I started the preclear on my 3, 2TB drives last night. The last time I checked on them was maybe 5-6 hours ago, and they were on the postclear step at about 45%. However, some time around 7:30 my isp went down and the computer that I had connected via telnet lost the connection (there is something screwy going on with that computer's network connection with the tower, but that's a whole other issue).

 

When I tried to reconnect through "screen -r" I got the following message:

Cannot find terminfo entry for 'vt100'.

 

I tried to check if the drives were marked as precleared using ./preclear_disk.sh [-t] /dev/sdX (where X is the respective to each drive), all that ever did was give me the preclear Help thing (whatever you want to call it, the thing that describes what each of -t -n etc. etc. do). If it was trying to send me an email (is that the only way it'll output?) I'm guessing that would fail since the ethernet connection isn't working still. (also, I tried  ./preclear_disk.sh [-t] [-m MY EMAIL] /dev/sdX as well as ./preclear_disk.sh [-t] [-m] [M 1] /dev/sdX but they all gave me that same preclear menu as that the first attempt gave me)

 

Am I doing something wrong here? Not real sure what to do next.

 

Edit: I got the original machine connected again. when I use screen -r I get the following:

 

There is a screen on:

1933.pts-0.Tower (Attached)

There is no screen to be resumed

 

Not sure what that means...is there a log saved somewhere that I can access?

The preclear script logs to syslog so you can check the results by logging in (telnet or terminal) and typing

grep preclear /var/log/syslog

to see what has been logged.  If you want to save it as a file to post back in the forums, you can use

grep preclear /var/log/syslog | todos >> /boot/preclear_results.txt

Then copy the file from \\tower\flash\preclear_results.txt assuming your server is named tower and you have the flash drive shared.  Both are defaults so if you haven't changed them they are.

 

As far as what screen is reporting when you try to re-attach, it sounds like screen thinks you are attached when you aren't.  To salvage the connection, you can type

screen -ls

and it will give you output similar to

There is a screen on:
        13419.pts-1.tower        (12/06/2010 03:13:56 AM)        (Detached)

For the above output, the screen session is 13419.pts-1.tower and it is a detached session.  Yours may show Attached still and the session will be different.  To force detach and connect to the running session type

screen -D -r 13419.pts-1.tower

but replace the session name with whatever screen -r reported from above.  That should get you in to see what's happening

 

Of course ALL of this is predicated on the fact you haven't rebooted    If you have all the logs are gone along with the screen session!

So, for arguments sake, lets say I did reboot, is there any way to check if the disks were successfully precleared?

So, for arguments sake, lets say I did reboot, is there any way to check if the disks were successfully precleared?

Yes.

 

Type:

preclear_disk.sh -t /dev/sdX

(where /dev/sdX is the correct device name for the disk you wish to test)

 

It will test if the disk has the pre-clear signature.  (and it is added at the end of the pre-clear process, so if it exists the disk is pre-cleared) The test takes only a second or so to run.

 

Joe L.

awesome, thank you. Was trying that last night but didn't realize you're not supposed to put the brackets around the -t