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Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

benmunson
Guide

ReadyNAS not showing all disks

 I have a readynas 428 with 4 8TB disks in raid 5 with X-Raid enabled. The overview page shows the correct amount of space is available. The front panel shows the disks are there. The volumes tab however only shows a single volume as does the performance tab. I'm not sure how to make the other volumes appear. I did try a complete factory reset which seemed to change nothing. One thing I think is a little suspicious is that the disk information displayed on the front panel says they are on channels 1, 0, -1, and -2. The admin pages shows the channel 1 disk. How can I get it to display my disks correctly?

Message 1 of 16

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Sandshark
Sensei

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

Just so I'm sure I got it right, you started filling the bays from the bottom, so the picture with just a drive in the top bay is completely wrong -- there isn't one there and there are 5 in the lower bays.  Correct?

 

Disk_info.log identifies the channels as 0, -1, -2, -3, and -4.  It comes from the Netgear program rnuitil, though I'm not sure where it gets the information.  So it's not just the GUI that's confused.  Controller channels are normally assigned based on the bay, not sequentially as you add the drives, and do start with zero.  Why yours appear to be labeled from -7 to 0 instead of 0 to +7 is certainly a puzzle, but does probably explain why the GUI isn't showing them, as it doesn't know what to do with a negative controller channel designation.  Since you started with bay 8 (controller channel 7), it should be showing them as 4 through 7.  The drives themselves are also normally labeled in the GUI based on the slot, but starting at 1 instead of zero -- so the controller channel +1, which is how yours are showing as +1 to -3.

 

While we normally recommend that you leave the drives in the same order, the system is supposed to sort everything out regardless.  I'm thinking that maybe that sorting out will assign the right channel numbers.  I suggest completely reversing the drives and start from the top bay.

 

I'm assuming this isn't just a bug that only shows up in a 428, but it would be nice to hear from another 428 owner to be sure.

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Message 14 of 16

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StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks


@benmunson wrote:

 I have a readynas 428 with 4 8TB disks in raid 5 with X-Raid enabled. The overview page shows the correct amount of space is available. The volumes tab however only shows a single volume as does the performance tab.


That is totally normal.

 

You have a single RAID volume that spans all four disks.

Message 2 of 16
benmunson
Guide

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

I expect to see one volume, but I can only see one of the four 8tb disks that make that volume. I have other earlier readynas models that are configured the same way but show all four disks that make the single volume. I've attached a screen shot showing the incorrect page, hopefully that clarifies.

 

Message 3 of 16
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

While I know of no reason the sync would cause that, I suggest you wait till it completes and see if it just fixes itself once the OS is not as occupied in the sync.

Message 4 of 16
benmunson
Guide

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

The sync is a complete red herring, it was like this before I added another disk, before the sync started. Something else I just noticed is that the disk in the volumes view and the same disk in the status view (I've attached another image of that) list different channels for the same disk, 1 and 0 respectively.

 

Message 5 of 16
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

Has it always been that way?  While I certainly expect you've done so, please confirm if you've done a power cycle and it behaved the same afterward.  If it's not always been this way, do you know if it started when you did a power cycle, OS update, or anything specific?

 

The 1 vs. 0 is completely normal.  One starts counting from 0 and the other from 1.  Basically, the drive is one but the channel is zero.  Yes, it's confusing.

 

Even if the sync has nothing to do with it, you really don't want to start trying anything while it's ongoing.  But maybe somebody has some suggestions for afterward.  Are you comfortable with SSH and the Linux command line?  Anything you do is almost certainly going to have to be done from there.

Message 6 of 16
benmunson
Guide

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

This behaviour seems to have survived a power cycle and also a factory reset. I don't remember it being any other way.

Like I said, the other suspicious thing is that the front panel on the box lists the drives as "Disk0", "Disk1", "Disk-3", "Disk-2", "Disk-1". I would guess the ui is looping over them from 1 to num disks or something, and missing ones less than zero? Does the physical location in the box have anything to do with it? I inserted them from the bottom bay upward.

I'm more than comfortable using ssh and linux, my technical linux knowledge is not massive though.

 

Message 7 of 16
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

OK, I missed that you were referring to negative numbers for the drives.  Yeah, that's very odd.  I think the next step it to see how the Linux core of the OS accounts for them.  You can do so through SSH and the command line, or the downloaded logs .zip file.  Start with disk_info.log and mdstat.log from the logs .zip.  If you need help interpreting them, perhaps @StephenB or a moderator will take a look for you.  But don't post it here (which doesn't really work, anyway), put it in online storage (e.g. Google Drive) and PM the link to whoever volunteers to take a look.

 

The order in which you installed the drives should not matter.

 

I just want to verify that this behavior survived a full factory default (which erases and re-creates the volume) and not just an OS re-install (that does not).  There was one other user who reported a specific drive type not being properly shown in the GUI, though I don't recall which brand and model.  I don't think he ever solved it, and my best guess is that there was one or more characters in the disk ID information that the GUI doesn't handle properly.  You may have a similar issue.

 

Once the sync is complete, my thought was to re-arrange the drives, thus forcing Linux and the GUI to re-read the drive info.  But if it survived a factory default, that's unlikely to help.

Message 8 of 16
benmunson
Guide

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

Yes, it definitely persisted after a full factory reset that required me to recreate the volumes and shares.

I've hopefully shared the log files here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13OoOB2_p9A-C471Nvnk49RsSI9nyKfhi/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vg424kD_YzjOId11Ixebtlddvjq0MO5n/view?usp=sharing

 

Can the disks be removed and shuffled back in any order without losing any data? Are they expected to be in any order?

Message 9 of 16
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks


@benmunson wrote:

Yes, it definitely persisted after a full factory reset that required me to recreate the volumes and shares.

I've hopefully shared the log files here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13OoOB2_p9A-C471Nvnk49RsSI9nyKfhi/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vg424kD_YzjOId11Ixebtlddvjq0MO5n/view?usp=sharing

 


mdstat looks normal (though the volume is still rebuilding).

 

The channel numbers run from 0 to -4, which is odd (and likely explains the negative numbers described earlier in the thread).

 


@benmunson wrote:

 

Can the disks be removed and shuffled back in any order without losing any data? Are they expected to be in any order?


They can be reinserted in any order, but generally we do recommend keeping them in order.  

Message 10 of 16
benmunson
Guide

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

Do the channel numbers correspond to anything? Are they changeable?

Message 11 of 16
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks


@benmunson wrote:

Do the channel numbers correspond to anything? 


Normally they correspond to bays (though normally bays are numbered from 1).

Message 12 of 16
benmunson
Guide

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

Perhaps I put the first disk in the highest number bay, and it got the channel 1 value, and the subsequent drives got the delta from the decreasing bay numbers added to the channel? I'll wait for the resync to finish and try reordering them, and let you know. Thanks!

Message 13 of 16
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

Just so I'm sure I got it right, you started filling the bays from the bottom, so the picture with just a drive in the top bay is completely wrong -- there isn't one there and there are 5 in the lower bays.  Correct?

 

Disk_info.log identifies the channels as 0, -1, -2, -3, and -4.  It comes from the Netgear program rnuitil, though I'm not sure where it gets the information.  So it's not just the GUI that's confused.  Controller channels are normally assigned based on the bay, not sequentially as you add the drives, and do start with zero.  Why yours appear to be labeled from -7 to 0 instead of 0 to +7 is certainly a puzzle, but does probably explain why the GUI isn't showing them, as it doesn't know what to do with a negative controller channel designation.  Since you started with bay 8 (controller channel 7), it should be showing them as 4 through 7.  The drives themselves are also normally labeled in the GUI based on the slot, but starting at 1 instead of zero -- so the controller channel +1, which is how yours are showing as +1 to -3.

 

While we normally recommend that you leave the drives in the same order, the system is supposed to sort everything out regardless.  I'm thinking that maybe that sorting out will assign the right channel numbers.  I suggest completely reversing the drives and start from the top bay.

 

I'm assuming this isn't just a bug that only shows up in a 428, but it would be nice to hear from another 428 owner to be sure.

Message 14 of 16
benmunson
Guide

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

So I can now confirm that what fixed this for me was powering off, removing all the disks, and reinserting them in the opposite order starting from the top bay instead of the bottom.

 

Many thanks to everyone in this chat that helped!

Message 15 of 16
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: ReadyNAS not showing all disks

Great.  This sounds like a bug, but at least we now know a work-around.

Message 16 of 16
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