Unassigned Devices - Managing Disk Drives and Remote Shares Outside of The Unraid Array


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Hi there,

I'm having an issue where my external USB hard drive will all of a sudden cause high IO wait on my system.

The last time it happened was yesterday (10/01/22) at around 12:36

In Syslog the first relevant message I see is

Jan 10 12:36:33 TheNAS kernel: usb 6-1: reset SuperSpeed Gen 1 USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd

The only files on the drive are chia plots for farming.

I only have necessary shares included in the cache dirs plugin, so that shouldn't be accessing the drive.

When it happens I am unable to unmount the drive from the Web UI and the only fix seems to be to physically unplug the drive.
How can I diagnose the root cause of the issue?
Could it be hardware related, (cable, drive, port)?

Thanks

thenas-diagnostics-20220110-2348.zip

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I've run into another issue.

I have a few unassigned devices mounted, some exFAT, some NTFS.

I noticed from my Windows 10 client, with the exFAT drives, I could create files, but not rename or delete them over SMB. I would get a "request not supported" error. Although I could modify / delete files on those drives using Krusader.

Eventually I found some posts on another forum related to issues with vfs_fruit and exFAT.

I had Enhanced macOS interoperability set to Yes. I changed it to No and tried again.

Now I can r/w to the exFAT drives over SMB, but I can't export my time machine share as such.

My guess is that having enhanced masOS interoperability enabled adds vfs_fruit to smb-settings.conf, which also requires vfs_catia and vfs_streams_xattr.

According to documentation, the file system that is shared with this vfs_streams_xattr must support xattrs. Which I guess exFAT does not?

If this is the case, is there anyway for read/write to work for exFAT drives over SMB while having masOS interoperability enabled?

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18 minutes ago, gamerkonks said:

My guess is that having enhanced masOS interoperability enabled adds vfs_fruit to smb-settings.conf, which also requires vfs_catia and vfs_streams_xattr.

Yes, vfs_catia and streams_xattr are added to the drive share settings.  This applies to all Unraid shares and UD devices.

 

19 minutes ago, gamerkonks said:

According to documentation, the file system that is shared with this vfs_streams_xattr must support xattrs. Which I guess exFAT does not?

exFAT does not support extended attributes.

 

20 minutes ago, gamerkonks said:

If this is the case, is there anyway for read/write to work for exFAT drives over SMB while having masOS interoperability enabled?

Why exFAT?  It is not a good choice for what you are trying to do.

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6 hours ago, dlandon said:

Why exFAT?  It is not a good choice for what you are trying to do.

I've found exFAT more convenient, as it's compatible with Windows, macOS and PS4.

Ideally I'd like to be able to plug them directly into the machines, as well as be able to share the disks over the network via Unraid.

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42 minutes ago, gamerkonks said:

I've found exFAT more convenient, as it's compatible with Windows, macOS and PS4.

Ideally I'd like to be able to plug them directly into the machines, as well as be able to share the disks over the network via Unraid.

Help me better understand your use case.  Do you need all or some UD devices to be "Enhanced macOS interoperability"?

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8 minutes ago, gamerkonks said:

I don't need any UD devices to have Enhanced macOS interoperability. I only need that for shares from my array.

Ok, that helps me understand your use case.  I think the best thing here is for me to have a UD setting the same as the setting for the array for MacOS interoperability, but applies to UD devices.  Currently if the array setting is 'Yes', then UD sets the MacOS interoperability on its shares.

  • Like 1
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3 minutes ago, dlandon said:

Ok, that helps me understand your use case.  I think the best thing here is for me to have a UD setting the same as the setting for the array for MacOS interoperability, but applies to UD devices.  Currently if the array setting is 'Yes', then UD sets the MacOS interoperability on its shares.

That would be perfect.

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I am facing an issue, which may be related to the UD plugin. See my initial post: 

What happened is that I replaced my second GPU. Since rebooting, all my UD connected devices have a different name. This leads to my docker and VMs not starting. I could probably change the docker vdisk location to the new name to make it work. However, I am concerned that something else broke and I shouldn't just "fix" it with such work-around. The other thread includes the diagnostic log. Any thought appreciated!

 

 

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56 minutes ago, steve1977 said:

I am facing an issue, which may be related to the UD plugin. See my initial post: 

What happened is that I replaced my second GPU. Since rebooting, all my UD connected devices have a different name. This leads to my docker and VMs not starting. I could probably change the docker vdisk location to the new name to make it work. However, I am concerned that something else broke and I shouldn't just "fix" it with such work-around. The other thread includes the diagnostic log. Any thought appreciated!

 

 

Can you post a screen shot of UD and explain what 'name' changed.

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Click on the mountpoint 'P02509107' and change it back to the original name.  UD did a default mountpoint assignment - not sure why.  You should always set the mountpoint so UD remembers it and it is always the same.  Set it to something that makes sense to you.  You can't count on the default name to always be the same.

Edited by dlandon
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New release of UD.  You can read the Release Notes for the changes.

 

There are known issues with the 'Dev X' assigments:

  • There is a case where the order in which disk devices are installed, removed, and then re-installed can cause the device to not get assigned a 'Dev X' designation.  UD will then mark the device as 'Array' which disables all UD functionality on that device.  This will be fixed in 6.10-rc3.  There are several ways to handle this.
    • Stop the array and then restart the array.  The 'Dev X' designations will be reset.
    • If it's a device you install that is auto mounted, UD will go ahead and execute the device script and there is no problem.
    • Reboot.  Geez, I hate to even suggest this.  Rebooting to me is a terribe solution.
  • Due to a misunderstanding on my part, I incorrectly stated that the 'Dev X' designations were consistent with the device serial number.  They aren't.  A fix is coming, but won't be in the first release of 6.10.  We are still trying to decide the best way to handle this because UD devices come and go and we have to some how bound the devices so Unraid doesn't track every single device ever installed in UD that may never be installed again.
  • In order to help a bit with the 'Dev X' designations not being consistent, I've added the last 'Dev X' assigned to a device in the 'Historical Devices' section.
  • Because of the way 'Dev X' assignments are made, you will see that the 'Dev X' assignment will generally be consistent with the device serial number.
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On 1/11/2022 at 3:16 PM, gamerkonks said:

That would be perfect.

The macOS interroperability setting is now in UD settings.  This is a separate setting from the array share setting.  This only pertains to UD devices and is set independent of the array setting.  It defaults to off.

 

Once you update UD, you'll be able to work with your exFAT disk.  You don't need to make any changes.

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I have a USB (5-bay) enclosure with various drives/capacities and would like to use them as a large volume via the unassigned devices plugin if that is a reasonable thing to do...

 

So far, I have been using UD to remote mount a windows drive pool on another machine to achieve this (I use this to backup my "media" from my main unraid array)

It's not particularly efficient (not at all) but I didn't have room for a USB3.x card in my old Dell T7500, so it wasn't practical to connect it directly (although really it would have been fine past the initial 20tb+ of syncing, incrementals would be more tolerable. 

Anyway, with a PCI-x extender, I was able to shoe-horn a USB3 card in there... and am kinda interested in making backup more automated...

 

options / pros and cons / input appreciated.

- keep drivepool as is, and move it to a windows vm with it passed through...

- use some other vm to manage a new created large volume of the drives and handle the backup (like an OpenMediaVault situation, as I have done that on separate hardware before, and it might be virtualized ok, I haven't looked into it that deep other than a google search for a video of anyone doing it, to no avail)

-- best I could theorize is use Unassigned Devices and either script the backup OR use some type of docker with a GUI... but the big question is (not being a huge linux guy) HOW do I create the Large Volume on the USB enclosure?  do I just do it via the unraid terminal? what files system will best accomplish this?

 

TIA

-g

 

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23 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

It's not.

Ok, that's a shame. Was trying to keep it out of a VM, but I suppose it's not a big deal. Just trying to keep things simple. But since I am already familiar with using FreeFileSync and Windows drive pool, I will just continue to do so.

Edited by Garbonzo
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On 1/10/2022 at 10:40 AM, Vr2Io said:

Agree.

 

Rather than buy a drive hookup, I elected to first try the windows VM route.  After some troubleshooting, it's running.  I can't figure out why, but for some reason I'm unable to change settings on the unassigned drives (grayed out - anyone know what this might be about?).  I used to be able to, but after updating the Unassigned Device plugin I'm no longer can.

 

Thankfully one of the my two mirrored drives showed up in Historical Devices, and I was able to change the settings there?  Seems strange, but ok?  So I enabling Pass Through for that drive, plugged it in, got VM drivers updated, and mapped the drive.  After that it DID show up under Drive Manager in Windows.  I had to Import the drive but after doing that it loads correctly and I'm now able to migrate files via the VM.

 

So I still have a lot of unknowns, but at least I'm able to get my files.  Questions:

  1. I think the issue with not being able to mount the drive was due to the file system not showing up.  But why wasn't it recognized if it was NTFS?
  2. Why can't I change drive settings?  Is there any work around for this?  I got pretty lucky with Historical Devices, otherwise I think I would have been locked out of allowing Pass Through for VM.  Any thoughts?

Screenshot 2022-01-15 1.49.58 PM.png

Edited by sixfootsideburns
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