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Forum Discussion
david_spittle
Apr 12, 2022Tutor
RN314 - OS partition full?
Hi I went to log into my NAS admin page and it didn't work, just went into a loop asking again for my credentials. I tried to SSH in via putty, and also windows: ssh root@ip-address. Access ...
StephenB
Apr 19, 2022Guru - Experienced User
/media should be empty of files. It does contain mount points for USB drives (/media/USB_HDD_1, etc), but those mount points should all be empty.
So the right thing to do is delete all the files (including the ones inside the mount points), but leave the USB* folders themselves.
david_spittle
Apr 19, 2022Tutor
Hi
I phoned a friend who suggested I did this:
rm -rf /media/USB_HDD_3/*
which removed that and the problem was fixed.
This was my external hard disk that was being used for local backups via the USB port on the NAS. It was set up to use Rsync at midnight each day. And every now and then I rotate the disks.
This is the second time that this problem has occurred related to this USB disk. Could it be that the NAS couldn't find the disk or it lost the connection mid backup, and then it starts backing up to a reserved partition on the NAS's OS? And once it fills it up I experience this problem?
- StephenBApr 19, 2022Guru - Experienced User
david_spittle wrote:
Could it be that the NAS couldn't find the disk or it lost the connection mid backup, and then it starts backing up to a reserved partition on the NAS's OS? And once it fills it up I experience this problem?
Yes. If the drive dismounts in the middle of the backup and the NAS doesn't detect that for some reason, then the NAS will start writing to the mount point.
- david_spittleApr 19, 2022Tutor
Does this seem a odd way for it to work? So if a backup fails then it bricks your NAS. Unless you've hopefully enabled SSH and know how to use it.
I always found the connection flaky with USB drives plugging directly into the NAS, with various disks.
I'm wondering what may be a better way to set the external backups up to avoid the potential for this? I have about 5TB of essentials to keep things running.
I'm also backing up to AWS with daily versioning for 90 days, but I see AWS as the last resort recovery as it would be time consuming to get a lot of data back and rebuild a new server. The type of work I do requires that my day-to-day working files need to load hundreds of image assets from a library. So I can't simply save my working files for offline use.
- StephenBApr 19, 2022Guru - Experienced User
david_spittle wrote:
Does this seem a odd way for it to work? So if a backup fails then it bricks your NAS. Unless you've hopefully enabled SSH and know how to use it.
It is an unfortunate failure mode - fortunately most people don't run into it.
david_spittle wrote:
I always found the connection flaky with USB drives plugging directly into the NAS, with various disks.
I'm wondering what may be a better way to set the external backups up to avoid the potential for this? I have about 5TB of essentials to keep things running.
I back up to other NAS myself. It doesn't need to be another ReadyNAS, since they all support rsync.
Another thing you could do is plug the external disks into a PC. You could still use ReadyNAS backup jobs, though I think it would be simpler to run something like FreeFileSync on the PC to backup the NAS.
- SandsharkApr 19, 2022Sensei
A backup NAS sounds like the best (though, undoubtedly, more expensive) solution for you. The ReadyNAS does not have a true "clone" mode where you can completely mirror everything, including the configuration items, but you can set things up well enough where you can just substitute the backup for the primary if the primary goes down as long as you manually keep the users, groups, and shares common on them. It's one reason to choose a ReadyNAS for your backup as well, but they are hard to find new (at least at an anywhere reasonable price) anywhere. I (and I believe StephenB as well) don't even enable SMB on the backup shares as an added level of protection against PC-based malware. The malware can't touch what it can't see.
You can run backup jobs as often as needed. In addition to rsync, ReadyDR is also an option for those backups with another (Intel based only) ReadyNAS, though it does take some extra steps to create accessible shares that clone the backup ones before you can substitute it for the primary.
I did have my main NAS go down once, and I just enabled SMB on the backup and started to work from there. I didn't need to change it's network name or IP address to make things work exactly as on the main one, but could have.
- StephenBApr 19, 2022Guru - Experienced User
Sandshark wrote:
(and I believe StephenB as well) don't even enable SMB on the backup shares as an added level of protection against PC-based malware. The malware can't touch what it can't see.
Correct. I also have the backup NAS on power schedule, so it is completely inaccessible when the backups aren't running.
- david_spittleApr 25, 2022Tutor
Another NAS probably isn't something I wish to do at this stage, too many $$$$.
I'll probably keep rolling with the USB HDDs plugged into my PC to avoid this in future.
On the topic of backups - I also have the Snapshots enabled daily, and today I needed to roll back to a previous version of a file, but it appears that the snapshots for two of my important shares have stopped running and are empty for some reason.
Two other shares have 2 years worth of snapshots.
Would anyone be able to suggest how I'd figure out what's going on with them? They're still enabled but they're most definitely not working. I can manually create snapshots on these shares.
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