On Sun, Jan 14, 2024 at 12:04:58PM -0500, gene heskett wrote:
> On 1/14/24 06:59, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> > Hi Gene,
> >
> > There's a whole series of long threads which loop through several
> > subjects - I can tease out a couple of things.
> >
> > 1.) You have one large deskside machine - large enough that it's tough
> > to lift or move - which is used for many things.
> Correct, a one size fits all machine.
OK. That much at least is understood :)
> >
> > 2.) You've added various drive controllers and various drives over a
> > period.
>
> Correct.
>
> > Unclear: At least one of your RAID devices may be mixed between on
> > motherboard connections and on-card drive controller connections??
> No, I boot from /dev/sda, a 1T samsung 870 SSD plugged into the motherboards
> sata which has 6 ports
OK. I'd suggest you plug this into the *first* SATA port on the motherboard,
maybe, and the CD/DVD drive (/dev/sr0) into the second on the motherboard.
> Because I didn't have 4 ports left for the raid, it on its own controller,
> one of 2 extra sata controllers currently plugged in. Both of the extra
> controlleres are just controllers, no raid in their pedigree, 1st extra has
> 6 ports, 2nd extra has 16 ports.
> >
2a.) How many devices in the RAID in total?
2b.) How do you have these configured - what RAID configuration are
you looking to do in mdadm here?
> > 3.) You "lost" a RAID a while ago so you don't trust RAID on some devices
> > but you're persisting with RAIDs.
> No here, it was a pair of quite new 2T seagates that died and started this
> whole maryann. Lasted about a month from 1st powerup to going offline in the
> night with no warning about 3 weeks after 1st powerup. Lost everything back
> to about 2002. The only raid I've ever had is the current one, which
> smartctl was sending me emails about but not thru a normal chaanel, I only
> found them when I found a strange mbox file in my home dir. Last mail in the
> mbox file was dated Jan 7th of this year.
> But I've now sussed the smartctl syntax and all 4 drives of the raid say
> they are healthy.
If you have four drives in your RAID - maybe plug them up to channels
3-6 on your motherboard and remove the extra drive controllers?
That should simplify things mightily. mdadm will reassemble the RAID
appropriately.
> >
> > 4.) You have various add in cards but you don't seem to know which RAID is
> > which / what's "locking" your filesystem / what's causing your problems.
> >
OK. Possibly irrelevant given your reply below.
> > You now have a slow access to one/more of your RAID devices.
> Which from the very limited clues seems to be related to my original of of
> plasma for a desktop, with xfce4 on top of that. So I suspecting the problem
> might be mixed gui related. This lag or lockup, whatever you want to call it
> occurs for any app that opens a file requestor, there at least 30 seconds of
> this lag before the gui opens the requestor, at which point everything
> returns to normal. Failing ns reslution? I've NDI. The lags are not logged
> anyplace I've managed to find a log to read.
>
> > 5). Unclear: All / ("most"??) of those RAID devices are using Linux mdadm
> > rather than "RAID" supplied by the individual cards/controllers.
>
> Correct.
OK - at least one more thing understood.
>
> > Various of us - including myself - have suggested that you simplify things
> > / get another machine and divide up functionality. For various reasons
> > you can't / won't do that.
>
> Mostly lack of space in this tiny childs bedroom to do that, over the last
> 35 years its best described as a midden heap. ;o)>
>
> > Can you answer the questions I've posted above, please, to try
> > and clarify what you have. I would have asked you for /etc/fstab and
> > a couple of other files, but this is good enough to be going on with.
> Instant /etc/fstab:
> gene@coyote:/etc$ cat fstab
> # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
> #
> # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
> # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
> # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
> #
> # systemd generates mount units based on this file, see systemd.mount(5).
> # Please run 'systemctl daemon-reload' after making changes here.
> #
> # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
> # / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
> UUID=f295334b-fdcb-4428-bed3-cb9e9e129be6 / ext4
> errors=remount-ro 0 1
> # /tmp was on /dev/sda3 during installation
> UUID=518cb65d-21f0-493f-8bb5-a5f435796991 /tmp ext4 defaults
> 0 2
> # swap was on /dev/sda2 during installation
> UUID=422b50db-9913-4ed3-92c3-dc18be72cc61 none swap sw
> 0 0
> /dev/sr0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
> UUID=bc6135de-0578-4e3b-b2c0-5c4687abd9bd /home ext4
> errors=remount-ro 0 2
> UUID=d24c3a99-9f40-4b71-92d4-916804553cb5 none swap sw 0 0
> # first put it where it is now & reboot
> #LABEL=homesde1 /mnt/homesde1 ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 2
> gene@coyote:/etc$
>
> I have not been able to use that last line as a target for rsync, it make
> around 13.5 gig of a 360G copy and locks up all i/o. So I've now refomatted
> the drive, an am about to powerdown and move that drives data cable to the
> 2nd, 16 port controller. When plugged into the 1st 6 port controller it ran
> to completion but not to the drive mounted by its label. So that made me
> move that data cable off the 1st controller to an empty plug on the
> motherboard And that crashes the system i/o. mouse works, no bash shell or
> keyboard works, so now I'm going to test by connecting that drive to the
> 2nd, 16 port controller and see how far rsync gets. The current idea is to
> remove the raid from the environment by copying it to a single drive, and
> editing fstab to make that copy my /home partition. if that does not remove
> this lag, then the gui mix theory as the src of this lag is re-enforced. if
> the lag is gone, then its in the raid. And we are 1 clue closer to finding
> the src of this problem. And ALL of this caused by the installer putting
> orca and brltty in without asking just because it found an fdti serial
> adapter connected to a cm11a x-10 controller for my Christmas lights.
> Listening to orca pronounce each and every keystroke as you type is enough
> to drive one to drink and its a very short drive when 20+ installs have been
> done because once installed, it cannot be disabled by any means and still
> reboot, init locks up waiting for orca, so a reboot was a reinstall. And I
> catch hell for squawking about it at the time when bookworm was only weeks
> old. I rest my case, I'm powering down to move a data cable and make the
> next test.
>
> > All the best, as ever,
> Likewise Andy, take care, stay warm, dry and well.
> >
> > Andy Cater
> > (amaca...@debian.org)
> >
> > .
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett.
> --
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
> soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
> If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
> - Louis D. Brandeis
>
