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

[dlandon]

8 minutes ago, wgstarks said:

Just to be clear, I'm still running 6.3.5, so if I'm understanding correctly this didn't fully test the new formatting.

It did.  UD is partitioning disks exactly the way unRAID does.

Edited September 9, 2017 by dlandon

[JorgeB]

24 minutes ago, wgstarks said:

Just to be clear, I'm still running 6.3.5, so if I'm understanding correctly this didn't fully test the new formatting.

 

Formatting a disk outside the array is only needed if it's going to be loaded with data and later added to the cache slot or as data disk after a new config, it's not needed (and it doesn't matter if it's formatted or not) when rebuilding an existing disk.

[dlandon]

49 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

 

Formatting a disk outside the array is only needed if it's going to be loaded with data and later added to the cache slot or as data disk after a new config, it's not needed (and it doesn't matter if it's formatted or not) when rebuilding an existing disk.

Correct.  The criticism was that a disk formatted and partitioned anywhere in the unRAID UI would be compatible with the array.  Apparently some users formatted disks with UD, loaded them with data and then expected the disk to be accepted into the array without forcing a re-format.  Of course parity would have to be built/rebuilt, but that was not the issue.

 

I had the experience where I formatted a new cache disk in rc7 and installed it in the array as a new cache and it was happily accepted by unRAID, but with rc8 it was rejected as an incompatible format because of the partition format requirements for encrypted disks.  unRAID is stricter now about the partition format.  The UD partition format will now alleviate this problem.

 

The changes to UD will now alleviate incompatibility issues with partitions, but the preferred method is still installing disks into the array and let unRAID format them.

[trurl]

4 hours ago, dlandon said:

Apparently some users formatted disks with UD, loaded them with data and then expected the disk to be accepted into the array without forcing a re-format.

But this is not what wgstarks said he did. He said he used a UD formatted disk to replace/rebuild another disk. How or even whether a disk is formatted before it is used to rebuild another shouldn't matter, should it? You could use UD to format it NTFS and it wouldn't matter because the rebuild is going to have whatever filesystem the original had.

[dlandon]

7 hours ago, trurl said:

But this is not what wgstarks said he did. He said he used a UD formatted disk to replace/rebuild another disk. How or even whether a disk is formatted before it is used to rebuild another shouldn't matter, should it? You could use UD to format it NTFS and it wouldn't matter because the rebuild is going to have whatever filesystem the original had.

 

What wgstarks did was not necessary, but helped me confirm that the UD partitioned disk would be accepted into the array.  What is important when a disk is rebuilt is the partitioning because the file system in the partition is replaced when the disk is rebuilt to what was on the original disk.  If the file system on the original disk was XFS, then the replacement disk will be XFS regardless of what file system UD created on the disk.

 

The format compatibility feature of UD is only to prevent situations where a disk is partitioned and loaded with data and then introduced into the array.  It is not a replacement for the normal partitioning of disks for the array, or a way to trick unRAID into changing file systems in a partition.

 

Note: This feature may offer an another way to convert file systems.  i.e. converting from ReiserFS to XFS.  A new disk could be installed and formatted by UD,  data copied from the array disk to be converted, and then inserted into the array and parity rebuilt.  Do I see a new opportunity for a User Script to copy data from an array disk to a UD disk?

[saarg]

58 minutes ago, dlandon said:

 

What wgstarks did was not necessary, but helped me confirm that the UD partitioned disk would be accepted into the array.  What is important when a disk is rebuilt is the partitioning because the file system in the partition is replaced when the disk is rebuilt to what was on the original disk.  If the file system on the original disk was XFS, then the replacement disk will be XFS regardless of what file system UD created on the disk.

 

The format compatibility feature of UD is only to prevent situations where a disk is partitioned and loaded with data and then introduced into the array.  It is not a replacement for the normal partitioning of disks for the array, or a way to trick unRAID into changing file systems in a partition.

 

Note: This feature may offer an another way to convert file systems.  i.e. converting from ReiserFS to XFS.  A new disk could be installed and formatted by UD,  data copied from the array disk to be converted, and then inserted into the array and parity rebuilt.  Do I see a new opportunity for a User Script to copy data from an array disk to a UD disk?

 

I have to agree here with @trurl

Replacing a disk and rebuilding it from parity will not help test what you added to UD as the previous partition and file system is overwritten from parity. At least that's how I thought the rebuild works. 

[JorgeB]

1 hour ago, dlandon said:

What wgstarks did was not necessary, but helped me confirm that the UD partitioned disk would be accepted into the array.

 

Not for a rebuild, a rebuild doesn't care for an existing partition (well except rc8 but that is a bug), only way to test if UD is partitioning the disks correctly is to add them to the array after a new config, preferably with rc8, as it is more strict than pre-rc8.

[dlandon]

15 minutes ago, saarg said:

 

I have to agree here with @trurl

Replacing a disk and rebuilding it from parity will not help test what you added to UD as the previous partition and file system is overwritten from parity. At least that's how I thought the rebuild works. 

 

It does because the partitioning of the disk was accepted by unRAID.  The disk is not re-partitioned when it is rebuilt if the partition is already proper, the file system in the partition is rebuilt.

Edited September 10, 2017 by dlandon

[JorgeB]

Just now, dlandon said:

The disk is not re-partitioned when it is rebuilt

 

It is pre-rc8, and he's using v6.3.5

[dlandon]

1 minute ago, johnnie.black said:

 

It is pre-rc8, and he's using v6.3.5

 

Ok.  I stand corrected.

[johnieutah]

Need some help finding out an issue I had with my Unraid server last night...

I was using the user scripts plugin to backup my movies share to an external hard drive (mounted with UD). It was taking longer than I expected so I just wanted to shut the server down and pick up the rest of the back-up later in the week. However hitting shutdown from the Web UI or telnetting in and doing a 'shutdown now' failed to powerdown the server cleanly. In the end I had to hard shutoff the external drive, then the shutdown was performed. This leads me to thinking there was a problem with Unraid and unmounting the disk. How can I check this so that it won't happen next time?

Thanks.

[gfjardim]

On 05/09/2017 at 11:08 AM, dlandon said:

What I did is not really a fix.  It is a work around.  The preclear rc.diskinfo has some issues and it is now disabled by default in UD with the option of re-enabling it if there are preclear issues.  @gfjardim needs to put the time into fixing the issues with rc.diskinfo.

 

Dan, could you summarize all errors users had reported around this?

[dlandon]

30 minutes ago, gfjardim said:

 

Dan, could you summarize all errors users had reported around this?

 

Disks not showing up in UD.  I don't know any particulars of what disks did not show.

[wgstarks]

In my case the disk would appear at first and then disappear as soon as I tried to format it.

[dlandon]

4 hours ago, johnieutah said:

Need some help finding out an issue I had with my Unraid server last night...

I was using the user scripts plugin to backup my movies share to an external hard drive (mounted with UD). It was taking longer than I expected so I just wanted to shut the server down and pick up the rest of the back-up later in the week. However hitting shutdown from the Web UI or telnetting in and doing a 'shutdown now' failed to powerdown the server cleanly. In the end I had to hard shutoff the external drive, then the shutdown was performed. This leads me to thinking there was a problem with Unraid and unmounting the disk. How can I check this so that it won't happen next time?

Thanks.

 

A disk that is busy can't be unmounted and unRAID will force a shutdown after the timeout so it can shutdown.  You will get an unclean shutdown.

[johnieutah]

17 hours ago, dlandon said:

 

A disk that is busy can't be unmounted and unRAID will force a shutdown after the timeout so it can shutdown.  You will get an unclean shutdown.

That was my impression but in this case Unraid wouldn't shutdown at all until I physically took action and turned off the mounted hard drive. I will add a diagnostic log later.

 

Thanks.

[dlandon]

21 hours ago, johnieutah said:

That was my impression but in this case Unraid wouldn't shutdown at all until I physically took action and turned off the mounted hard drive. I will add a diagnostic log later.

 

Thanks.

 

That is an issue to take up with LT. Post a defect report.

[wgstarks]

Is there any way to view read/write speeds on UD mounted disks?

[dlandon]

On 9/11/2017 at 10:09 AM, johnieutah said:

Need some help finding out an issue I had with my Unraid server last night...

I was using the user scripts plugin to backup my movies share to an external hard drive (mounted with UD). It was taking longer than I expected so I just wanted to shut the server down and pick up the rest of the back-up later in the week. However hitting shutdown from the Web UI or telnetting in and doing a 'shutdown now' failed to powerdown the server cleanly. In the end I had to hard shutoff the external drive, then the shutdown was performed. This leads me to thinking there was a problem with Unraid and unmounting the disk. How can I check this so that it won't happen next time?

Thanks.

 

Next time abort the user script, wait a little bit of time, unmount the disk in UD, and then shutdown the server.

[dlandon]

1 hour ago, wgstarks said:

Is there any way to view read/write speeds on UD mounted disks?

 

Not in the UD plugin.

[johnieutah]

On 9/13/2017 at 0:04 PM, dlandon said:

 

That is an issue to take up with LT. Post a defect report.

 

Done.

 

9 hours ago, dlandon said:

 

Next time abort the user script, wait a little bit of time, unmount the disk in UD, and then shutdown the server.

 

Can a user script that is running in the background be aborted?

 

Thanks.

[dlandon]

1 hour ago, johnieutah said:

 

Done.

 

 

Can a user script that is running in the background be aborted?

 

Thanks.

 

Yes.  There is an abort button on the User Scripts page.

[phiyuku]

error: plugins/unassigned.devices/UnassignedDevices.php: wrong csrf_token

 

Newest version. Uninstalled Plugin and installed again.

[itimpi]

That message means you have a browser window open from before the last time you rebooted unRAID.

[tink]

Hi i hope someone here can help me out. i'm trying to use Unassigned devices to move data from an old unraid server that suffered a motherboard failure to a brand new server. i've gotten the drive to mount and share and I can see the top level of directory. but when I try to go into what would have been a share on the old unraid disk i get a permissions error. i've included a screen shot of the error i'm getting i'm getting