your screenshot of the system shows it is stopped.

Have you tried rebooting and starting the system

[Josh7890]

Not sure what I did, but it's working now with a new install.

 

In case this helps: I installed unRAID on a new flash drive, and installed the preclear plugin and script. The unassigned (and now never-assigned) drives showed up right away on the Settings/Preclear page. I tried preclearing one drive but it failed immediately due to lack of a boot.cfg file. Not wanting to add either HDD to my array, I registered a key (bought unRAID Plus), added my SSD cache drive assuming that this would create the boot.cfg file (it did), and now my first two HDD's are going through the preclear process.

[danioj]

I have just had the need to install a new 8TB drive into each of my Backup and Main Servers and thought I would give this plugin a whirl. I have to say, from installation to execution so far this is an excellent piece of work and a pleasure to use.

 

All those reasons to drop to the command line, using screen etc etc are all just disappearing into the realms of distant memory ...... 

 

It is work like this through the hard work of the community, in the addition of the bells and whistles like this (rounding off what is already and excellent product by Limetech) which make unRAID a very practical and essential piece of software in my life not to mention a joy to use with minimal effort.

 

Thank you gfjardim. Haven't seen you around since November so I hope you are on an extended Christmas / New Year break and will be coming back soon!

 

P.S. My only note to give was that I like others wanted to use Brians "Faster" preclear script (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=32564). I might have missed it but I didn't see a note in the thread saying that the script had to be named "preclear_disk.sh" in order for the plugin to find it. Pretty easy to figure out and once renamed everything was rosey. This is just in case anyone else has this issue and comes across this post!

 

Only 3 cycles and 117 Hours to go!!   

[JorgeB]

Probably a good idea to add to initial page that to preclear disks on an empty server disk.cfg has to exist, quick and easy way is to do a new config, this will create a new disk.cfg even if there are no disks assign to the array.

[jeffreywhunter]

It is work like this through the hard work of the community, in the addition of the bells and whistles like this (rounding off what is already and excellent product by Limetech) which make unRAID a very practical and essential piece of software in my life not to mention a joy to use with minimal effort.

 

And I add my thanks to you gfjardim as well.  Great bit of "usability".  Well done.  Can't wait for your next addition.

[danioj]

I have just had the need to install a new 8TB drive into each of my Backup and Main Servers and thought I would give this plugin a whirl. I have to say, from installation to execution so far this is an excellent piece of work and a pleasure to use.

 

All those reasons to drop to the command line, using screen etc etc are all just disappearing into the realms of distant memory ...... 

 

It is work like this through the hard work of the community, in the addition of the bells and whistles like this (rounding off what is already and excellent product by Limetech) which make unRAID a very practical and essential piece of software in my life not to mention a joy to use with minimal effort.

 

Thank you gfjardim. Haven't seen you around since November so I hope you are on an extended Christmas / New Year break and will be coming back soon!

 

P.S. My only note to give was that I like others wanted to use Brians "Faster" preclear script (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=32564). I might have missed it but I didn't see a note in the thread saying that the script had to be named "preclear_disk.sh" in order for the plugin to find it. Pretty easy to figure out and once renamed everything was rosey. This is just in case anyone else has this issue and comes across this post!

 

Only 3 cycles and 117 Hours to go!!   

 

Given this is in BETA here is my feedback:

 

As I mention in my above post I just ran the preclear plugin (using Brians faster script - see above post for link) across my 2 production severs for the latest round of preclears I needed to run:

 

Main:Define R5:X10SL7-F:E3-1241v3:32GB ECC UB:HX850i

Backup:DS380:C2550D4I:C2550:4GB ECC UB:ST45SF-G

 

Note: As not to double up with posts (or post off topic) I did post the actual S.M.A.R.T results in the following post under the "Storage Devices and Controllers" section of the forum for those who are interested in the drives specifically:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=39526.msg433798#msg433798

 

Back to the plugin, Nothing to fault whatsoever. Both disks cleared without an issue and the plugin ran stable. No errors in the syslog to speak about which could be attributed to this plugin. GUI was accessed many many many times over the 140+ hours that the preclear(s) were running across both servers and not a flinch was seen. The preview of the progress (via clicking the 'eye") is a nice touch BUT after a glance at the beginning, middle and end the status on the Main page is more than sufficient for status. Excellent I would say in fact.

 

For those who are interested, attached is how the GUI looked AFTER a successful preclear!

 

Excellent experience so far!!

 

As a side note, the plugin HAS to be close to coming out of BETA given it has been in that state since: 18 May 2015.