Preclear plugin


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3 minutes ago, Squid said:

Ok
I thought there was also an option to simply write the sig. But I'm the first to admit that I'm ignorant (even without my wife's prodding)

It's all good... your knowledge on other unRAID issues has helped me and many others countless times. You can't be expected to know about things you don't use or deal with yourself, at least until you get informed. I don't have a wife, but my pets often remind me that I'm ignoring them... not quite the same as ignorant, but similar! :D

 

6 minutes ago, Squid said:

Ashamed to admit that I no longer live up to my teenage ethos of "it's better to burn out than fade away"

Ahh, so a Neil Young or Highlander fan are you? Of course that phrase has appeared in a few other pop culture references, including Kurt Cobain's suicide note and songs from many. Now that I've essentially been forced into retirement from my main career, I've joined the 'burn-out' culture in the form of my medical cannabis usage. Though not entirely true... I've found some of the sativa strains really do give me a burst of energy, focus and creativity! 🤣

 

 

 

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EDIT:

 

After more digging, I have a guess at what is happening:

 

The errors from the previous read failures may be permanently stored in the drive's SMART error log.  After preclear completion, the plugin gathers a SMART report that presumably includes these previous errors and includes them in the preclear log.

 

It's possible that the plugin tries to determine whether these errors were logged before the preclear run.  It could compare the "power on hours" at the start of the preclear to the "power on hours" of the logged errors.  In my case, however, both values were 4772, so there may be no way for the plugin to know that the errors preceded the preclear run.

 

Does this seem correct?  If so, it seems like an unavoidable and rare quirk, and I'm happy to move on.

 

ORIGINAL POST:

 

Quote

 

I just ran preclear on a disk that was showing signs of trouble, and I'm not sure how to interpret the results.

 

The display says "Preclear Finished Successfully!", but the preclear log (attached) shows errors (Aug 22 20:00:08).  The syslog shows similar errors from a failed pre-read the day before (Aug 21 19:15:28, diagnostics attached).

 

Are the preclear log errors just delayed versions of the errors in the syslog?

 

Some history of the drive, which had been one of the dual parity drives:

 

A few weeks ago, I started seeing increases to the "Current pending sector" and "Offline uncorrectable" SMART attributes.  It was just a couple jumps, and the "Reallocated sector count" and "Reallocated event count" are still zero, so I still have some hope for the drive.

 

I replaced the drive with a new one, and have started to try to recover this drive.  As mentioned, the first preclear failed at the pre-read step.  To try to force sector reallocations if needed, I ran a preclear pass without the pre-read.  The "Current pending sector" attribute dropped to zero, but "Offline uncorrectable" stayed the same.

 

I'm running an extended SMART test now to see if that uncovers anything different than preclear.  If that's successful, I intend to run another couple preclear passes, at least.  Any thoughts on what I should be looking for?

 

preclear_disk_WD-WX11DC57S8AX_94806.txt sf-unraid-diagnostics-20190822-2211.zip

Edited by fritzdis
New info
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I am using preclear for the first time.

 

I installed 2 seagate drives that I knew had issues and 1 brand new 10TB WD RED.

 

The 2 Seagate drives I knew had issues eventually both failed the pre-read, and the new WD passed.

 

image.png.f3e3bc797cd96b1239dcbc63b40f2da0.png

 

The WD Continued into zeroing as far as 21%. 

 

The logs look good for 5-20%.

image.png.eaa813da38e62a0a3689e1bda40a2f51.png

 

Each 5% has generally taken less than a hour.

 

Preclear has now been stuck on 21% for over 3 hours, and there is no activity on the drive LED.

 

Before I cancel it and retry, is there anything I can grab to assist the author with checking why it froze without showing any error message?

 

Pete.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi all, just starting a preclear on a new WD 8TB white label. As soon as I started it these errors started appearing in the log - it seems quite happy to continue though (currently 4% into the pre-read after 30 mins)

Sep 01 18:34:06 preclear_disk_7SKY8XEW_18413: syslog: sd 5:0:6:0: [sdh] tag#1 UNKNOWN(0x2003) Result: hostbyte=0x0b driverbyte=0x00
Sep 01 18:34:06 preclear_disk_7SKY8XEW_18413: syslog: sd 5:0:6:0: [sdh] tag#1 CDB: opcode=0x88 88 00 00 00 00 00 23 84 9e 00 00 00 04 00 00 00
Sep 01 18:34:06 preclear_disk_7SKY8XEW_18413: syslog: print_req_error: I/O error, dev sdh, sector 595893760
Sep 01 18:34:06 preclear_disk_7SKY8XEW_18413: syslog: sd 5:0:6:0: [sdh] tag#2 UNKNOWN(0x2003) Result: hostbyte=0x0b driverbyte=0x00
Sep 01 18:34:06 preclear_disk_7SKY8XEW_18413: syslog: sd 5:0:6:0: [sdh] tag#2 CDB: opcode=0x88 88 00 00 00 00 00 23 84 a2 00 00 00 02 00 00 00
Sep 01 18:34:06 preclear_disk_7SKY8XEW_18413: syslog: print_req_error: I/O error, dev sdh, sector 595894784

This doesn't look good to me - anyone know if it's anything to worry about - couldn't find anything with a quick Google

 

Thanks!

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On 9/1/2019 at 6:38 PM, itfcjim said:

Hi all, just starting a preclear on a new WD 8TB white label. As soon as I started it these errors started appearing in the log - it seems quite happy to continue though (currently 4% into the pre-read after 30 mins)


Sep 01 18:34:06 preclear_disk_7SKY8XEW_18413: syslog: sd 5:0:6:0: [sdh] tag#1 UNKNOWN(0x2003) Result: hostbyte=0x0b driverbyte=0x00
Sep 01 18:34:06 preclear_disk_7SKY8XEW_18413: syslog: sd 5:0:6:0: [sdh] tag#1 CDB: opcode=0x88 88 00 00 00 00 00 23 84 9e 00 00 00 04 00 00 00
Sep 01 18:34:06 preclear_disk_7SKY8XEW_18413: syslog: print_req_error: I/O error, dev sdh, sector 595893760
Sep 01 18:34:06 preclear_disk_7SKY8XEW_18413: syslog: sd 5:0:6:0: [sdh] tag#2 UNKNOWN(0x2003) Result: hostbyte=0x0b driverbyte=0x00
Sep 01 18:34:06 preclear_disk_7SKY8XEW_18413: syslog: sd 5:0:6:0: [sdh] tag#2 CDB: opcode=0x88 88 00 00 00 00 00 23 84 a2 00 00 00 02 00 00 00
Sep 01 18:34:06 preclear_disk_7SKY8XEW_18413: syslog: print_req_error: I/O error, dev sdh, sector 595894784

This doesn't look good to me - anyone know if it's anything to worry about - couldn't find anything with a quick Google

 

Thanks!

Just to follow up on this, the preclear finally finished (46 hours later). I ran an extended SMART report afterwards which reported no errors so I'm going ahead and using the disk

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3 minutes ago, itfcjim said:

Just to follow up on this, the preclear finally finished (46 hours later). I ran an extended SMART report afterwards which reported no errors so I'm going ahead and using the disk

Although I'm not one of the experts here, 46 hours for one full pass of the preclear (pre-read, zero and post-read) isn't unreasonable. I get similar numbers for my 10TB drives, but my 8TB preclears usually take about 40 hrs.

 

I've seen similar errors in my syslog as well, but as the drive passed the preclear and as no SMART errors were of concern, I've used those drives with no issues. I suspect you are fine, but I too would be interested to know why random sectors report errors that don't affect the preclear. Perhaps those are dealt with through the drive's sector reallocation list but SMART has shown no re-allocated sectors for any of the drives that saw those errors.

 

In any case, I think you're safe to not be concerned with using the drive. Hope it all goes well... now that I've had my connection issues resolved for a month, I'm finding the system to be extremely stable. I haven't even seen one UDMA CRC error, which are fully recoverable but do tend to indicate connection issues.

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Thanks! 

 

Strangely enough I've just started preclear on another two of these drives and haven't seen any errors in the log whatsoever... So perhaps a dodgy cable or something on the first one, I'll have to check

 

I'm lucky enough to have bought most of my drives from Amazon so at the first sniff of any SMART error - even UDMA CRC, I get on live chat and get the drive replaced! I spend so much at Amazon for both personal and business that they're always happy to oblige...

 

All the best

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello guys, can someone who understand this SMART reports look on mine and give me some advice

This is refurbished WD Green, i bought for temporary storage. Was working fine under windows until i decided to copy there a lot of data. But after i got issue to copy data from drive.

I done clear and erase on disk

Before i got errors in SMART, after doing this no smart errors overall, but in report this things flagged making me worry.

Do i need to throw this drive into bin, or there is some way to extend this drive operation

WDC_WD40EZRX-00SPEB0_WD-WCC4E3LXU4C3-20190922-1745.txt

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Hi folks -- asking for help on an issue with my preclear on 6.7.

 

First off, the issue may be simply that I was doing a preclear on a 8TB external USB drive. If so, I'm happy to shuck/install/retry the preclear.

 

The main issue is that said preclear has apparently locked up the UnRaid UI. The UI was up during the preclear until after the Erase stage of the preclear completed. I can login via SSH, but attempts to go to the Web Interface throw a 502 Bad Gateway error.

 

Prior to that, I wasn't able to get the Unassigned Drives section to load in the UI, once the Erase pre-clear stage started.

 

FYI I'm confident I picked right drive for preclearance; the Array has been down since I restarted prior to preclear, and I can see the USB drive's activity light running as I write this. So it should be only drive doing anything (aside from USB stick, of course).

 

Thoughts?

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Not sure if anyone else is running into this issue, but I precleared 3 8TB disks and they all completed after a few days (Pre-Read, Zero, and Post-Read). The preclear log shows the unRAID preclear flag is present for all 3 disks, but when I add to the array it tries to clear them. Below are the steps I've completed, not sure if I am just not doing the proper steps? There is no option to just format the disks.

 

1. Attach disks and find them in Unassigned Devices

2. Start preclear on all 3 disks.

3. Once preclear finished, stop array.

4. Add disks to array and start array.

5. Clearing starts, can cancel but disks not usable.

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  • 2 weeks later...

For anyone who is having a problem with the Preclear Plugin, there is now a new Docker app (Preclear Docker) which has all of the components to run the preclear operation using the shell scripts.  (Yes, you will have to use the command line.)  The advantage with using the Docker is that it runs in a fixed Linux environment and that should stabilize any possible issues that might arise with changes in the core Linux OS as well as any interaction with any other plugin.   

 

Here is a link to the FAQ:

         https://github.com/binhex/documentation/blob/master/docker/faq/preclear.md

 

and here is a link to the support thread:

         https://forums.unraid.net/topic/83465-support-binhex-preclear/

 

 

And a link to the procedure that I used to run a multi-cycle preclear with mail notifications:

        https://forums.unraid.net/topic/83465-support-binhex-preclear/page/4/?tab=comments#comment-778280

 

Edited by Frank1940
  • Like 3
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  • 3 weeks later...
Guys, I'm sorry I've been missing these past months, but if there are any problems to the plugin, please let me know as I have a few days of vacation left.
 
Thanks.
 
Welcome back. I believe that there have been a few posts about the plugin not working correctly with 6.7.2+

Sent from my NSA monitored device

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14 minutes ago, Squid said:

Welcome back. I believe that there have been a few posts about the plugin not working correctly with 6.7.2+

Sent from my NSA monitored device
 

Yep, saw those, but users failed to send proper logs. Maybe redirect logging to syslog could be a way to avoid this.

 

I'm preclearing two drives right now on 6.8-rc4, let's see if I find some of those errors.

 

PS. It's nice to be back, thanks!

Edited by gfjardim
  • Like 1
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On 8/23/2019 at 2:30 AM, fritzdis said:

EDIT:

 

After more digging, I have a guess at what is happening:

 

The errors from the previous read failures may be permanently stored in the drive's SMART error log.  After preclear completion, the plugin gathers a SMART report that presumably includes these previous errors and includes them in the preclear log.

 

It's possible that the plugin tries to determine whether these errors were logged before the preclear run.  It could compare the "power on hours" at the start of the preclear to the "power on hours" of the logged errors.  In my case, however, both values were 4772, so there may be no way for the plugin to know that the errors preceded the preclear run.

 

Does this seem correct?  If so, it seems like an unavoidable and rare quirk, and I'm happy to move on.

 

ORIGINAL POST:

 

preclear_disk_WD-WX11DC57S8AX_94806.txt 14.46 kB · 2 downloads sf-unraid-diagnostics-20190822-2211.zip 197.38 kB · 0 downloads

 

Those syslog errors in the end of the preclear log are historical and are included there so the user can see what happened before, during and after the preclear session to the drive. It's possible that a media read/write error can be recovered by the drive's firmware and therefore won't impact the preclear operation, but it's always nice to see what happened.

About the SMART info there, it's collected the last values and then exported to the log.

 

Hope this helps.

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@gfjardim One issue I can see with the plugin is the fact that there are version clashes with the NerdPack plugin for some of the packages it installs. Another is this:

Nov  2 14:33:05 Mandaue root: plugin: installing: /boot/config/plugins/preclear.disk.plg
Nov  2 14:33:05 Mandaue root: plugin: skipping: /boot/config/plugins/preclear.disk/preclear.disk-2019.04.23a.txz already exists
Nov  2 14:33:05 Mandaue root: plugin: skipping: /boot/config/plugins/preclear.disk/preclear.disk-2019.04.23a.md5 already exists
Nov  2 14:33:05 Mandaue root: plugin: skipping: /boot/readvz already exists
Nov  2 14:33:05 Mandaue root: plugin: setting: /boot/readvz - mode to 755
Nov  2 14:33:05 Mandaue root: plugin: running: anonymous

Files under /boot can't be given execute permissions on Unraid version 6.8. Executables need to be copied from the boot flash to some other place before they can be run. See the release notes for the 6.8.0-rc series.

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On 9/29/2019 at 9:54 AM, MandalorePatriot said:

Not sure if anyone else is running into this issue, but I precleared 3 8TB disks and they all completed after a few days (Pre-Read, Zero, and Post-Read). The preclear log shows the unRAID preclear flag is present for all 3 disks, but when I add to the array it tries to clear them. Below are the steps I've completed, not sure if I am just not doing the proper steps? There is no option to just format the disks.

 

1. Attach disks and find them in Unassigned Devices

2. Start preclear on all 3 disks.

3. Once preclear finished, stop array.

4. Add disks to array and start array.

5. Clearing starts, can cancel but disks not usable.

I’m having this issue as well. As well as a friend that has the same setup as me. Has anyone figured out a fix for this? 

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Hi folks,

 

I've recently pre-cleared 3 drives using the plugin (run off of Unassigned Devices, successfully completed) and then added them to the array, one by one. Two drives were recognized by Unraid as clear and added immediately. The third was not recognized as being precleared and Unraid kicked off a clear - again. For a 12TB this is a bit frustrating...

 

The two drives that went in smoothly are 4TB, 512e.

The one drive that went into clearing again is 12TB, 4Kn.

Btw the Unassigned Devices code recognized all three of them as "precleared" (under fs type).

 

Any thoughts on what could be the reason for the larger (newer) drive to not be recognized as pre-cleared? Could it have something to do with the drive being 4Kn?

 

(I posted about this here and received the good advice to ask on this thread).

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Hi, great app.

I plan to sell my server, so to clear the disk for the next user i plan to zero them out.

Am i correct if the fastest way is to use the "Erase All disk" option, then enable the "Skip Pre-Read" and Skip Post-Read" ?

Is that the fastest way to erase them so nothing can be recovered ?

Edit: my server has 8gb of ram, how many disk can i clear at the same time ?

 

Thank you in advance for the help.

Edited by Nortrek
More info
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On 11/11/2019 at 6:46 AM, doron said:

Hi folks,

 

I've recently pre-cleared 3 drives using the plugin (run off of Unassigned Devices, successfully completed) and then added them to the array, one by one. Two drives were recognized by Unraid as clear and added immediately. The third was not recognized as being precleared and Unraid kicked off a clear - again. For a 12TB this is a bit frustrating...

 

The two drives that went in smoothly are 4TB, 512e.

The one drive that went into clearing again is 12TB, 4Kn.

Btw the Unassigned Devices code recognized all three of them as "precleared" (under fs type).

 

Any thoughts on what could be the reason for the larger (newer) drive to not be recognized as pre-cleared? Could it have something to do with the drive being 4Kn?

 

(I posted about this here and received the good advice to ask on this thread).

 

Hi, thanks for reporting here. Can you please send me the log files (please see the main OP).

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8 minutes ago, gfjardim said:

 

Hi, thanks for reporting here. Can you please send me the log files (please see the main OP).

Umm, apparently the logs are not being stored on permanent storage, and the server has been restarted since then... So what I have does now not cover the relevant time. Sorry about that.

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