15.1 and External USB disk docking station

[mdi]

Hi Jocko,
thank you for asking :)

I'm still checking how it is going. The Spin-down guard is not enabled in the NAS.

The RPi seems to work fine with the docking station: I moved all the equipment in another place in the house, where I have a etherned cable. I connected the RPi to it, and the USB docking station to the RPi.
I configured the NAS to make a remote backup on the two shares exported from the RPi, each corresponding to each disk.

I run the php backup script manually and it worked with no issues. I also try to backup another NAS share and it worked too.
This week I'm testing how the backups are run automatically during the night. The big backup (NAS public) will happen tomorrow night (wednsday).

So far the disks are still mounted in the Rpi.

Something I am not sure is if the disks stayed mounted when the RPi was connected in the same place where I have the NAS.... :scratch

So, I'm waiting till wednsday, but my current doubt is about the stability of the power line (sometimes I have "glitches" in the house electricity, but it never gave problems so far). I doubt about that, because if all the equipments keep working, it seems strange that a USB connection (which is filtered by the equipment itself) is affected...

Anyway, I see that rsync works, but it gives some "access denied" errors when I try to backup again the same shares, which I don't understand...

I will sure let you know if I have news.

Cheers,
MDI

[mdi]

Hi, this is what I found:
- I backed up a first share, called "mdi", directly from ssh, running the nas-generated php script. It worked.
- I did the same with another share, called "hanna" (my gf's data) and it worked too.
- I let the same script to be called as by cron definition.

I noticed in the log that there were some "access denied" error.

Now that I'm connected to the RPi, I can see that the disk which is shared and where I'm remotely backing up from the NAS is mounted read-only. It's called "data1". Look:

Code: Select all

:/mnt/data1# mount
/dev/root on / type ext4 (rw,noatime,data=ordered)
devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,relatime,size=216108k,nr_inodes=54027,mode=755)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=44876k,mode=755)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tmpfs on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=89740k)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/mmcblk0p1 on /boot type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/sda1 on /media/boot type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0022,dmask=0077,codepage=cp437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks)
/dev/sdb1 on /mnt/data1 type ext4 (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,data=ordered,_netdev)
/dev/sdc1 on /mnt/data2 type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,data=ordered,_netdev)

:/mnt/data1#mount /mnt/data1 -o remount,rw
mount: cannot remount block device LABEL=data1 read-write, is write-protected


I think I should investigate more with the disks or the docking station.

Anyway, this time the disks are still mounted, even if data1 (the one actually being used) is mounted "ro".

Do you know if the disks can spin-down on their own?

[Jocko]

Hi mdi,

all disk has a spin-down time. (We include a spin-down guard daemon only for old usb disks which don't always have a standard behavior)

You can get the current spin-down time of your disk with the command hdparm and the flag B

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hdparm -B /dev/sdb

if returned value is <241 then the timeout is hdparm value*5 (second)
if value >240 then the timeout is (hdparm value-240)*30 min
and 253: vendor timeout

[mdi]

Hi Jocko,
I will check that value tonight. What I noted to tell you is the error I get from the dmesg output from the RPi connected to the docking station.

Again, the involved disk (this time it was the disk #2) is mounted, but in ro mode. The dmesg out says repeated "Rejecting I/O to offline device" during the rsync process.

So, I think this happens when the disks goes ro. I've read that USB3 draws too much power from a USB2 port sometimes, and that USB3 support is not fully functional in Linux. I'll try again to avoid the docking station and use the SATA-USB cable (USB2) with each disk and see if it works.

I'll keep you updated.

See ya,
MDI

[mdi]

In my office I'm also trying to test the same docking station (same model), with a couple of 2Tb seagate disks I have here, with another RPi.
Up to now, it seems they are working fine: i'm backupping to both of them at once, and still they are working after 2h.....

I'm checking if anybody had issues with WD RED hdd's, the ones I have at home....

[mdi]

Hi Jocko,
since you're helping so much, I am thinking in contributing by donating you a Docking Station like the one I bought, USB 3 with 2 bays by Innatek (http://www.amazon.fr/Inateck-station-da ... ek+docking).

Would you agree with this, or do you think money are better?

I'd like to send you a docking station (you will need to send me an address) so you can have one for yourself (it can backup an HDD without being connected to a computer) and test with it ;-)))))

I start suspecting my problem are due to the disks, as I'm right now backing up my shares with different disks and it seems to work great. I'm backing up on the two disks at once, two nas shares, one in each disk.

Please let me know if you'd like the docking station as a donation.

Cheers,
MDI

[mdi]

Mmm... Using back my WD disks, I still find them with ro access. hdparm output:

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root@VideoInfo99:/mnt# hdparm -B /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
 APM_level   = not supported
root@VideoInfo99:/mnt#  echo $?
0
root@VideoInfo99:/mnt# hdparm -B /dev/sdc

/dev/sdc:
 APM_level   = not supported
root@VideoInfo99:/mnt# hdparm  /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
 multcount     =  0 (off)
 readonly      =  0 (off)
 readahead     = 256 (on)
 geometry      = 243201/255/63, sectors = 3907029168, start = 0
root@VideoInfo99:/mnt# hdparm  /dev/sdc

/dev/sdc:
 multcount     =  0 (off)
 readonly      =  0 (off)
 readahead     = 256 (on)
 geometry      = 243201/255/63, sectors = 3907029168, start = 0


There were still errors in dmesg like "sd 4:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device".... :(

But I also saw this:

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root@VideoInfo99:/mnt# hdparm -J /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
 wdidle3      = 300 secs (or 13.8 secs for older drives)


[fvdw]

jocko is this weekend not around..just that you know. Seems that this is also a very persistent issue

[mdi]

Hi fvdw, yes, the issue is still there. I also wrote to WD support site right now, let's see if they answer something.
When I run the backup manually, it seems that everything is fine. Then, leaving the machines doing nothing for some time, the backup running during the night gives errors since the beginning because the disks are mounted ro.
Very strange unless the disks spins-down and cannot resume normal mode automatically, but I'm not sure...

Thanks for advising about jocko, I will wait for him to be back, no hurry.

[brinka123]

My few cents regarding disks.
I had other issues with a WD harddisk. I updated the firmware of the harddisk it self using an WD firmware update tool... Check the WD website http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp