upgrading and hardware questions

[neurorad]

I've been up and running for several years now without upgrading as things were stable and functional. I have not really made much use of any plugins in the old versions.

 

Currently on v5.0 rc8a

24 TB data over 8 drives not including parity

Sempron 145 (single core CPU)

Marvell 8 port SATA card, 88SE63xx or 88SE64xx series I think

 

Multiple things made me recently think about upgrading. We are finishing construction on a new house that will use a pfsense router on dedicated PC hardware, blueiris for security, a separate PC running CQC for automation, Ruckus unleashed WAP's, etc. and the unraid server is pretty long in the tooth. I thought I had forgotten my unraid cli login, but finally remembered it so that isn't a driving force.

 

I downloaded the latest stable unraid release, 6.8.3 I think (?), using the "clean install" instructions, copied over the pro.key file and the network and ident configuration files.

 

I was able to boot the system but it failed to load unraid. Stuck at "Kernel Panic - not syncing VFS: unable to mount root fs" screen.

 

I did some digging and searching on the forums but did not find what seemed a convincing solution. I am unsure if this is related to the Marvell card, or a BIOS UEFI setting, or something else?

 

In the process of reading, it sounds like my hardware with single core 2.8gHz CPU might be a bit borderline for v6 anyway.

 

So, I guess I'm asking for general recommendations. Is it worth upgrading unraid to v6 with the current hardware? If so, suggestions on where to start with this kernel panic error? If not, would you suggest ditching this hardware altogether or just looking for a multicore CPU for this socket AM3 board? 

[JorgeB]

11 hours ago, neurorad said:

I was able to boot the system but it failed to load unraid. Stuck at "Kernel Panic - not syncing VFS: unable to mount root fs" screen.

This is usually a flash drive problem, try a different one if possible or redoing it manually, this can also help in some cases.

 

11 hours ago, neurorad said:

Is it worth upgrading unraid to v6 with the current hardware?

It will work but it will be very slow, even the GUI will likely lag, dual core with 4GB RAM is the minimum I would use for v6, also looks like you have a SASLP or SAS2LP, those are also not recommended for v6 due to multiple known issues, it should be replaced by an LSI HBA.

[neurorad]

On 4/20/2020 at 3:51 AM, johnnie.black said:

This is usually a flash drive problem, try a different one if possible or redoing it manually, this can also help in some cases.

 

It will work but it will be very slow, even the GUI will likely lag, dual core with 4GB RAM is the minimum I would use for v6, also looks like you have a SASLP or SAS2LP, those are also not recommended for v6 due to multiple known issues, it should be replaced by an LSI HBA.

Thanks. If I'm going to need a new CPU, probably additional RAM (at 4GB now I believe), and new sata card, I think I'll hold tight for the moment. Refurb Athlon II X4 low power editions (~45W) are pretty cheap, but at that point I'd likely look to make a jump to more current mobo/platform.