OK, so I ran a parity check 2 days ago and all was good. But I came home from work today and:

 

I had a flashing red ball on my parity disk and a bunch of errors on parity and disk1.  I figured it was most likely a loose cable.  So I:

Powered down, checked cables, powered up

Then I got a blue ball on the parity drive, and parity refused to rebuild and refused to unassign

 

So I powered down, disconnected parity and booted up, and it's saying parity not installed, and disk1 is showing solid red.

 

This is where I lose the plot - what should I be doing next?

 

TIA, Miriam

 

OK, so I ran a parity check 2 days ago and all was good. But I came home from work today and:

 

I had a flashing red ball on my parity disk and a bunch of errors on parity and disk1.  I figured it was most likely a loose cable.  So I:

Powered down, checked cables, powered up

Then I got a blue ball on the parity drive, and parity refused to rebuild and refused to unassign

 

So I powered down, disconnected parity and booted up, and it's saying parity not installed, and disk1 is showing solid red.

 

This is where I lose the plot - what should I be doing next?

 

TIA, Miriam

 

Let's see...  you might start by posting a syslog.

 

You probably dislodged the cable to disk1 when trying to fix the parity disk.  But then you said you had errors on disk1 too, so we can't know for sure without seeing the log file. (but it is now gone since you've rebooted.)

 

For a disk to have "errors" reads from it failed.  For a disk to be marked as [glow=red,2,300]RED[/glow], "writes" to it failed.

Thanks for your help, Joe.

 

Disk1 was green before reboot, red after.  Seems odd - hopefully all the data is still there.  Here's my syslog.

syslog.txt

Basically, your log shows:

Sep  3 17:20:40 Media kernel: md: disk0 removed

Sep  3 17:20:40 Media kernel: md: disk1 missing

Sep  3 17:20:40 Media kernel: md: import disk2: [8,16] (sdb) WDC WD20EARS-00M WD-WMAZ20204317 offset: 63 size: 1953514552

Sep  3 17:20:40 Media kernel: md: import disk3: [8,0] (sda) WDC WD20EADS-00R WD-WCAVY0403606 offset: 63 size: 1953513496

 

So... neither the parity disk nor disk1 are being seen.  Is there a common power splitter?  Or perhaps both cables are loose?

 

Joe L.

 

Yep, those two were sharing a power splitter.

 

I switched it out for another one and rebooted, and it's again come up with a blue ball for parity, and green for the rest.  So it's fixed the problem with disk1 but I'm still left with my original parity issue.

 

I can't rebuild parity (when I tick the box the "start" button stays greyed out), and I can't unassign the parity drive either.  If I select "unassigned" on the devices page, as soon as I refresh the page it lists the serial number again.

 

here's my latest syslog.

syslog.txt

Yep, those two were sharing a power splitter.

 

I switched it out for another one and rebooted, and it's again come up with a blue ball for parity, and green for the rest.  So it's fixed the problem with disk1 but I'm still left with my original parity issue.

 

I can't rebuild parity (when I tick the box the "start" button stays greyed out), and I can't unassign the parity drive either.  If I select "unassigned" on the devices page, as soon as I refresh the page it lists the serial number again.

 

here's my latest syslog.

Select un-assigned on the devices page.  Don't refresh it.

Then go to the main page and "Start" the array with the parity disk un-assigned.

This will cause it to forget the model/serial number of the parity disk)

 

The stop the array once more and assign the parity disk once more.

 

If that does not work, re-assign the parity drive and as long as ALL THE DATA DRIVES are GREEN, log in and on the command line type:

initconfig

 

That will set a new initial disk configuration.  When you then refresh the main web-page it will show all disks blue.  When you press "Start" it will then calculate parity on the disks.

 

Joe L.

That's what I tried but it won't.

 

I did:

Devices

Unassigned (on parity)

Main  -  I get the attached screen.  If I tick "I'm sure I want to do this" the start button remains greyed out.

That's what I tried but it won't.

 

I did:

Devices

Unassigned (on parity)

Main  -  I get the attached screen.  If I tick "I'm sure I want to do this" the start button remains greyed out.

 

That screen shot does not show parity un-assigned.  In any case you can type:

initconfig

Respond to the prompt with

Yes  (capital "Y" lower case "es")

 

then refresh the main screen and start the array.  It will then begin a complete parity calculation.

Yeah, that's what I meant when I said selecting unassign on the devices page doesn't seem to "stick".

 

OK, I've typed initconfig and Yes, and refreshed my main page, and it says it's doing a Parity-sync.

 

And in amongst it all I think I've worked out why I was having trouble with the web interface - I was using a different browser which had javascript disabled by default.

 

Thanks for your help, Joe!