Success! Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H (corrected model)

[kenoka]

Hi all,

 

I'm new to unRAID, but I've been flirting with the idea for about two years now. I last looked at it over a year ago, and in my linux noobishness, I was a bit intimidated by the, well, linuxiness of it all. Things seem to have really progressed here in that time.

 

I completed building my unRAID server a couple of days ago, and couldn't have asked for a smoother experience. I started with unRAID basic, and had my array built with three drives very easily. The web interface is easy and informative. I copied data onto the array and everything went really well; well enough that I've bought a two pack of pro licenses, and I'm in the process of preclearing two more drives to fill out my array. I'm going to hold off on any additional drives due to budget constraints. Parity is a new Seagate 2TB bought for the purpose. It's been quiet, cool, and reasonably quick for a "green" drive. The four data drives are a hodgepodge of 1.5TB drives; two Seagates and two WD Greens.

 

The server is built in the seemingly ubiquitous CM 590, with an Athlon 5600. I haven't sprung for the snazzy hot swap cages yet, again due primarily to budget. I'm using Coolermaster's 4 in 3 cages, and they're fine, but I do wish I could get drives in and out quicker. I definitely prefer the standalone cage to the one that came with the case. It's a pain in the ass to get screws into that one.

 

I'm hoping to add a Supermicro 8 drive card to my mobo's PCIE slot. Can anyone tell me if that x16 slot can take a non video card?

 

Also, I've seen a couple of things about the Seagate drive needing a firmware update. I haven't checked the firmware version, and the impression I get is that Seagate is only rolling this out to select, affected serial numbers. Can anyone clarify the situation for me?

 

 

[queeg]

If you intend on using this mobo (basically any Gigabyte mobo), make sure the board has a bios version with it's DualBios (HPA) set as DISABLED by default.  You should do a search for HPA in the forum to understand this issue. 

[kenoka]

Well that was scary. Thanks for the heads up.

 

If anyone sees something wrong in my syslog, please tell me, because it's mostly gobbledygook to me.

 

Queeg: That's one of my favorite episodes of Red Dwarf. Do you get all your knowledge from the Junior Encyclopedia of Linux?

syslog.conf

[kenoka]

I'm getting about 28 MB/s on sustained data transfers. I'm assuming that's typical.

[kenoka]

I already ran a parity check after I first built the array a few days ago. Is there any way to get a log back to that time to get level 1 testing out of the way, or should I just run another check?

[Joe L.]

I already ran a parity check after I first built the array a few days ago. Is there any way to get a log back to that time to get level 1 testing out of the way, or should I just run another check?

If you've not rebooted, the results may still be in the syslog.  (or in /var/log/syslog.1)

[kenoka]

If you've not rebooted, the results may still be in the syslog.  (or in /var/log/syslog.1)

Sorry, I've had to reboot.

[kenoka]

If you've not rebooted, the results may still be in the syslog.  (or in /var/log/syslog.1)

Sorry, I've had to reboot. I'll just wait until my next parity check and upload the syslog at that time. I doubt there's huge demand to use this mobo anyway. I wouldn't have it myself but I got a good open box deal from Newegg.

 

[queeg]

Well that was scary. Thanks for the heads up.

 

If anyone sees something wrong in my syslog, please tell me, because it's mostly gobbledygook to me.

 

Queeg: That's one of my favorite episodes of Red Dwarf. Do you get all your knowledge from the Junior Encyclopedia of Linux?

 

Haha, absolutely.  I have a raft of vitual machines named sparehead1, sparehead2 ...

 

I know the HPA  is a jolt.  But it's better to know up front than get suprised when a drive fails and your up a creek.

[kenoka]

It's absolutely vital to know for anyone using a Gigabyte board, and I thank you for letting me know.

 

Sparehead1 etc. is brilliant. From another of my favorite episodes. I love it when Spare head 3 gives Kryten what for. That plus the curry beast and Lister as (mini) man+.

[kenoka]

Finished a parity check this afternoon. Syslog attached.

syslog.conf

[kenoka]

Whoops. I just found the box for the motherboard, and it's actually a GA-MA78GM-S2H.

 

[kenoka]

I'm really enjoying my unRAID system. I've gone ahead and bought a Supermicro 8 port SAS card in order to add my 1 TB drives that were migrated to 1.5 TB on unRAID. Once that's installed, I'll start the clock on Level 2 testing.

 

So far, everything has been pretty much trouble free, except for one thing. On a lark, I added a drive to the sixth SATA port, which is configured for eSATA. I used an Antec eSATA enclosure I had plus one of the 1 TB drives mentioned above. unRAID never seemed to recognize that there was even a drive present. The port worked fine when this was a Windows machine, and the enclosure and drive both work on a Windows machine. Now that I'm getting the 8 port card, I'm not fussed about getting the eSATA port working, but was just curious if anyone else had had any similar issues.

[Joe L.]

unRAID is not a hot-plug OS... Did you reboot after connecting the external drive?

[kenoka]

unRAID is not a hot-plug OS... Did you reboot after connecting the external drive?

 

Yes. I tried to hot plug it, and then when I found nothing I rebooted with the eSATA drive attached.

[kenoka]

I had to RMA a Samsung 1TB drive, but I just got it back. If I have time this week before the Supermicro card gets here, I'll shut down the server and plug the Samsung into the eSATA port via an eSATA dock I have. Hopefully it will at least allow me to preclear disks. That would be quite handy.

 

What impediments are there for unRAID to support hot swapping? I wouldn't mind manually mounting and unmounting the disk, but it would be great to have the option.

[kenoka]

Update: I powered down the array and tried the Samsung drive in my eSATA dock, and it seems to work fine. I'm in the process of pre-clearing the disk now.

 

Maybe the enclosure or the cable has gone bad while sitting on the shelf.

[kenoka]

Installed the Supermicro SAS eight port card without a hitch.

[kenoka]

I guess I never updated this thread. This board had a bad PCI-E slot, which I had never discovered before, because I had always just used the onboard video. After I installed the Supermicro SAS card, I started to experience a weird series of errors and forced reboots. I sent the card back for replacement, and tested an alternative power supply to eliminate those as suspects. I then tested a video card in the slot. When that didn't work, I knew the slot was bad. Then I had to order another motherboard. It seems like a lot of folks here favor Asus boards, so I went with the M4A785-M, and had a horrific time with it. Details here.

 

Now I've finally received the board back from Gigabyte, and it's now happily back in my unRAID server. Once again, installation was completely painless. The Asus board is now serving duty in a kitchen PC, where it will mostly serve up music via Pandora.