unRaid decides to use sdg instead of sda as the Boot Device

[Refferic]

Hi guys, 

 

Well, I have gotten myself into a mess you will like. First of all, I had the unRaid running with an internal USB stick (assigned as boot via bios, still functions that way), however, unRaid decided to allow me "mount" my USB boot flash as a normal disk. unRaid decided that after inserting 2 SSD drives (with the intent of using as a cache disk) that it would look at sdg as it's flash medium. (not sda anymore) 

 

 

Unfortunately, it still boots (and starts) with the sda medium, but switches to sdg the moment unRaid finishes. I will include both a diagnostics (prior! = -2312.zip) and after (= -2355.zip) me inserting both SSD's into my server. After inserting the SSD's I had to reconfigure them as "non-raid" disks, since my Dell Poweredge Raid controller also decided to be smarter than me.

 

In the mean time, whilst you are all mindblown by this here problem of mine.... I will try to manually format the SSD's (they were fresh out of the packaging from the store..) within my windows computer. Hopefully that could solve this problem.

 

Let me know what you think!  

stuka-ju87-diagnostics-20200415-2321.zip stuka-ju87-diagnostics-20200415-2355.zip

Edited April 15, 2020 by Refferic
changed title in something more understandable.

[trurl]

It is a bit odd alright. There is no requirement that flash be sda, and the sd designations will often change when adding, removing, or changing disks.

 

For a while my sda was an unassigned device and sdb was flash, but that was all working fine and as expected. After a recent reboot without that UD flash went back to sda, and replugging the UD gave the UD a different letter. I don't know what will happen on next reboot but I've never had any problems when flash doesn't come up as sda.

 

Your situation is different though, since it does seem to be booting from flash, and then it looks for a FAT filesystem on another device and continues on to load the plugins from flash, and it even seems to get your config/super.dat disk assignments correct.

 

Are you sure you don't have any of those files on the SSD?

 

Is flash the only boot device configured in the BIOS?

 

31 minutes ago, Refferic said:

Let me know what you think!

I don't know what to think. Keep us posted.

 

[itimpi]

The diagnostics show that at the Linux level /dev/sda1 is still mounted at /boot as expected so it is not at all clear why sdg should be displayed in the GUI.    Did you set a name for /dev/sdg in Unassigned Devices that may be confusing the GUI?

[Refferic]

12 hours ago, trurl said:

Are you sure you don't have any of those files on the SSD?

- SSD's are bought in the store, didn't use them for anything else. 

 

Is flash the only boot device configured in the BIOS?

- Yes, the Kingston 1 and  then harddisk. Can't remove the harddisk functionality, but it clearly boots from the usb stick as all my settings and configuration files are loaded.  

 

I don't know what to think. Keep us posted.

- I will!

 

 

5 hours ago, itimpi said:

Did you set a name for /dev/sdg in Unassigned Devices that may be confusing the GUI?

- Negative, it is just inserted into the server after opening the package from the store. 

 

I will now start removing the SSD drives, connecting them to my pc and do some testing with it. 

Edited April 16, 2020 by Refferic

[Refferic]

On 4/16/2020 at 12:27 AM, trurl said:

I don't know what to think. Keep us posted.

 

I have found the problem, at last.. It seemed that there was an old instance of unRaid present on the harddisk that I bought from the store. Apparently it was an returned SSD after 30 days to that store, which they sold to me as "new". Having 2 unRaid disks present on the system, unRaid kinda freaked out. What fixed it was to format/purge the SSD. 🤓

[kizer]

Also what confuses me wasn't your Bios Pointing at the USB or was it simply set to Auto?