File Activity Plugin - How can I figure out what keeps spinning up my disks?


dlandon

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On 3/23/2017 at 2:48 PM, dlandon said:

You have a problem not related to File Activity.  Your diagnostics shows 24 disks, but they are not all mounted.  Sort that out and File Activity should work.

Its just the way that @bnevets27has his system set up.  Not all disks have been set within the settings (leaving gaps of 4 drives -> presumably for his own organizational needs).  Not how I would set up a server, but it is a valid configuration.

 

 

Edited by trurl
Remove quoted syslog excerpts by request of bnevets27 (just this once)
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On 3/23/2017 at 4:09 PM, Squid said:

Its just the way that @bnevets27has his system set up.  Not all disks have been set within the settings (leaving gaps of 4 drives -> presumably for his own organizational needs).  Not how I would set up a server, but it is a valid configuration.

 

 

His vars shows 24 disks, so I just assumed that's what he had in his system.  Strange setup but File Activity should work fine.

Edited by trurl
Remove quoted syslog excerpts by request of bnevets27 (just this once)
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Yup that's how I have both my servers setup and file activity doesn't work on both (had the one down doing work on it so didn't try on that one till last night)

There is logic to how I set it up. 24 hot swap bays, parity 1 and 2 are in slot 1 and 2 and therefore to keep server slot = unraid slot I disregard unraid slot 1 and 2. The reason for the other gaps is I don't have the server fully populated so to aid in cooling I have a row between each of the populated rows so the heat doesn't transfer between drives.

Sent from my SM-N900W8 using Tapatalk

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21 minutes ago, bnevets27 said:

Yup that's how I have both my servers setup and file activity doesn't work on both (had the one down doing work on it so didn't try on that one till last night)

There is logic to how I set it up. 24 hot swap bays, parity 1 and 2 are in slot 1 and 2 and therefore to keep server slot = unraid slot I disregard unraid slot 1 and 2. The reason for the other gaps is I don't have the server fully populated so to aid in cooling I have a row between each of the populated rows so the heat doesn't transfer between drives.

Sent from my SM-N900W8 using Tapatalk
 

There's no reason File Activity won't work with your setup.

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3 hours ago, dlandon said:

There's no reason File Activity won't work with your setup.

But it doesn't work.....All i see is this:

Screen Shot 2017-02-21 at 12.07.37 pm.png

 

I would like to use the plugin. If it turns out that the reason is having drives not assigned to slots causes the problem then I'm sure I won't be the only one it won't work for. I'm willing to try and diagnose the problem but without any errors I don't know how to fix this.

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6 hours ago, bnevets27 said:

But it doesn't work.....All i see is this:

Screen Shot 2017-02-21 at 12.07.37 pm.png

 

I would like to use the plugin. If it turns out that the reason is having drives not assigned to slots causes the problem then I'm sure I won't be the only one it won't work for. I'm willing to try and diagnose the problem but without any errors I don't know how to fix this.

Your drive arrangement is not the problem.  Without any error information I don't know how to fix the problem either.

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58 minutes ago, bnevets27 said:

I found this in the syslog:

Mar 22 16:26:28 Excelsior inotifywait[11860]: Failed to watch /mnt/disk11; upper limit on inotify watches reached!
Mar 22 16:26:28 Excelsior inotifywait[11860]: Please increase the amount of inotify watches allowed per user via `/proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches'.

Install the Tips & Tweaks plugin and increase the 'Max user Watches'.  I need to look into this further though because File Activity should not show as running.

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Hi dlandon,

 

Just thought I'd give you a rundown of my experience with this plugin today

 

1. I started reading the thread from the beginning and discovered I was running a really old version due to this:

Quote

> If you have installed this plugin, please use the following link to update the plugin.  Because of a bug in my plugin, it will not update through the plugins update.  Remove the previous version first.

oops :)  I uninstall/reinstalled and am now on the 2017.03.17 version.  
 

2. I think it might help people get started if there was some sort of message telling them they have to start the plugin before they will see any results.  Took me a few minutes to figure that out, although perhaps that is because I was used to the old version.  I found it in the help afterwards.

 

3. Then I had a couple of false starts because it kept stopping right after I started it, with no explanation.  Noticed this in the syslog:

Mar 24 16:01:59 Tower inotifywait[30412]: Failed to watch /mnt/disk1; upper limit on inotify watches reached!
Mar 24 16:01:59 Tower inotifywait[30412]: Please increase the amount of inotify watches allowed per user via `/proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches'.

So I increased the watches using the Tips and Tricks plugin.  It would be nice if the plugin could detect this and explain why it can't start.

 

4. There were no results at first but after a few minutes the refresh button started showing results. 

 

Thanks for this, I think it will be quite helpful.

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  • 4 months later...

Looks like the plugin isn't working for me. I have tried to install an inofity package before trying this, so maybe that corrupted something.
 

Jul 30 20:55:11 sorrentoshare root: plugin: checking: /boot/config/plugins/file.activity/file.activity-2017.04.05.tgz - MD5
Jul 30 20:55:11 sorrentoshare root: plugin: running: anonymous
Jul 30 20:55:11 sorrentoshare root: plugin: creating: /boot/config/plugins/file.activity/file.activity.cfg - from INLINE content
Jul 30 20:55:11 sorrentoshare root: plugin: running: anonymous
Jul 30 20:55:22 sorrentoshare php: /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/file.activity/scripts/rc.file.activity 'start'
Jul 30 20:55:22 sorrentoshare file.activity: Starting File Activity
Jul 30 20:56:49 sorrentoshare php: /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/file.activity/scripts/rc.file.activity 'update'
Jul 30 20:56:49 sorrentoshare file.activity: Stopping File Activity
Jul 30 20:56:49 sorrentoshare file.activity: File Activity is not running
Jul 30 20:56:49 sorrentoshare file.activity: Starting File Activity
Jul 30 20:57:00 sorrentoshare php: /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/file.activity/scripts/rc.file.activity 'start'
Jul 30 20:57:00 sorrentoshare file.activity: Starting File Activity

Basically shuts down a few seconds after clicking the start button. Any clue what this could be?

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10 hours ago, mishmash- said:

Looks like the plugin isn't working for me. I have tried to install an inofity package before trying this, so maybe that corrupted something.
 


Jul 30 20:55:11 sorrentoshare root: plugin: checking: /boot/config/plugins/file.activity/file.activity-2017.04.05.tgz - MD5
Jul 30 20:55:11 sorrentoshare root: plugin: running: anonymous
Jul 30 20:55:11 sorrentoshare root: plugin: creating: /boot/config/plugins/file.activity/file.activity.cfg - from INLINE content
Jul 30 20:55:11 sorrentoshare root: plugin: running: anonymous
Jul 30 20:55:22 sorrentoshare php: /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/file.activity/scripts/rc.file.activity 'start'
Jul 30 20:55:22 sorrentoshare file.activity: Starting File Activity
Jul 30 20:56:49 sorrentoshare php: /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/file.activity/scripts/rc.file.activity 'update'
Jul 30 20:56:49 sorrentoshare file.activity: Stopping File Activity
Jul 30 20:56:49 sorrentoshare file.activity: File Activity is not running
Jul 30 20:56:49 sorrentoshare file.activity: Starting File Activity
Jul 30 20:57:00 sorrentoshare php: /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/file.activity/scripts/rc.file.activity 'start'
Jul 30 20:57:00 sorrentoshare file.activity: Starting File Activity

Basically shuts down a few seconds after clicking the start button. Any clue what this could be?

The inotify package is built into unRAID.  No need to install one.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi
I get the following warning:

Sep 14 14:48:59 unRAID inotifywait[32221]: Failed to watch /mnt/disk4; upper limit on inotify watches reached!
Sep 14 14:48:59 unRAID inotifywait[32221]: Please increase the amount of inotify watches allowed per user via `/proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches'.

My current inotify setting/value is:

Current Inotify Settings: fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 524288

My question is, what is a correct value to change it to (and how is this number concluded)?

 

Extra info:
- unRAID 6.3.5
- File Activity 2017.04.05

 

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1 hour ago, brandur said:

Hi
I get the following warning:


Sep 14 14:48:59 unRAID inotifywait[32221]: Failed to watch /mnt/disk4; upper limit on inotify watches reached!
Sep 14 14:48:59 unRAID inotifywait[32221]: Please increase the amount of inotify watches allowed per user via `/proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches'.

My current inotify setting/value is:


Current Inotify Settings: fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 524288

My question is, what is a correct value to change it to (and how is this number concluded)?

 

Extra info:
- unRAID 6.3.5
- File Activity 2017.04.05

 

 

There is no correct value.  Just set it to whatever works.  Try to double it to start.

  • Like 1
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  • 5 months later...

Hello.

 

In my Main screen of unRAID I see that there are some reads/writes in 2 of my data disks in the array.
I installed this plugin but it doesn't show why these disks are spun up. File Activity is clear.

 

There souldn't be any activity in any of the disks of my server at the moment.

So why are the Reads/Writes values changing in the Main screen, keeping these two disks from spinning down?

Is unRAID doing any reads/writes randomly for some reason?

 

Thank you.

Edited by mnever33
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Thank you very much for your plugin.

 

With the help of your program I can see that it is a 'completion' script in nzbGet that make my Disk 1 spin-up :-)

 

** Disk 1
Feb 21 20:30:00 OPEN => /mnt/disk1/Downloads/scripts/Completion.py
Feb 21 20:30:01 OPEN => /mnt/disk1/Downloads/scripts/Completion.py
Feb 21 20:30:01 OPEN => /mnt/disk1/Downloads/scripts/Completion.py
Feb 21 20:45:00 OPEN => /mnt/disk1/Downloads/scripts/Completion.py
Feb 21 20:45:00 OPEN => /mnt/disk1/Downloads/scripts/Completion.py
Feb 21 20:45:00 OPEN => /mnt/disk1/Downloads/scripts/Completion.py
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  • 3 months later...

I'm really struggling with two issues, the first is disk spin up and thus my using this addon...the second (and the root problem) is that shares stop during disk spin-up...but that's for other posts.

 

 

i /just/ had a disk spin up, with nothing noted in the addon.  Is there any known source of spin-ups that wouldn't show an inotifiywait result?

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On 5/30/2018 at 12:22 PM, Tybio said:

I'm really struggling with two issues, the first is disk spin up and thus my using this addon...the second (and the root problem) is that shares stop during disk spin-up...but that's for other posts.

 

 

i /just/ had a disk spin up, with nothing noted in the addon.  Is there any known source of spin-ups that wouldn't show an inotifiywait result?

File activity is logged in this plugin, but there is directory activity that may spin up a disk and not be noted by this plugin.  If the all directory activity was logged, There would be a huge amount of activity logged that would be impossible to go through and make any sense out of it.

 

As mentioned many times in the forums,  post your diagnostics.

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54 minutes ago, jowi said:

I've installed this, the first thing it does is... spinning up all disks... Why is that? Or is that caused by the inotifywait commands? Do i have to spin all down again by hand?

This plugin logs disk activity by setting up inotify watches.  It should not spin up disks.  Your disks will spin down as they normally do.

 

If you need further help, post diagnostics.

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23 minutes ago, jowi said:

- when it starts, it spins up ALL drives sequentially... i manually spinned (spun?) them down again.

- did a test by deleting a file. It got logged in the plugin screen

- after a while, parity & disk9 spinned up for unknown reason. Was not detected by the plugin...

 

diagnostics attached.

unraid-diagnostics-20180604-1221.zip

Try installing the Dynamix Cache Dirs plugin and see if it doesn't help.  Directory access can spin up disks.

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