No response, dirty shutdown, cache corrupt

[ShaneH]

Hi

My unRaid setup is normally stable.  This morning one VM became really unresponsive. I shutdown, then killed the VM. Plex would not shutdown. I could not turn off the array.  1 hr later I tried a reboot using the unRaid GUI.   GUI went away put server did not power off.  Checking the attached monitor it looked like things were almost down.  No luck.  Power off, dirty shutdown, boot up, parity check started.  My single (spinning disk) cache drive would not mount.   "Unmountable: No file system"    BTRFS

   This happened about 3 months ago with my two SSD drive cache pool.   Dead, lost all data in cache pool.   I thought maybe it was a bad SSD.

Now....   it has happened again with a single spinning disk used as cache.    Bla.    No diagnostic file in /logs dir.

 

I am tired of rebuilding the cache.

Can I create a cache without  btrfs ?

What is the best way to back up the cache disk?

Thank you

 

[Frank1940]

1 hour ago, ShaneH said:

Can I create a cache without  btrfs ?

Absolutely, my single cache drive is formatted with xfs.  

 

1 hour ago, ShaneH said:

What is the best way to back up the cache disk?

You might have a look at the CA Appdata Backup / Restore v2  plugin.  You can read about it in the support thread:

 

     https://forums.unraid.net/topic/61211-plugin-ca-appdata-backup-restore-v2/

 

[ShaneH]

Hi.   I don't want to be rude, but is it possible we can no longer format a cache disk with XFS ?   I am ready to add a new SSD as my cache disk.   I added the SSD, booted up, add  new SSD as cache, start array.

Now unRaid wants me to format the unmountable disk (the new SSD).  

I do not see any option anywhere to select the file system.   BTRFS seems to be the only option.

Any ideas?

Thank you

[JonathanM]

18 minutes ago, ShaneH said:

BTRFS seems to be the only option.

Any ideas?

Change the number of cache slots to 1.

[ShaneH]

Good idea.   But no change.

[itimpi]

3 hours ago, ShaneH said:

Hi.   I don't want to be rude, but is it possible we can no longer format a cache disk with XFS ?   I am ready to add a new SSD as my cache disk.   I added the SSD, booted up, add  new SSD as cache, start array.

Now unRaid wants me to format the unmountable disk (the new SSD).  

I do not see any option anywhere to select the file system.   BTRFS seems to be the only option.

Any ideas?

Thank you

You have to stop the array before you can change the file system type.   As long as you have the number of cache slots set to 1 then you should be able to click on the cache disk in the Main tab and explicitly set the file system type to XFS.   When you now start the array the option to format (as XFS) should appear.

[ShaneH]

Ahh  that was the last bit of information I needed.  

1) add cache disk

2) set cache slots to 1

3) click on the cache disk in the Main tab and explicitly set the file system type to XFS

4) start array

5) click on format button.   (no option to select file system type here.  It was selected in step 3)

 

I guess I was trying to change the file system of the unmounted cache disk with the array running.  

We are all good.   Cache is formatted XFS.

Thank you