Plex + SSD cache, any utility ?


Keint

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Hello !

I m a n00b on Unraid.
I recently switch from expenology to Unraid 6.6.6.

I m quiet happy, but I feel Unraid with Plex is less stable than on Xpenology. It s crash every 2 days. ( I use the server only for Plex)

Maybe I use the wrong setting...
I m using  5 HD + 1 Parity + 1 cache SSD.

 

I  don t really understand how the SSD cache HD is working. 

On my  media share folder I setup CACHE; YES

I see that Unraid copy the last movies I download on the SSD, which is always full. ( 500gb ssd). I don t really understand how the SSD is working, I was thinking that the main point to put an SSD CACHE for Plex is to help for the transcoding, but if it s always full because Unraid copy the last files I download inside the ssd, how can it works well ?

There is any point to use the cache to use PLEX ?

I have many friends who are connected to my server, and they are not watching only the last movies I DL (means not the movie who Unraid copied on the SSD CACHE) 

I also always have the alert to tel me that my SSD CACHE is full, even I schedule the mover every day.

 

and when I use  'MOVE NOW' it doesn't work ...  Any idea?

 

Thanks for you help !

 

Cheers

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1 hour ago, Keint said:

Hello !

I m a n00b on Unraid.
I recently switch from expenology to Unraid 6.6.6.

I m quiet happy, but I feel Unraid with Plex is less stable than on Xpenology. It s crash every 2 days. ( I use the server only for Plex)

Maybe I use the wrong setting...
I m using  5 HD + 1 Parity + 1 cache SSD.

 

I  don t really understand how the SSD cache HD is working. 

On my  media share folder I setup CACHE; YES

I see that Unraid copy the last movies I download on the SSD, which is always full. ( 500gb ssd). I don t really understand how the SSD is working, I was thinking that the main point to put an SSD CACHE for Plex is to help for the transcoding, but if it s always full because Unraid copy the last files I download inside the ssd, how can it works well ?

There is any point to use the cache to use PLEX ?

I have many friends who are connected to my server, and they are not watching only the last movies I DL (means not the movie who Unraid copied on the SSD CACHE) 

I also always have the alert to tel me that my SSD CACHE is full, even I schedule the mover every day.

 

and when I use  'MOVE NOW' it doesn't work ...  Any idea?

 

Thanks for you help !

 

Cheers

I would suggest you enable mover logging under Settings->Scheduler, and then try the move now option again.   After that get the system diagnostics ZIP file via Tools->Diagnostics and post that here.   Doing that should enable the experts to work out what is going wrong and therefore how to resolve your issue.   Note that mover will ignore any files that are open in an application in case that is relevant.

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You should check into the settings you are using for each of your shares. It sounds like you may have them setup to "use cache disk" which you may not want for large files such as movies. If you set that setting to no for any folders that contain large files they will get written directly to the disk and not the cache drive. I suggest that you set the appdata share to "Use Cache Disk ONLY" and any other shares that do not need faster transfer speed to NO for cache. Keep in mind that the cache drive is not part of the array so any data there such as appdata will need to be backed up manually.

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9 hours ago, itimpi said:

I would suggest you enable mover logging under Settings->Scheduler, and then try the move now option again.   After that get the system diagnostics ZIP file via Tools->Diagnostics and post that here.   Doing that should enable the experts to work out what is going wrong and therefore how to resolve your issue.   Note that mover will ignore any files that are open in an application in case that is relevant.

thanks for you help! 

I just uploaded the diagnostic 

tower-diagnostics-20190204-1041.zip

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4 hours ago, CraigGivant said:

You should check into the settings you are using for each of your shares. It sounds like you may have them setup to "use cache disk" which you may not want for large files such as movies. If you set that setting to no for any folders that contain large files they will get written directly to the disk and not the cache drive. I suggest that you set the appdata share to "Use Cache Disk ONLY" and any other shares that do not need faster transfer speed to NO for cache. Keep in mind that the cache drive is not part of the array so any data there such as appdata will need to be backed up manually.

thanks a lot ! 
I followed you advise, just set cache drive on ''app date'' and it's looks like working ! the cache is transferring to the array  

Thanks !

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I don't know if you changed anything since you posted those diagnostics so that is what I am going on.

 

There are a few things in that advice that would be good if you had already done it correctly, but since you already have some things in the wrong place those settings will not fix it.

 

Unraid will not write any new files to cache for a user share set to cache-no, but any files already on cache will not be moved. You still have some files on cache for your cache-no user shares.

 

Unraid will only write new files to cache for a user share set to cache-only, but any files already on the array will not be moved. You have files for system and appdata on the array.

 

You want your apps on cache. This means appdata and system should be cache-prefer.

 

Do this:

  1. Stop writing anything to your server.
  2. Go to Settings - Docker and disable the docker service. Do the same for Settings - VM Manager.
  3. Set system share and appdata share to cache-prefer. Set all other shares to cache-yes.
  4. Run mover. Wait for it to finish.
  5. Go to the Shares page and click on Compute All. Wait for a while for it to produce the results. Check and make sure the system and appdata shares only have files on cache, and no other share has any files on cache. Also post a screenshot of that page.
  6. Set every share except system and appdata to cache-no.
  7. Reenable Docker and VM services.

If you have any questions or problems with these instructions come back for further advice.

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23 hours ago, trurl said:

I don't know if you changed anything since you posted those diagnostics so that is what I am going on.

 

There are a few things in that advice that would be good if you had already done it correctly, but since you already have some things in the wrong place those settings will not fix it.

 

Unraid will not write any new files to cache for a user share set to cache-no, but any files already on cache will not be moved. You still have some files on cache for your cache-no user shares.

 

Unraid will only write new files to cache for a user share set to cache-only, but any files already on the array will not be moved. You have files for system and appdata on the array.

 

You want your apps on cache. This means appdata and system should be cache-prefer.

 

Do this:

  1. Stop writing anything to your server.
  2. Go to Settings - Docker and disable the docker service. Do the same for Settings - VM Manager.
  3. Set system share and appdata share to cache-prefer. Set all other shares to cache-yes.
  4. Run mover. Wait for it to finish.
  5. Go to the Shares page and click on Compute All. Wait for a while for it to produce the results. Check and make sure the system and appdata shares only have files on cache, and no other share has any files on cache. Also post a screenshot of that page.
  6. Set every share except system and appdata to cache-no.
  7. Reenable Docker and VM services.

If you have any questions or problems with these instructions come back for further advice.

 

 

Hello,

thanks for your instruction, I did everything you wrote, 
Please kindly find attached the screenshot.

There are still some files on MediaPlex in the cache. I don t know what it cloud be. I checked and in the cache ssd, MediaPlex folder is empty.

I also reboot the server.

 

Do you know why next to MEDIAPLEX folder there is a triangle who tell me that my files are not protected?

 

Thanks !!

 

Best

Screen Shot 2019-02-05 at 11.18.11 AM.png

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According to that screenshot, your system share still has files on disk2, so you still need to fix that. I don't know how that got missed. Are you sure the system share is set to cache-prefer? Maybe you missed some steps in my instructions. You will have to repeat them.

 

If you are writing anything to MediaPlex and it is a cache-yes share then new files for that share will be written to cache and later moved to the array when mover runs, so that seems normal to me.

 

You should get rid of that 2nd share in the list, the one that is probably the result of a typo and has a similar name to appdata. That is only going to be an opportunity for more mistakes in the future. Just click on that share to get to its page and you should be able to delete it since it is empty.

 

You might go to Settings - Scheduler - Mover Settings and enable mover logging temporarily so we can see what mover is doing when you post your next diagnostics.

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On 2/5/2019 at 10:09 PM, trurl said:

According to that screenshot, your system share still has files on disk2, so you still need to fix that. I don't know how that got missed. Are you sure the system share is set to cache-prefer? Maybe you missed some steps in my instructions. You will have to repeat them.

 

If you are writing anything to MediaPlex and it is a cache-yes share then new files for that share will be written to cache and later moved to the array when mover runs, so that seems normal to me.

 

You should get rid of that 2nd share in the list, the one that is probably the result of a typo and has a similar name to appdata. That is only going to be an opportunity for more mistakes in the future. Just click on that share to get to its page and you should be able to delete it since it is empty.

 

You might go to Settings - Scheduler - Mover Settings and enable mover logging temporarily so we can see what mover is doing when you post your next diagnostics.

thanks a lot for your help !
I did what you told me above, it seems working !  

But I still have my main problem, the server crash often. Just happen again now.

 

I attached the log. 

 

If you have any idea ...

 

Thanks !!!!

Crash happen at 00h00

 



 

tower-syslog-20190209-0017.zip

Edited by Keint
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24 minutes ago, trurl said:

That is just the syslog. We would rather have the diagnostics. Did you try to get the diagnostics? 

how can I get it?

I just did this screenshot before restart

 

.png

 

 

 

I was creating a parity on two HD when Unraid crashed.

Edited by Keint
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35 minutes ago, Keint said:

I did what you told me above, it seems working !

Did it crash before you could complete my previous instructions? That diagnostic indicates you still have these issues I posted before:

On 2/5/2019 at 9:09 AM, trurl said:

...your system share still has files on disk2...

... get rid of that 2nd share in the list, the one that is probably the result of a typo and has a similar name to appdata...

The syslog you posted was full of these:

Feb  9 00:17:22 Tower kernel: i801_smbus 0000:00:1f.3: SMBus is busy, can't use it!

Google seems to indicate this is related to sensors. Is your BIOS up-to-date? Maybe some problem which is happening when System Temp plugin tries to get the temps. Don't know whether or not it could be related to your crash.

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11 minutes ago, trurl said:

Did it crash before you could complete my previous instructions? That diagnostic indicates you still have these issues I posted before:

The syslog you posted was full of these:

Yes it crashed often, like every 2days. I followed your instruction, and after tha ''mover'' started to work well again.


Feb  9 00:17:22 Tower kernel: i801_smbus 0000:00:1f.3: SMBus is busy, can't use it!

Google seems to indicate this is related to sensors. Is your BIOS up-to-date? Maybe some problem which is happening when System Temp plugin tries to get the temps. Don't know whether or not it could be related to your crash.


 

My bios is running the last updated available. I get this error since ever, I m using a Supermicro test server with engineer sample CPU..

 

 

 

I m still stuck on '' Array Starting•Starting services..''' and nothing happen, do you have any recommendations?

 

 

Thanks again for your time !

Screen Shot 2019-02-09 at 1.20.09 AM.png

Edited by Keint
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My bad, 
 

Did it crash before you could complete my previous instructions? That diagnostic indicates you still have these issues I posted before:

Yes it crashed often, like every 2days. I followed your instruction, and after tha ''mover'' started to work well again.

 

 

 

Google seems to indicate this is related to sensors. Is your BIOS up-to-date? Maybe some problem which is happening when System Temp plugin tries to get the temps. Don't know whether or not it could be related to your crash.

My bios is running the last updated available. I get this error since ever, I m using a Supermicro test server with engineer sample CPU..

 

 

 

 

I feel the server crash when is updating  automatically the plugins by ''CA Auto Update Applications'' 

 

I ll turn it off to see if it s crash again.

 


 40 minute after the crash, the array is back. the server is on, dockers start 15 mn after the array was back
 

 

 

Thanks again for you help

Screen Shot 2019-02-09 at 1.26.53 AM.png

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1 hour ago, Keint said:

Did it crash before you could complete my previous instructions? That diagnostic indicates you still have these issues I posted before:

Yes it crashed often, like every 2days. I followed your instruction, and after tha ''mover'' started to work well again.

Your answer is not really an answer to my question. I was asking if you were unable to complete my instructions due to it crashing. The reason I asked that is because I thought you might not have been able to complete my instructions, since your diagnostics still indicate these things have not been fixed:

On 2/5/2019 at 9:09 AM, trurl said:

...your system share still has files on disk2...

... get rid of that 2nd share in the list, the one that is probably the result of a typo and has a similar name to appdata...

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I did follow all you instruction again, please kindly find attached the screenshot.

 

The cache has only the fils from appdata and system.

 

The ''service system'' and dockers seems now start normally !

 

 

I keep you update if there is any other crash ! 

 

Thanks again for your time and your patience!

Screen Shot 2019-02-09 at 12.41.49 PM.png

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On 2/9/2019 at 3:31 AM, trurl said:

 

Hello,

 

a little feedback after 1 weeks of activity, everything is going very well ! 
thanks again for you help !
 

On 2/10/2019 at 2:35 PM, jebusfreek666 said:

Looks like you're running a little hot too. If you weren't pushing it that hard and your hitting 51 C already, I might be concerned with that. Could be wrong, but it seems a bit high to me. 

Hello, 

thanks for your message, I think I setup the wrong sensor, 51C is the sensor of the chips I350BB who is the lan chip.  I didn't find which one I the MB sensor ^^

 

Cheers

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