Hi guys, this morning I first received Error message on my Unraid Build and I think my usb is failing.

here my usb log and my "fix common problems messages".

What should I do? I stopped the array, copied the /config folder (except one file wich gave me error) and started back my array. Starting it back made begin a parity check.

When the parity check will be finished what am I supposed to do?

The flash disk is a SanDiskUltraFit with only 3 months of life!

 

Edited June 28, 20188 yr by playmake

Have you looked at the report you included?   ..and what are your findings? 

 

Have you checked the flash drive to make sure it was not full?  (If you have more than 1GB on that flash drive, I would be suspicious that you have a Docker/Plugin setup wrong and it is using the flash drive for storage!) 

 

Have you checked to see what kind of USB port the flash drive is plugged into?  USB2 ports (black plastic insert) tend to be more reliable for unRAID boot drives.  

 

You should also post up a Diagnostics file with your next post.    Tools   >>>>    Diagnostics   

 

EDIT:  Also run chkdsk  on that flash drive  in your PC and see if there are any errors.

Edited June 25, 20188 yr by Frank1940

Yes, sure, i've looked at it but my limited knlowledge does not permit to me to do a troubleshoot

I've 328MB used and 15GB free space on it, so I would exclude the problem about something saving to it

actually the usb stick is installed internally in the USB3.0 connector. I can try to move it on the USS 2.2 tomorrow, then togheter with chdisk on windows machine.

 

I attach the diagnostic

 

 

 

tower-diagnostics-20180625-1341.zip

You have thousands of these entries on your syslog:

 

Jun 23 21:29:55 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [[email protected]]: connect failed: Connection failure: No route to host
Jun 23 21:30:03 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [[email protected]]: connect failed: Connection failure: No route to host
Jun 23 21:30:11 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [[email protected]]: connect failed: Connection failure: No route to host
Jun 23 21:30:19 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [[email protected]]: connect failed: Connection failure: No route to host
Jun 23 21:30:27 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [[email protected]]: connect failed: Connection failure: No route to host
Jun 23 21:30:35 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [[email protected]]: connect failed: Connection failure: No route to host
Jun 23 21:30:35 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [email protected] is unavailable

 

The sheer number of these make it difficult to find any other problem.

 

I suspect that you might not have working setup for your SMTP settings for your r-mail provider.         

 

        Settings   >>>    Notification Settings   >>>    SMTP Settings

 

One other possibility might be a faulty connection to your UPS.

 

PS---  The Anonyzing process substitutes   [email protected]    for the actual address,   

 

Edited June 25, 20188 yr by Frank1940

the usb stick is installed internally in the USB3.0 connector. I can try to move it on the USS 2.2 tomorrow

You should definitely use an USB 2.0 port, USB 3.0 ports are a known problem, though not for everyone.

 

 

47 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

 

Jun 23 21:29:55 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [[email protected]]: connect failed: Connection failure: No route to host
Jun 23 21:30:03 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [[email protected]]: connect failed: Connection failure: No route to host
Jun 23 21:30:11 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [[email protected]]: connect failed: Connection failure: No route to host
Jun 23 21:30:19 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [[email protected]]: connect failed: Connection failure: No route to host
Jun 23 21:30:27 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [[email protected]]: connect failed: Connection failure: No route to host
Jun 23 21:30:35 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [[email protected]]: connect failed: Connection failure: No route to host
Jun 23 21:30:35 Tower upsmon[4986]: UPS [email protected] is unavailable

 

One other possibility might be a faulty connection to your UPS.

 

 

 quite sure related to the synology box from wich I take the ups data actually shut down! (I'm replacing the syno box with Unraid build).

 

I will for sure move my USB to a 2.0 Connection.

 

Can I safely shut down my server or should I expect not to be able to boot up again after powerdown?

29 minutes ago, playmake said:

Can I safely shut down my server or should I expect not to be able to boot up again after powerdown?

Run chkdsk on the flash drive before, but it should boot normally.

26 minutes ago, playmake said:

Can I safely shut down my server or should I expect not to be able to boot up again after powerdown?

 

Can't tell from here.  I would suggest that you try to copy the entire contents of your flash drive to a folder on your PC.  (Save that backup!!!)  If you can do that, it will probably boot-up again.  

 

Before you shutdown, go to    Main   >>>  Array Operation   and manually stop the array first.  (If it doesn't stop, you will have to allow the parity check-- which will automatically start on the next bootup -- to complete.  If the array stopped, before you actually powerdown the server, you can safely stop that check.)   

 

Be sure to do that chkdsk before restarting.  

thank you very much both for the help! only last super-noob question: to run chksdk can I simply unplug the USB key from the unraid box and plug it in the windows machine? Before maybe it's better to stop the array, right?

23 minutes ago, playmake said:

Before maybe it's better to stop the array, right?

Shutdown the server first.

Update: I manually stopped the array. Waited for all service stopped and array stopped then I had the bad idea of shutting down. The box didn't shut down either after waiting several minutes. So I tried to ssh in it but nothing. Then I decided to force sgut down by pressing ppwer button.

 

Now it can no more boot up (doesn't show at usual ip)

 

I tried then to chkdsk from windows but the message return something like "the disk is in raw format impossible to run chkdsk".

Win try to format the usb key (i didn't).

I think the key is gone. Should I create e new one and copy inside the /config folder? Then ask to limetech thw license swap?

Your key file is in the config folder that you copied over.  It will work with that flash drive or will serve as the basis for automatically obtaining a replacement key on a new flash drive.  See here:

 

     https://lime-technology.com/replace-key/

 

UPDATE:

i ran HDDscan on the usb stick and... it's gone! thousand of bad block found :'(

 

luckly I had both manually and automated (CAapp thanks squid :)) done backups of everything.

 

I plan this evening as soon as I come back home to boot from a fresh usb stick and see what's happen

Update: restored everything and license moved.

 

Now a question: since boot I've got 246 writes on usb stick. I "played" a bit configuring new vm. Is it normal or are them too much?

Keep an eye on it.  unRAID is designed to minimize writes to the boot drive.  In ten and half days, I have had 140 writes to mine.  But you have been doing some configuring and some of those changes may have been stored in files that are on the that drive.  

 

The big danger is that you have some docker or plugin that has been configured to store some of its files on the flash drive (instead of the cache drive or the array). That is something you never want to do!   Temp files are usually the offender in most of these cases. 

Checked and since boot, the only files changed on the usb key are the one I expect to change. I will monitor the situation.

I also have moved from USB3 to USB2 to be safe, i read several people had problem similar to mine using USB3. I tought that if it was working I should not worry but... I was wrong.

I only ask myself what we will do when we won't have anymore USB2.0 on new mobo!

The problem is not universal.  (By the way, USB1 and USB2 will be around forever. The USB1/2 port may disappear but the hardware support will have to be there and that is where the issue lies.)  I have long suspect that some MB's boot their USB3 ports in USB2 mode.  (Years ago, I had a MB that booted all of the USB2 ports in USB1 mode. You want to talk about a Slooooow boot...)   The problem comes that by the time when the USB3 driver gets installed by the underlying Linux OS, the fact that the port was the boot drive has been 'lost'.  I am not sure if the problem lays in BIOS, the boot loader that unRAID uses, or the Linux OS.  

 

The unRAID OS is small that the difference in speed between USB2 and USB3 is insignificant. (Most of the boot time is spent unpacking, installing, and configuring the Linux OS and unRAID.)  Plus, there are very few (if any) USB3 flash Drives that can read or write at USB3 speeds so any speed difference is largely moot.   

Update: from yesterday when I went to sleep (midnight) to this mornig (8 am) the usb key had been written 22times, and read 121 times.

Can I consider this as normal or not? should I do something? I checked the docker config and I don't see any reference to "FLASH" in settings.

I have and use CAbackupp which maybe is cause of reading writing plus docker autoupdate? should I set less frequent bck / autoupdate?

On 6/27/2018 at 6:18 PM, Frank1940 said:

Keep an eye on it.  unRAID is designed to minimize writes to the boot drive.  In ten and half days, I have had 140 writes to mine. 

 

I still have 140 writes to it...

 

By the way, the  Linux path to the flash drive is     /boot    That is what you should be looking for in the configuration section for each Docker, plugin and VM as a complete path is required.  If you PuTTY (using SSH)  into your computer, you can see the contents of the root of the flash drive with this command:

 

     ls  -al  /boot

 

You will get writes to the flash if you update your Dockers and plugins.  Both of these store their configuration files on the boot drive so if you make any configuration changes, you would probably have a write to the flash drive.

 

By the way, don't worry about the number of reads.  They do not negatively impact  the life of the drive.

Edited June 29, 20188 yr by Frank1940

4 hours ago, playmake said:

Update: from yesterday when I went to sleep (midnight) to this mornig (8 am) the usb key had been written 22times, and read 121 times.

Can I consider this as normal or not?

That's perfectly normal, it depends a lot on the server config/usage, i.e., I run some scripts everyday so, my flash drive has about 40.000 writes in 15 days.

This is the result of the command & a search from win in the usb folder with file modified "today". Can you see something strange? this morning I had 285 writes, now it's 382 :'( I made some changes in settings but I don't think I did 100 changes!

 

Well, you did update at least one plugin.  (community.applica...)  plus changes to seven configuration files (.cfg).  I am unfamiliar with speedtest app...  You appear to have a lot of stuff that you are doing automatically on a regularly scheduled basis.  Any time, you make a change as to how your server is setup, you are going to have to store those changes somewhere and that will result in most cases with a 'write' to your flash drive.  

 

You might want to Google  number of writes to flash memory before failure  and that will provide many articles to read on the subject.  But remember, flash drive failures are not uncommon for unRAID users.  LimeTech has provided for an easy way to replace the key file in those cases.  I know that this was a fairly new drive but you may well have just gotten a 'bad' one.  (That was why I asked if something might be configured to use the flash drive as temporary storage.)   You might want to see if SanDisk will replace it on a warranty claim. 

Already arrived the new one, thanks Amazon!!!

But for the substitution of the dead one I took a bigger Sony, hoping that the bigger form factor help the KEY to cool down and to last longer. The speedtest app is running once a day to test my new connection, in a while I will switch it totally off.

Edited June 29, 20188 yr by playmake