Hey guys, 

 

Long story short a breaker at my house tripped over the weekend (Bloody washing machines) and looks to have cooked the USB Flash drive that I was using to boot from. Right now I can't boot into it at all (I did a search prior to posting and couldn't find anyone with the exact issue im currently having)

 

The only other machine I have is a windows based one and while I can see the flash drive when i plug it in I cannot run any kind of disk check because its not detecting a file system. At this point im pretty confident I need to rebuild the OS drive but I have some questions around it.

 

1. Granted my current RAID array is still OK (Pending an error check) can I still use the existing array and maintain all data?

2. Will my docker settings be able to be restored? (I'm pretty sure I stored the docker.img on the SSD Cache drive but unable to confirm)

3. Will my current license carry across if I choose to use the same USB stick for the OS (Meaning the hardware ID wont change)

 

I'll hold off on re-imaging until I get everyone's input.

 

Cheers

Do you have a backup of your boot Flash Drive?  If so, you should be able to find the file in the config directory/folder with an extension of .key.  That is your registration file for Unraid.  If you don't have a backup look for the E-mail that confirmed your registration.  If the current USB key is completely dead, you can get a new .key file with the instructions on this page: 

 

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

 

However, it is unlikely that the USB drive is completely dead.  It has probably just had the file system destroyed. You can start by seeing if you can format that old flash drive.   

 

You now know if you need a new flash drive or can reuse the old one. 

 

By the way, the docker.img file is on the cache drive by default.  (It should not be on the flash drive under any circumstance!)

 

Second thing.  The registration is tied to the GUID serial number that is on the flash drive.  So if the old drive is good, you won't have a problem on the score if you have a copy of the .key file.  If you don't have a copy of that file, you will have to send an E-mail to LimeTech Support and explain what happened.  They have always bent over backwards to accommodate their users.  

 

Now for the big question!  Do you have that backup?  The answer will provide us the info we need to get you started on the next steps.  By the way, if you have a backup and you have even the slightest suspicion that you might have added a drive, changed out a drive or made any other reassignment of a drive, DO NOT boot up from that backup!!!!  You could lose data if you do.

 

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Frank1940 said:

By the way, the docker.img file is on the cache drive by default.  (It should not be on the flash drive under any circumstance!)

But the location of docker.img is mostly irrelevant to this because the important thing for getting your dockers going again just as before are the templates, which are on flash.

 

1 hour ago, Frank1940 said:

Now for the big question!  Do you have that backup?  The answer will provide us the info we need to get you started on the next steps.  By the way, if you have a backup and you have even the slightest suspicion that you might have added a drive, changed out a drive or made any other reassignment of a drive, DO NOT boot up from that backup!!!!  You could lose data if you do.

^THIS

 

If you don't have a backup then we need some way to at least figure out your disk assignments, such as a screenshot or recent diagnostics or syslog.

7 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

However, it is unlikely that the USB drive is completely dead.  It has probably just had the file system destroyed. You can start by seeing if you can format that old flash drive.   

 

Yep I can reformat the drive. Just didn't want to go too far if it meant that I was starting from scratch again. To be fair the data is the most important thing on there. Not super worried about having to re-do the settings on dockers etc as none of it was publicly available.

 

7 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

Now for the big question!  Do you have that backup?  The answer will provide us the info we need to get you started on the next steps.  By the way, if you have a backup and you have even the slightest suspicion that you might have added a drive, changed out a drive or made any other reassignment of a drive, DO NOT boot up from that backup!!!!  You could lose data if you do.

 

Unfortunately I don't have a backup of the Flash Drive (Didn't know you could simply back up the contents of the drive and it act as a full system backup of sorts)

 

6 hours ago, trurl said:

If you don't have a backup then we need some way to at least figure out your disk assignments, such as a screenshot or recent diagnostics or syslog.

Not too sure this is a huge issue as my setup was very simple. 4 Disks assigned from top to bottom, a single SSD for cache drive and the USB stick as boot device but yeah you are absolutely correct this will be the first thing that gets screenshot when its back up and running.

Basically, you need to get the new .key file from LimeTech (or find a copy of it).  Then format that drive and install the version of Unraid that you want to use.  (Be sure that you put the .key file in the config directory.)  Boot the server using that new boot drive that you have made.  You then have to assign the drives.  You should be easily able to identify assign cache drive as it is a ssd.  Assign all of the other drives as data drives.  Start the array.  One (and only one) drive will be unformatted.  (If more than one drive is unformatted, STOP and ask for advice as you have even more problems!!!)  Assign that drive as the parity drive.

 

By the way, it is very easy to make a backup of the flash drive.  Go to   Main   and click on 'Flash'  under  'Array Device'  and you will find a 'Backup' button under 'Flash Device Settings'. 

1 hour ago, FlameThrower2290 said:

Not too sure this is a huge issue as my setup was very simple. 4 Disks assigned from top to bottom, a single SSD for cache drive and the USB stick as boot device but yeah you are absolutely correct this will be the first thing that gets screenshot when its back up and running.

If you assign a data disk as parity then the data would be overwritten with parity, so it is a huge issue, but

37 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

Assign all of the other drives as data drives.  Start the array.  One (and only one) drive will be unformatted.  (If more than one drive is unformatted, STOP and ask for advice as you have even more problems!!!)  Assign that drive as the parity drive.

Frank1940 has the way to proceed.

Hey guys just a quick update. I've had a much better success than I thought I would've - Heres what I did.

 

1. Reinstalled Unraid OS to the SAME USB Flash Drive 

2. Located my original LimeTech email and managed to pull my original key file.

3. Booted into Unraid and to my surprise it was licensed no issues

4. Assign my cache drive and set all other drives as data disks to check which one was the parity drive (Thanks @Frank1940)

5. Once I confirmed, reset the RAID config (Spent longer than I'd like to admit finding this haha) and re-assign drives properly

6. Bam just like that. My shares, my VMs, My Dockers (With config) are all back

 

The ONLY thing I have come across that i've had to do is the network settings, hostname and to re-deploy certain dockers (As long as its pointing at the original config location, all settings are coming back)

 

I kinda forgot how easy UnRaid is as this is the first issue I've ever had with it.