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


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35 minutes ago, wgstarks said:

It looks like it was removed.  I would suggest that there is an issue with the /flash/config/plugins/unassigned.devices/unassigned.devices.cfg file.  Edit it manually and see if there remains anything referring to the disk in question.  If so then remove it.

 

If you are uncomfortable with manually editing the file, you can PM it to me and I will correct it.

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On 12/26/2017 at 5:51 PM, dlandon said:

A new  version of UD is available.  You can now mount array disks that are encrypted.  There are some restrictions:

  • The array disk passphrase has to be defined. You cannot enter the passphrase for the disk in UD.
  • The disk can only be mounted if the current array passphrase is the same as the encrypted disk.
  • An array encrypted disk cannot be created with UD.

(above from dlandon) several days ago, but let me make the following clarification...

 

You must have one drive in your array encrypted with the same password or keyfile that you want to use with an unassigned device.  This is only because without that, unRaid won't even ask for any encryption credentials, and unassigned devices needs the ones from unRaid before it can mount an encrypted device.

 

Other than that clarification, I haven't seen any issues with the implementation.  Thanks @dlandon

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On 04/01/2018 at 6:13 PM, dlandon said:

Set Settings->Unassigned Devices "Enable preclear rc.diskinfo daemon?" to "No".

 

Could someone explain what rc.diskinfo does, please? I understand it's installed by the Preclear plugin and, presumably, it provides information about disks but there seems to be an incompatibility with some functions of Unassigned Devices. I must say, the name seems a little odd for a daemon, though - I would have expected it to be called something like diskinfod as I thought the rc prefix meant "run commands", in the sense of start-up scripts.

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Some time ago the rc.disknfo was added to the preclear plugin to share the disk information needed for preclear with UD to cut down on the disk accesses.  It seems that when a disk was being precleared and UD tried to query the disk for the information it needed it caused preclear/UD to appear to hang.  The incompatibilities you mention are from changes in UD that are not kept up with in the preclear plugin.  I assume that @gfjardim does not have the time to keep up like I do.

 

I added a setting in the UD settings so the rc.diskinfo would be disabled unless it was absolutely needed.  Unfortunately what I see is that users are turning on the UD setting expecting it to fix preclear functional problems, which it doesn't.  When the rc.diskinfo is turned on, the incompatibilities come out in the form of UD support issues.

 

I have made changes in UD to cut down on the disk queries and I really don't think rc.diskinfo is necessary any longer.  I have been pondering about this for quite a while and I will probably just remove the rc.diskinifo from UD completely.  There is a plan to incorporate UD into unRAID and I don't see preclear as part of that integration.

 

I think preclearing disks is highly overrated anyway and not really necessary.  I know, all you preclear fans are going to tell me how it's so important and you've had a gazillion disks fail right out of the box, etc.  I just put a disk in the array and let unRAID do its thing.  If the disk is going to fail, unRAID will detect it and I then replace it and rebuild it.

 

Anyway, I'm going to remove rc.diskinfo from UD because it has increased the UD support issues, is very confusing to users, and I don't see LT incorporating the preclear into unRAID at this time.

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LT added "Clear" support to the array, now any new disk will be automatically cleared in the background. This is different from the past when clearing was a foreground process and the array could only become operational once the new disk was fully cleared, hence preclear came into existence.

 

With unRAID 6 the array stays operational all the time and new disks can be formatted as soon as the background clearing is finished, which make those disks instantly available to the array.

 

When notifications are enabled then SMART anomalies will be reported real-time during the clearing of a disk, this may help identifying "bad" disks (infant mortality).

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23 minutes ago, bonienl said:

When notifications are enabled then SMART anomalies will be reported real-time during the clearing of a disk, this may help identifying "bad" disks (infant mortality).

Is it just a write pass, or also a read pass so the disk gets a chance to test all the just written sectors?

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Note that a HDD doesn't read back after a write operation, so it will not see if it writes bad data. It assumes that the sector is in a good enough physical state that it will not have more bit errors than what the ECC can safely handle.

 

It takes a full disk read - or an extended SMART test - for the disk to verify that all sectors can actually be read ok.

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3 hours ago, pwm said:

It takes a full disk read - or an extended SMART test - for the disk to verify that all sectors can actually be read ok.

+1

I would like to suggest that the logic for adding a disk includes an optional extended smart test as the last step of the process, preferably defaulted to enabled. That way, all zeros are written, and afterwords the drive can be verified automatically instead of waiting for the next parity check to determine readability.

 

Alternatively, I'd like to suggest a pop up that asks the user if they want to start a NON-CORRECTING parity check after the addition of the drive. That way crib deaths or connection issues can be caught and dealt with before significant amounts of data are entrusted to the array.

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The advantage with a extended SMART test is that it happens inside the drive, so it doesn't load down anything else.

 

The disadvantage is that it will not scream at a bad SATA cable - but a bad SATA cable would normally already have produced ECC errors in the SMART data from incorrect transfers when writing zero to the disk.

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10 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

I would like to suggest that the logic for adding a disk includes an optional extended smart test as the last step of the process, preferably defaulted to enabled. That way, all zeros are written, and afterwords the drive can be verified automatically instead of waiting for the next parity check to determine readability.

Agree, this would be a good addition and make preclear pretty much dispensable.

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Hi everyone. I'm a total noob to unRAID and am trying it out as a NAS alternative and a location to store my backups. I previously posted my problem here but it was recommended to post in this thread instead. 

 

I've managed to scrounge up an HP dual-Xeon computer that I'd like to use as an unRAID server (it's a monster!). So far I have it working with a 500 GB SSD cache drive, a 2 TB parity drive, and two 2 TB array drives. I have Shares configured on it so I can access it from the PCs in my house for media sharing and backing up to. 

 

Here's my problem:

 

The motherboard is an old one, so it doesn't see SATA drives bigger than about 2 TB. To get around this limit, I'm attempting to use  a pair of 6 TB drives in a Vantec NexStar MX USB RAID box, with the box configured so the drives are treated individually (not RAID or JBOD). UnRAID sees the drives and lets me mount them, but there doesn't see to be any way to format them. In addition, I'm getting this error message overlaid on the Unassigned Devices section of the Main page.

 

Warning: syntax error, unexpected '=' in Unknown on line 14 in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1399 
Warning: syntax error, unexpected '=' in Unknown on line 22 in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1399 
Warning: syntax error, unexpected '=' in Unknown on line 28 in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1399 
Warning: syntax error, unexpected '=' in Unknown on line 14 in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1399 
Warning: Illegal string offset 'DEVTYPE' in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1422 
Warning: syntax error, unexpected '=' in Unknown on line 28 in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1399

 

I've attached a screenshot showing what it looks like. 

 

5a529bd02809b_2018-01-07UnRAID6TBProblem.thumb.jpg.16424cc7361f96c7fc4bec3ccf8e3b27.jpg

 

Have I run into a limitation with unRAID or am I doing something wrong?

 

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! 

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21 minutes ago, PeeBee said:

Hi everyone. I'm a total noob to unRAID and am trying it out as a NAS alternative and a location to store my backups. I previously posted my problem here but it was recommended to post in this thread instead. 

 

I've managed to scrounge up an HP dual-Xeon computer that I'd like to use as an unRAID server (it's a monster!). So far I have it working with a 500 GB SSD cache drive, a 2 TB parity drive, and two 2 TB array drives. I have Shares configured on it so I can access it from the PCs in my house for media sharing and backing up to. 

 

Here's my problem:

 

The motherboard is an old one, so it doesn't see SATA drives bigger than about 2 TB. To get around this limit, I'm attempting to use  a pair of 6 TB drives in a Vantec NexStar MX USB RAID box, with the box configured so the drives are treated individually (not RAID or JBOD). UnRAID sees the drives and lets me mount them, but there doesn't see to be any way to format them. In addition, I'm getting this error message overlaid on the Unassigned Devices section of the Main page.

 

Warning: syntax error, unexpected '=' in Unknown on line 14 in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1399 
Warning: syntax error, unexpected '=' in Unknown on line 22 in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1399 
Warning: syntax error, unexpected '=' in Unknown on line 28 in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1399 
Warning: syntax error, unexpected '=' in Unknown on line 14 in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1399 
Warning: Illegal string offset 'DEVTYPE' in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1422 
Warning: syntax error, unexpected '=' in Unknown on line 28 in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1399

 

I've attached a screenshot showing what it looks like. 

 

5a529bd02809b_2018-01-07UnRAID6TBProblem.thumb.jpg.16424cc7361f96c7fc4bec3ccf8e3b27.jpg

 

Have I run into a limitation with unRAID or am I doing something wrong?

 

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! 

What version of UD are you using?  Post diagnostics.

Edited by dlandon
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JFYI: just updated to the latest version (as of yet – 2018.01.07a) of UD and now see this error:

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 920

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1099

i've no shares, etc. mounted. maybe it is assuming, that there's at least one mounted?

Edited by s.Oliver
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I as well have received;

 

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 920

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1099

 

also from command line at server head;

 

# chmod: cannot access '/var/state/unassigned.devices/unassigned.devices' : No such file or directory

 

I'm running unRAID 6.3.5 and just updated unassigned devices to latest version 2018.01.07a

diagnostics-20180107-1547.zip

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29 minutes ago, SoAvenger said:

I as well have received;

 

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 920

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/lib.php on line 1099

 

also from command line at server head;

 

# chmod: cannot access '/var/state/unassigned.devices/unassigned.devices' : No such file or directory

 

I'm running unRAID 6.3.5 and just updated unassigned devices to latest version 2018.01.07a

diagnostics-20180107-1547.zip

Fixed in version 2018.01.07c.

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3 minutes ago, PeeBee said:

 

It says I'm running version 2017.12.30 and that it's up-to-date, but I see from other users that they have a more current version. Why does mine say that it's up-to-date?

 

Diagnostics attached. 

 

5a52b91a05547_2018-01-07UnraidUDup-to-date.thumb.jpg.8a34031db9e618aae703ba68645af8d6.jpg

tower-diagnostics-20180107-1915.zip

I haven't run 6.3.5 in a while, but there should be an update button in the upper right part of the plugins page.  Click on that and it will check for updates.

 

There seems to be a problem with your configuration file.  Please post the the /flash/config/plugins/unassigned.devices/unassigned.devices.cfg file.

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