My server crashed. As I tried to boot it back up, I could not. I heared a POST beep and could see the Lan interface beeing used, but the server did not appear on the network.

As it is running headless It took a while to get a screen to the place. Now when I got a picture, I was very suprised.

It was saying "Login to Tower", but i renamed my server. Also the IP was a 169. while it should be a Class C. So I grabbed the Flash and found a newly generated ident.cfg with all the default values.

 

What happened? Can I get my config back?

I attached the last syslog, but It seems quite old.

syslog-20190109-155216.txt

Edited January 10, 20197 yr by Jaster

Put flash in your PC and let it checkdisk. While there copy config folder from flash to PC.

 

Try it in your server again, maybe use a different USB port, preferably USB2.

 

If that doesn't work then maybe we can put a new install on flash and copy your config back to it.

Worst case that syslog has your disk assignments so we could work from there to set it back up. Also found a diagnostic you posted not too long ago we might use to figure out some other bits of your settings. Some of the files in diagnostics are in fact your settings and those files could just be copied.

 

Best to keep a current backup of flash of course. Main - Boot Device - Flash - Flash Backup to download a zipped copy of flash.

The backup of the flash is on the Raid

I did fix the disk, but the config seems default(y)

 

I attached the folder (without the plugins) as a zip and also the latest diagnostics I had on my local machine.

config.rar

knowlage-diagnostics-20190109-1555.zip

Edited January 10, 20197 yr by Jaster

If you look in the config folder in those diagnostics I think you will see a lot of what you need there.

 

Obviously backing up flash to a system that you need to boot from flash is not a good plan.

From what I see, the ident.fg ist screwed up. That one is easy to fix.

however the disk.cfg looks very different, no idea what to do there.

The network.cfg is there, but its not used I assume as this config could never work on my network.

 

What else do I need to dig into?

 

3 hours ago, Jaster said:

The backup of the flash is on the Raid

Since we know the disk assignments, we could probably get things going well enough to let you get to that backup. Try this:

1. Prepare flash as a new install.
2. Put your license .key file in the config folder and boot up.
3. Assign all your array data disks as they were. No need to assign parity. Assuming your backup isn't on cache no need to assign those either.
4. Start the array and see if you can find your flash backup.

I could get it back from the storage, however libvirt.img was not recoverable, but thats not a big deal.

Thank you very much for guiding me through that process!

 

I could imagine keeping a config backup ON the flash could be a good idea; as it's usually recoverable through windows and then just restore the latest dump and you are good to go....

 

As I cought your attention... you are not to deep into VMs, right?

I am definitely not deep into VMs. I had a VM in Unraid back before dockers were available, but everything I want to do I can do with dockers so I haven't run any VMs for a few years.

 

On the subject of flash backup though, backing up part of the flash drive to that same flash drive seems like an even worse idea than backing it up to the array. Or maybe I am misunderstanding you.

 

If you are trying to automate the backup using the CA Backup plugin, here are some of ideas.

 

Put the backup on an Unassigned Device that you can read on another computer. This is what I do. I have an external drive formatted as NTFS so it can be read in Windows. I have Unassigned Devices plugin automount it. I use that disk for various things, including as the destination for my flash backup using CA Backup.

 

Other people have Unassigned Devices mount a network share on another computer and that becomes the destination for their flash backup.

 

And as already mentioned, you can

13 hours ago, trurl said:

Main - Boot Device - Flash - Flash Backup to download a zipped copy of flash.

at any time in the webUI.

I like the Idea about the unassigned drive, but the CA Backup only allow one copy of the flash (at least I couldn't find anything to set multiple backups/history).

You are getting me right with putting it on the drive itself; it might sound stupid, but I had a couple of failing falsh drives, however those were never unusable. Usually some config files are damaged, once you put the drive into a windows machen and repair, you can put back the config from a backup on the same drive.

22 minutes ago, Jaster said:

CA Backup only allow one copy of the flash

I think that's probably right. If you want some way to have versioning you are on your own there I guess.

 

One thing I will warn you about with keeping versions of flash though. You must be careful you don't use a backup that has drive assignments different from the current drive assignments. There has been more than one case where a user upgraded their parity disk then reused the old parity as a data disk. Later they tried to use an old backup of flash that still had that old parity (now data) disk assigned as parity, and the data on it was overwritten by parity.

 

One way to avoid this surprise is to edit config/disk.cfg and set startarray to no. Then you can check the assignments to make sure they are correct before starting. Another way is to simply delete config/super.dat and Unraid will make you assign your disks again.

Good point! Just have to keep in mind to reset the backups if you change the the assignments.

Btw: is it save to change the 'drive numbering'. A while ago I was removing some drives and have now kind of spare numbers between the assigned once (like disks 2 and 4 are present, while 3 is missing). Of course I wouldn't change the parity...

1 minute ago, Jaster said:

Btw: is it save to change the 'drive numbering'. A while ago I was removing some drives and have now kind of spare numbers between the assigned once (like disks 2 and 4 are present, while 3 is missing). Of course I wouldn't change the parity...

If you have parity2 then any change to disk assignments would require rebuilding parity2. For parity1 it doesn't matter. As long as you keep all the same disks and don't add, remove or replace any then parity1 is valid however you assign the data disks.

 

Tools - New Config, Retain All. Reassign disks as you wish (don't assign a data disk to parity slot obviously). Check parity valid box and you're good to go.