Re: Readynas os6 became unresponsive Now showing used disk and array is not accessibe,

serdood · ‎2017-10-06

The nas became un responsive so tried a reboot. Did not work after leaving overnight so turned off. Machine is now showing disk have information and ask to reformat. Can this be recovered? The Nas was updated to 6.8.1 recently. This has happened to me a few times. The last time I had to restart everything from scratch.

StephenB · ‎2017-10-06

You could try paid support (my.netgear.com).

If you have a PC that can boot up under linux (most can) you can also connect the disks in the array to that PC, install mdadm and btrfs, and manually attempt to mount the data volume. Best not to attempt that if you don't have reasonable knowledge of linux shell commands.

serdood · ‎2017-10-07

Not a problem with rebuilding the array as I can restore from backup Just wondering why it keeps happening and maybe just an easy recovery. I don't mind if support takes a look for informational purposes before I do a restore.

serdood · ‎2017-10-08

Just tried to do an os reinstall on pro 6 with 6.8.1 and I get stuck at checking root fs. Last time I had this error it was fixed with the help of MDGM. Very greatful that he takes the time out to help us with legacy hardware. From what I have gathered I probably have OS root partition filled and that is why nas is not booting. As this has happened a few days after the upgrade to 6.8.1. I have had weekly reboots and scrubs of the volume. I am suspecting that since this server runs plex and plexpy that something is filling up the os partition. Unfortunately I am not able to get in to check the logs to investigate. Like last time I was able to just restore but this is the third time this has happend and I would like to prevent this from happening constantly.

StephenB · ‎2017-10-09

Do you have ssh installed (and if so, are you comfortable running linux commands)?

Note that a full OS partition can result in a non-responsive NAS, but it usually doesn't show you a "used disk" status in RAIDar.

BTW, I didn't realize you were running OS 6 on a pro. Unfortunately paid support is not an option.

serdood · ‎2017-10-09

I think I had ssh installed and I am comfortable with linux commands. I don't mind trying a few things before I do a full reset and restore even just as a learning excercise. For me I am just wondering if Plex has anything to do with all my issues. As of now I have telnet support mode enabled.

serdood · ‎2017-10-10

Does anyone have any instructions on what to look for If I am able to ssh into the box? As of now all I am getting is checking FS on the box.

serdood · ‎2017-10-11

Hello if anyone can help,

I was hoping that someone can help troubleshoot my pro 6 that was updateded to the 6.8.1 recently. The device became unresponsce and machine needed to be powered down. When it came back up it showed that it was used disk please format. I have tried to reinstall the os via the boot menu but the machine has been stuck at checking FS overnight. Is there a way to bypass the FS check and force OS reinstall? I have tried to ssh into the machine but I have not been able to connect to even check if it is a full os partition. Either way I am not able to get into the admin page. Previously I had this happen and mdgm was very helpful in helping me get machine back up and running. Then a few months later I went into the admin page and it said lost volume. The second time around I just did a factory default and started from scratch.

This time around I just want to see if there is something that is wrong with my setup before I do a factory reset again and do a restore. I am only running 2 apps which is Plex and PlexPy. I am hoping to determine if these 2 apps are causing the issues of the machine locking up when there are multiple users streaming from the box. Unfortunately I am not able to get into the box to do troubleshooting. I have tested all the drives and ran memory tests previously to see if there is any hardware issues but it seems fine so far. I understand that this is a legacy box running unsupported firmware so I mainly use it for stuff that is not that important.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

serdood · ‎2017-10-12

Does anyone know how to bypass the FS check so I can try to do an os reinstall?

StephenB · ‎2017-10-16

The OS reinstall would happen before the file system check.

Did you check the OS partition fullness with ssh?

serdood · ‎2017-10-16

Thanks Stephen B for getting back to me. I was not able to get in via ssh even though I had it enabled. Fortunately MDGM got in touch with me and was able to get into the machine and I believe he was able to initiate an os install which I was not able to. I have spoke with MDGM and I have done some troubleshooting and I believe that Plex is causing issues. I was able to get in and retrieve logs and run diagnostics. The hardware seems ok but the day that the nas became unresponsive I had around 7 users connected via plex to my nas. Plex was running natively on the nas and I only limit to one transcode on the server. Even with that I think that the extra overhead from plex and multiple streams caused the issue. I am aslo suspecting that the btrfs gets corrupted alot easier then when the hardware was on ext4 fs. The combination of plex and btfrs is what I suspect giving me issues especially on older hardware.

As an experiment I will be offloading plex server on a seperate computer and using the nas as just file server which Plex will pull from. I will update you on if this will help.

Big thanks to MDGM for helping me fix the nas and saving me time from restoring tons of data as well as his knowledge and help on Legacy hardware. Also thanks to the community for the input and making me not regret sticking with the readynas ever since the infrant days.

StephenB · ‎2017-10-17

I'm glad you are up and running again.

@serdood wrote:

I am aslo suspecting that the btrfs gets corrupted alot easier then when the hardware was on ext4 fs.

I generally disagree on this. My take is that btrfs is better at detecting corruption than ext. Though I think btrfs does need to do a better job of managing free space, and hopefully better btrfs repair tools will emerge. In any event, I haven't suffered from btrfs corruption at all (even on arm-based NAS running plex).

Plex itself has sometimes caused some issues for me over the years on the arm-based NAS. A while back I switched to an application server model (running Plex and other applications on a dedicated windows PC, and using my NAS only for storage). That's working out well for me. The PC has a 10 gigabit interface card (as does the RN526x), so the network isn't a bottleneck. I think the flexibility of separating applications from storage outweighs the cost of having a separate server.

serdood · ‎2017-10-26

@StephenB wrote:
I'm glad you are up and running again.

@serdood wrote:
I am aslo suspecting that the btrfs gets corrupted alot easier then when the hardware was on ext4 fs.
I generally disagree on this. My take is that btrfs is better at detecting corruption than ext. Though I think btrfs does need to do a better job of managing free space, and hopefully better btrfs repair tools will emerge. In any event, I haven't suffered from btrfs corruption at all (even on arm-based NAS running plex).

Plex itself has sometimes caused some issues for me over the years on the arm-based NAS. A while back I switched to an application server model (running Plex and other applications on a dedicated windows PC, and using my NAS only for storage). That's working out well for me. The PC has a 10 gigabit interface card (as does the RN526x), so the network isn't a bottleneck. I think the flexibility of separating applications from storage outweighs the cost of having a separate server.

StephenB

I do agree with you on the Plex that it probably is the cause of the instability. As of now I have migrated the Plex server to a standalone unbuntu box and I will update the thread if I see any issues. So far so good.