after recovery ix4-200d says "degraded" but it's not

[Mastsrl]

i had a diskless ix4-200d, following the steps in this thread and putting two FRESH new never used WD green 1TB drives (WD10EARX-00PASB0, 51.0AB51) i managed to recover the unit to 2.1.38 firmware.

next i downloaded the latest firmware which is 2.1.48.30125, installed it, reboot and the unit was still rebuilding.

After rebuild i see that the alert led flashes red but the LCD doesn't reports anything, once i login i get:

"The Iomega StorCenter device is degraded and data protection is at risk."

i click the link and it goes to the HDD status screen, where it says the same, but if i mouseover the two HDDs it says "disk is operating normally" WTH?!?!.

already did a "reset data protection" in the support page as this unit does not have a "return to factory" reset option.

any ideas?, i'm kind of at a loss on how to follow with this inconsistency, i couldn't find anything wrong on any of the logs

[Mijzelf]

Login over ssh, and have a look at /proc/mdstat

Code: Select all

cat /proc/mdstat

[Mastsrl]

Code: Select all

root@storage:/# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [raid0] [raid1] [raid10] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4]
md1 : active raid1 sdb2[1] sda2[0]
      974722192 blocks super 1.0 [2/2] [UU]

md0 : active raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1]
      2040128 blocks [4/2] [UU__]

unused devices: <none>

there it is

[Mijzelf]

Your data array is fine. But the system array is a degraded 4 disk raid1 array. Nothing wrong with that, but maybe some script freaks out on that?

[Mastsrl]

Your data array is fine. But the system array is a degraded 4 disk raid1 array. Nothing wrong with that, but maybe some script freaks out on that?

i have no idea, i followed the info here viewtopic.php?f=251&t=4401 to recover using the images you provided. I didn't use any scripts whatsoever, straight up extracted the X:\emctools\ix4-200d_images\ix4-boot.tgz rebooted unit whilst pressing the reset button with the two HDDs connected until it started reading from the pendrive, wait until it rebooted and started ok.

Maybe the image was done with the full 4 drives populated and that's the problem?, how can i fix this issue?

[Mastsrl]

could it be that it needs 4 drives to work?

[Mijzelf]

I mean the scripts in the fimrware. For some reason it decides that the array is degraded.

Maybe the image was done with the full 4 drives populated and that's the problem?, how can i fix this issue?

AFAIK it's normal that the system partition of a NAS is an n-disk raid1, where n is the number of disk slots. It's the only way to guarantee that as single disk is enough to boot the box.

I guess you can 'fix' this by using mdadm to remove both missing disks from the system raid array. Unless it's something else which triggers the error. Can you find any log which gives a hint why the box thinks the array is degraded? Maybe

Code: Select all

grep -i degraded /var/log/*

or something like that can tell.

[Mastsrl]

the grep turns out nothing, i exported and searched all logs and couldn't find ANYTHING indicating an error.

i will check on how to remove the missing ones with mdadm, never done it before

[Mastsrl]

ok.. i deleted the array with mdadm but the problem persists

before:

Code: Select all

root@storage:/# mdadm --detail /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
        Version : 00.90
  Creation Time : Thu Oct 29 17:54:53 2015
     Raid Level : raid1
     Array Size : 2040128 (1992.65 MiB 2089.09 MB)
  Used Dev Size : 2040128 (1992.65 MiB 2089.09 MB)
   Raid Devices : 4
  Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 0
    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Thu Nov  5 18:01:40 2015
          State : clean, degraded
 Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 0

           UUID : 262336c4:b8694d1a:a6ac69fc:9ed46262
         Events : 0.3836

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0       8        1        0      active sync   /dev/sda1
       1       8       17        1      active sync   /dev/sdb1
       2       0        0        2      removed
       3       0        0        3      removed

after:

Code: Select all

root@storage:/# mdadm --detail /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
        Version : 00.90
  Creation Time : Thu Oct 29 17:54:53 2015
     Raid Level : raid1
     Array Size : 2040128 (1992.65 MiB 2089.09 MB)
  Used Dev Size : 2040128 (1992.65 MiB 2089.09 MB)
   Raid Devices : 2
  Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 0
    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Fri Nov  6 13:54:45 2015
          State : clean
 Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 0

           UUID : 262336c4:b8694d1a:a6ac69fc:9ed46262
         Events : 0.3840

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0       8        1        0      active sync   /dev/sda1
       1       8       17        1      active sync   /dev/sdb1

i removed them with

Code: Select all

root@storage:/# mdadm /dev/md0 --remove failed
root@storage:/# mdadm /dev/md0 --remove detached
root@storage:/# mdadm /dev/md0 --grow --force --raid-devices=2

and nothing, GUI still shows degraded.

another thing is that the unit will not reboot or poweroff, it just hangs with the power icon in the LCD or the "device software restarting" in the web (tried a reboot command from the shell, nothing) and i have to kill the power

[Mijzelf]

Do you have serial access?

[Mastsrl]

Do you have serial access?

serial as in soldering the pins for the RS232 header?, no, didn't bother with it since it didn't seems as dead or wasn't going to turn it into a CE (and i see the instructions for ¿converting it into a cloud edition are not very reliable judging by the replies and lack of followups), i do have a FT232 breakout board that i could use.
Why do i need the serial for?

Also, the unit now poweroffs by itself(didn't test a reboot) noticed it last time i powered it off, so at least that now seems to work

[Mijzelf]

Do you have serial access?

serial as in soldering the pins for the RS232 header?

Don't know if that is necessary. But basically, yes. BTW, it's /not/ RS232, it's TTL level. So an RS232 port doesn't work. (RS232 has +/- 12V, while TTL level is at 5 or 3.3 V.)

Why do i need the serial for?

The bootlog *might* show (depending on the firmware) why the array is considered degraded, and also, it *might* show why the box doesn't shutdown. Although that part seem to have fixed itself.

[Mastsrl]

i'll update if i have more info, right now i'm trying to revive a ix2-ng (i do have a mountain of these devices "broken") with the same drives, if i manage to make the ix2 work ok the ix4 will be on backburner (specially because it's not CE)