Bilal Yassine Posted December 19, 2017 Share Posted December 19, 2017 (edited) FOR THOSE SEEING THIS IN THE FUTURE THE ISSUE WAS SOLVED BY SETTING UP A NEW CONFIG THE, ACTUAL ERROR IN THE TITLE WAS UNFIXABLE IN MY SITUATION... THOUGH IN YOURS IT MIGHT BE. THE STEPS DISCUSSED BELOW OUTLINE HOW TO TAKE A RUINED CONFIG, REFLASH THE USB BOOT DRIVE, IDENTIFY THE PARITY, DATA AND CACHE DRIVES AND THEN SETTING UP THE SYSTEM AGAIN WITHOUT LOSING ANY DATA. Hi So I had a power failure at home and no UPS set up. I turned the server back on and now I am getting a message on my ipmi screen unraid failed to load ldlinux.c32. I turned off the machine and stuck the USB flash drive into my windows 10 machine and well the screenshot explains it all. I have no idea what to do. I am officially really worried now. Do i re-setup the usb? my concern is that the system config will be lost or is that not a problem with unraid? Thanks for any help. Edited December 20, 2017 by Bilal Yassine Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted December 19, 2017 Share Posted December 19, 2017 I'm guessing you don't have backups of your flash, or you wouldn't be asking these questions. You will definitely need to find the license key file for that USB stick that was emailed to you, other than that we can muddle through getting your drives and shares back the way they were. Do you have notifications set up? Daily status emails will list the drives and what slots they were in, or maybe a recent screenshot, or some other record of which drive was where, if you don't have that we can figure it out. Quote Link to comment
Bilal Yassine Posted December 19, 2017 Author Share Posted December 19, 2017 Hi, Really sorry for the late reply… ofcourse my virgin media broadband decided to kick the bucket while I was replying, all good now though. Ok, so I found the plus key from the purchase email. I had setup email status alerts and Pushbullet alerts although i can't see anything in them to say how the disks were organised I don't have a screenshot of my array (clearly a massive oversite on my part). but i think i remember when i set it up the drives i had them in alphabetical order. I don't mind setting all the dockers etc up from scratch it's the data I'm worried about especially since i was in the middle of copying everything over to my new pc, and even among all that stuff it's my PhD research and Data that I'm panicking over. Quote Link to comment
pwm Posted December 19, 2017 Share Posted December 19, 2017 4 minutes ago, Bilal Yassine said: I don't have a screenshot of my array (clearly a massive oversite on my part). but i think i remember when i set it up the drives i had them in alphabetical order. I don't mind setting all the dockers etc up from scratch it's the data I'm worried about especially since i was in the middle of copying everything over to my new pc, and even among all that stuff it's my PhD research and Data that I'm panicking over. Your data drives will not break just because you lost the configuration data on the USB thumb drive. The individual files are still there - the issue right now is just to recreate enough system configuration information so the system boots, can start the array and once more make the information on the data disks available. Not having backup means you will lose time, reconfiguring everything. But this is a good time to also consider the value of having a backup policy and having set some form of value on the different types of data you have at home. With backup of the thumb drive you would already have had your system 100% up and running. A couple of minutes of your time and a tiny amount of storage space would have kept a backup of the configuration. And you should also consider the value of the data on the data disks - and how much it is worth having a backup plan for that data. With proper backup routines you wouldn't have to worry about any PhD research documents. The only reason to not consider backup of information is if you are ready to make the decision that the information isn't important in the first place, and that it doesn't matter to you if you lose the information. But in that case you should formalize this by writing that very decision down on a piece of paper. 1 Quote Link to comment
Bilal Yassine Posted December 19, 2017 Author Share Posted December 19, 2017 4 minutes ago, pwm said: A couple of minutes of your time and a tiny amount of storage space would have kept a backup of the configuration. And you should also consider the value of the data on the data disks - and how much it is worth having a backup plan for that data. With proper backup routines you wouldn't have to worry about any PhD research documents. you are absolutely correct I feel like a fool for making such an error and being so arrogant. Quote Link to comment
pwm Posted December 19, 2017 Share Posted December 19, 2017 1 minute ago, Bilal Yassine said: you are absolutely correct I feel like a fool for making such an error and being so arrogant. We may sometimes need some form of reminder to make us reevaluate how we look at things. So in the end, I think this can be a valuable reminder. But back to the current issue. You said you had status mails enabled. The normal status mail sent out every night contains a list of the individual disks, where it says 'Parity', 'Disk 1', 'Disk 2' etc and for every disk the mail also mentions the serial number of the drive, the drive temperature and if the drive is active or standby. Quote Link to comment
Bilal Yassine Posted December 19, 2017 Author Share Posted December 19, 2017 this is what i meant by status email. and this is the most recent one. they are all like this or telling me a parity check has started or if errors were found by the fix common problems plugin. Quote Link to comment
pwm Posted December 19, 2017 Share Posted December 19, 2017 Sounds like you never checked the "Array status" checkbox, or possibly didn't enable "Notice"-level mails. So you have never received any array health report mails. But just to make sure - search your mails for any mails with a subject line containing "array health report". Quote Link to comment
Bilal Yassine Posted December 19, 2017 Author Share Posted December 19, 2017 no nothing I've checked every email account I have just in case. Quote Link to comment
pwm Posted December 19, 2017 Share Posted December 19, 2017 OK. So that means an initial task is to figure out which of the drives that have file systems, to single out which drive is parity. Did you have additional disks besides the ones that was part of the unRAID array? I.e. cache drives or additional, unprotected, data disks? Quote Link to comment
Bilal Yassine Posted December 19, 2017 Author Share Posted December 19, 2017 (edited) I have a 480GB Intell SSD cache drive, and one other 120GB Kingston SSD that was unassigned (the previous cache drive but I switched it with the larger one later on and never removed it). 6 drives are in the array. 4 WD RED 6TB NAS drives 2 Seagate 4TB NAS drives. the Seagate I added later because I took them out of my PC. So the parity is one the WD drives. Edited December 19, 2017 by Bilal Yassine Quote Link to comment
pwm Posted December 19, 2017 Share Posted December 19, 2017 So you are expected to find a file system on 3 of the 4 WD RED (I'm assuming you aren't running with double parity) while one of them will not have any file system and will not be possible to manually mount. Not sure what you mean with "unassigned" for the second SSD. If it really was unassigned or if you used it as a separate data drive using the Unassigned Devices plugin. Unless there is a size/brand difference between the two SSD you might have to manually mount them too and take a peek at the content to figure out which of them is your cache drive. Quote Link to comment
Bilal Yassine Posted December 19, 2017 Author Share Posted December 19, 2017 No double parity. I had the unassigned devices plugin but the smaller SSD was never mounted... I never decided what to do with it since I thought I couldn't use it as a second cache drive since it was smaller and a different brand. the larger Intel SSD was definitely the cache drive. (It's the drive in the email screenshot from earlier.) 5 minutes ago, pwm said: while one of them will not have any file system and will not be possible to manually mount. Do you mean if I set-up the USB Boot Flash Drive again from scratch and tried to mount all my drives then the one which isn't mountable would be the parity drive? Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted December 19, 2017 Share Posted December 19, 2017 15 minutes ago, Bilal Yassine said: Do you mean if I set-up the USB Boot Flash Drive again from scratch and tried to mount all my drives then the one which isn't mountable would be the parity drive? Yep. Do a fresh install and add your license file, then boot, log into the web gui, and assign all your 6TB drives as data drives 1,2,3,4. As long as you don't put anything in the parity slots, you'll be fine. Start the array, and hopefully only 1 of the 4 will be unmountable. If that's the case, stop the array, do a new config in tools, and assign the single unmountable drive as parity, and the rest of the drives anywhere you want, obviously putting the correct drive in the cache slot as well. Select the option to tell unraid that parity is already valid and start the array. If anything pops up as unformatted, DON'T format it, download diagnostics and post back here attaching the diagnostic zip file. If more than one of your data drives shows as unformatted, don't panic, there have been a fair amount of instances where you need to manually set the drive format type to specify the existing format rather than relying on the auto detection setting. One step at a time, don't hesitate to pause, step back, formulate a question and post. NO QUESTION IS STUPID when it comes to keeping years of data safe. Better ask than assume. Quote Link to comment
Bilal Yassine Posted December 19, 2017 Author Share Posted December 19, 2017 15 minutes ago, jonathanm said: assign all your 6TB drives as data drives 1,2,3,4. As long as you don't put anything in the parity slots, you'll be fine. Start the array, and hopefully only 1 of the 4 will be unmountable. Ok, I did this and only one unmountable drive. So that one is the parity drive. so just to be sure after this: stop the array. put the unmountable drive in slot 1 of the parity section. the cache drive in slot one of cache section all my other HDDs randomly in the area for data drives (using sequential slots) go to tools > new config > and tick the boxes like in the second screenshot. then apply and done start the array? (hopefully not lose any data?) Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted December 19, 2017 Share Posted December 19, 2017 go to tools > new config > and tick the boxes like in the second screenshot. then apply and done You can also tick the data slots or you'll have to reassign all disks, but either way works, just make sure you assign the parity disk, current disk4, to the parity slot. start the array? (hopefully not lose any data?) Before starting the array check the "parity is already valid" box next to the start button, then you should do a parity check, a few sync errors are normal after doing what you just did. Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted December 19, 2017 Share Posted December 19, 2017 47 minutes ago, Bilal Yassine said: so just to be sure after this: stop the array. put the unmountable drive in slot 1 of the parity section. the cache drive in slot one of cache section all my other HDDs randomly in the area for data drives (using sequential slots) go to tools > new config > and tick the boxes like in the second screenshot. then apply and done start the array? (hopefully not lose any data?) You have to do the new config step before it will allow you to assign the drives, so move step 5 to between 1 and 2, and follow johnnie.black's advice to do a correcting parity check. Quote Link to comment
Bilal Yassine Posted December 20, 2017 Author Share Posted December 20, 2017 WOW the parity check is running. I had already started the parity by the time jonathanm replied. I setup detailed notifications and took a screenshot . all my shares appeared with public smb settings and I checked a couple of them quickly before starting the parity check. Thank you so much, you are my unraid heroes I really owe you big time. I will report back if I have any more issues. Quote Link to comment
Bilal Yassine Posted December 20, 2017 Author Share Posted December 20, 2017 Parity check finished with 2067 errors. I'm going through the config of dockers etc and won't be making the same mistake twice. thanks again. Quote Link to comment
pwm Posted December 20, 2017 Share Posted December 20, 2017 Good to hear you're back on track. Just remember there's a lesson to be learned from this. Quote Link to comment
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