Old computer guy, new with unRAID, built a new PC, and trying to get it going using 4.71b.  The PC is a Asus M4A785-M motherboard with a Sempron 140 CPU, 2x1GB RAM.   I have 3 new Samsung 2TB F4 drives purchased when they first came out, but am just now using for the first time.  

 

1) what is the difference between the 4.71b fork and the 5.0x fork of unRAID?  Will I be able to upgrade from one to the other later?

 

2) installing unRAID was uneventful added unMenu, in 4.71b I selected the Main Menu option for using advanced format drives, but only the partition drive was listed as starting at 64, the other 2 were listed as starting at 63.  Shouldn't they all have aligned to 64?  I decided to stop building the array and run the preclear script with the -A flag to check the drives, clear, and align them.

 

3)  I opened 3 telnet sessions in Win7 and started them preclearing last night at about midnight.  It is now 10:30am  and the preclear looks to have stopped on them.  SDA is still showing 4% complete on the disk pre-read for sda & sdc.  I closed one session for sdb, restarted it, seems to be running has already surpassed the other 2 sessions.  It looks like the unRAID computer is going asleep and the processes hang?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old computer guy, new with unRAID, built a new PC, and trying to get it going using 4.71b.  The PC is a Asus M4A785-M motherboard with a Sempron 140 CPU, 2x1GB RAM.   I have 3 new Samsung 2TB F4 drives purchased when they first came out, but am just now using for the first time.  

 

1) what is the difference between the 4.71b fork and the 5.0x fork of unRAID?

A complete re-write of the GUI and security to accomodate AFP, NFS, ans SMB protocols. (Apple-File-Protocol being added)

 Will I be able to upgrade from one to the other later?

Yes, but not to 5.0b2 if you use the AF formatting starting at sector 64.  You'll need to wait for 5.0b3, due out any day now. It supports the MBR-4k-allignment.  The 5.0b2 does not.  

2) installing unRAID was uneventful added unMenu, in 4.71b I selected the option for using advanced format drives, but only the partition drive was listed as starting at 64, the other 2 were listed as starting at 63.

Don't know, since you did not provide any specifics.  unraid will use the existing parition if you pre-cleared them, so basically, it did what you requested.

 Shouldn't they all have aligned to 64?

Not if you precleared them and did not use the "-A" option.

I decided to stop building the array and run the preclear script with the -A flag to check the drives, clear, and align them.

That will work.

3)  I opened 3 telnet sessions in Win7 and started them preclearing last night at about midnight.  It is now 10:30am  and the preclear looks to have stopped on them.  SDA is still showing 4% complete on the disk pre-read for sda & sdc.  I closed one session for sdb, restarted it, seems to be running has already surpassed the other 2 sessions.  It looks like the unRAID computer is going asleep and the processes hang?  

No way to know.  If your windows machine goes to sleep it might terminate the telnet session, and that will stop the pre-clear scripts.  

 

Best to invoke the pre-clear scripts from the system console, or, from in a "screen" session.

 

unRAID does not "go to sleep" but you could have errors when writing to the disks.

 

Have you looked in your system log for errors affiliated with the disk that seemed to "freeze" in its clearing process?

 

For any other analysis, you'll need to attach a system log.  Instructions under "Troubleshooting" in the wiki.

 

Joe L.

Thanks Joe!!

 

I appreciate the clarification on 4.7x vs 5x forks. I tried searching but seemed to come up empty.

 

If unRAID doesn't sleep, then it looks like when Win7 must be napping, then stopping the terminal preclearing sessions.  I could see the preclear running issuing "top" in unRAID, left to run an errand, and now it's gone in top, (halted at 11% in the Win7 terminal session), so Win7 must be the culprit.  I don't want to spend a lot of time pre-clearing, maybe will try to find another way to align.  I am off work for 2 days and have a lot of other stuff to do.

 

At a glance - I checked /var/log/syslog and can see where I telnet in, but nothing showing it stopped.

 

None of the drives were precleared initally, I just stuck them in checked the alignment box, blindly hoped it would set it up correctly. 

Thanks Joe!!

 

I appreciate the clarification on 4.7x vs 5x forks. I tried searching but seemed to come up empty.

no problem.  4.7 will be the last of its series.  From here on the next "stable" version will be in the 5.0 series.

If unRAID doesn't sleep, then it looks like when Win7 must be napping, then stopping the terminal preclearing sessions.  I could see the preclear running issuing "top" in unRAID, left to run an errand, and now it's gone in top, (halted at 11% in the Win7 terminal session), so Win7 must be the culprit.

It is why use of the system console or the "screen" add-in are suggested when clearing drives.  Neither will time-out.

  I don't want to spend a lot of time pre-clearing, maybe will try to find another way to align.

You can set the MBR-4k-align option in the unRAID settings.  Then let unRAID clear the drives for you.  The server will be off-line while it does, so plan accordingly.  (It is one reason why the pre-clear is so popular, the other being that if you let unRAID perform the "clear" you'll not know of disk issues until AFTER you write your data to the array and then subsequently try to read it back. )

  I am off work for 2 days and have a lot of other stuff to do.

 

At a glance - I checked /var/log/syslog and can see where I telnet in, but nothing showing it stopped.

No log entry is made when you log off.

None of the drives were precleared initally, I just stuck them in checked the alignment box, blindly hoped it would set it up correctly.   

The MBR-4k-aligned box is used if the disk is not pre-cleared, and does not have a valid unRAID partition on it. 

so far, your disks have neither.

 

Joe L.

NAJAMES,

 

Have you updated the firmware for the F4 as you haven't, then thats the first place I would start.

NAJAMES,

 

Have you updated the firmware for the F4 as you haven't, then that's the first place I would start.

Very true... There is a serious bug in their firmware.  One that causes data to silently be not written to the disk. (but act as if it was)

See this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9339.0

 

It has nothing directly to do with the pre-clear process, but it does affect your ability to trust the drives.

Is the 4.7 safe to use now as I have 7 F4 hdds nearly filled with data?

Is the 4.7 safe to use now as I have 7 F4 hdds nearly filled with data?

 

It was never a question if unRAID was "safe" to use with the F4's.  You HAVE TO update the firmware on the drives to be sure that they will not corrupt your data silently.

 

4.7beta1 does provide "advanced formatting" options so that these drives (among others) are properly aligned.

 

4.7 is still in beta but from the test already done it seems to be a very stable release and on its way to becoming 4.7 final.

I am new to both Linux and unRAID, but given that I have set up my new unRAID server with WDEARS, I have used v4.7.

 

All three of my WDEARS have been precleared to sector 64 (-A command) with 4 cycles which took approx 65 hours total per drive.

 

Transferred data to the array at 20-21MB/sec with parity drive in place.

 

I have tested NFS, not in the way described in the OP I'm afraid so I don't know how useful it is to you - but streaming direct to a media player. Internal network test of the NFS share was at a rock solid constant 86Mbps, which I think is the real world max for the media players' 10/100 port - SMB achieve a variable rate of around 59-75Mbps.

 

As I say, I'm a 'newbie' so I don't know how useful the above is to you, but just my 2p worth.

Have you updated the firmware for the F4 as you haven't, then thats the first place I would start.

 

Yup, did it before I started on this "project".  

 

 

You can set the MBR-4k-align option in the unRAID settings.

 

This is what I did originally.  It set the parity disk to the 64 offset, but the other two data drives were set at 63.  Since I last posted, I downloaded partitionmagic (?) software, ran it from a CD, reset partitions to start at 2048, wiped my unRAID flash drive & reinstalled everything from scratch.  Now with the box "MBR-4k-align" box checked it realigned all 3 disks from 2048 to 64, like I thought it would've done from the start.  DOH!!!

 

After not caring about alignment in the past, these new drives are a "learning experience".  

 

Forgot:  thanks for your quick replies, it is really nice.