Old 4.x system - flash drive corrupt


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Sorry for being so out of date - but my Unraid 4.x server (4.7, I think) had been running for many, many years without problems. After a recent power outage, the machine rebooted but there was no network connection. No web UI, can't ping it, doesn't even show up on my router's DHCP tables. I can log in locally as root, ran ifconfig eth0 but it shows no ip information, zero packets in/out. Checking the flash drive, the files in the root are readable, but the /config directory appears completely corrupted - all random characters. And of course I don't have a backup of the flash drive.

 

I know 4.x is no longer supported, but is there some way to get this server running with a newer version? In particular *without* wiping all data and starting over?  I believe the six hard drives are all still functional, and their data should be intact. Can I create a new flash drive with 5.x or 6.x and would it mount the old Unraid file systems?

 

I tried searching the forums, but couldn't find any relevant threads. Thanks!

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10 minutes ago, Jim Reitz said:

Sorry for being so out of date - but my Unraid 4.x server (4.7, I think) had been running for many, many years without problems. After a recent power outage, the machine rebooted but there was no network connection. No web UI, can't ping it, doesn't even show up on my router's DHCP tables. I can log in locally as root, ran ifconfig eth0 but it shows no ip information, zero packets in/out. Checking the flash drive, the files in the root are readable, but the /config directory appears completely corrupted - all random characters. And of course I don't have a backup of the flash drive.

 

I know 4.x is no longer supported, but is there some way to get this server running with a newer version? In particular *without* wiping all data and starting over?  I believe the six hard drives are all still functional, and their data should be intact. Can I create a new flash drive with 5.x or 6.x and would it mount the old Unraid file systems?

 

I tried searching the forums, but couldn't find any relevant threads. Thanks!

Yes, you can set up a new flash with 6.3.3

 

4 caveats:

 

#1 - If you were running the free version of 4.7, then you're going to wind up having to buy a licence.  6.x only supports trial versions (30 days)

#2 - If you had a licence, then there's a file either in the root of the flash or in the config folder with an extension.  If its there (or if you happen to still have the original email from Limetech emailing you the key file), then copy it to the config folder on the new flash -> will save you having to buy a licence.  If you did have a licence, but the file is lost, then email [email protected] for some assistance.

#3 - When assigning your drives, if you don't know which one was your parity drive, then assign them all as data drives.  The one that comes up as "unmountable" is your parity drive.  Stop the array, and do a New Config (Tools Tab) and assign that one as your parity

#4 - You may need to upgrade your hardware, as 4.7 basically ran no problems in 512Meg, but 6.x requires basically at minimum 1Gig RAM, and a 64bit processor (which due to the age yours might not be capable of)

 

Alternatively, you can try just deleting all the files within the config folder (except for the .key file if it exists) and trying to boot again.

 

Edited by Squid
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Awesome, thx for the quick reply. I did purchase an Unraid Pro license almost exactly 10 years ago - wow, ancient times. The /config directory on the flash drive is toast, but I do still have the original key file that Tom emailed me. But wasn't this somehow tied to the original flash drive serial number or something?

 

This machine does have 1GB RAM, but it's an older Celeron CPU, so I think no 64-bit. I should be able pop a new motherboard/CPU into this tower next week to give it a try, though.

 

Saw your edit - will also see if deleting the config folder & replacing the key file works. Thanks again!

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Jim Reitz said:

But wasn't this somehow tied to the original flash drive serial number or something?

It is, but the new key replacement policy and automated server means you can use that original key file to register a new replacement key automatically. Once the new USB boots successfully with the old key, the GUI will walk you through the process of blacklisting the old USB stick and transferring the license to your new stick.

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Seems that my ancient Celeron D 336 cpu actually *can* run 64-bit.  Created a new 6.3.3 flash drive with a Trial Key, booted up, figured out which was the parity drive (the unmountable one), did a New Config, assigned all the drives - and amazingly, all of my shares and files are still there!  It will take a while to rebuild the parity drive, so hopefully no hardware failures in the next 7 hours.

 

After this finishes rebuilding parity, tomorrow I will look into replacing the new Trial key with the original Pro key I bought 10 years ago. Will almost certainly be upgrading all the hardware as well very soon, it's using pretty old 2TB drives still.

 

Thanks again for the quick advice!

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8 hours ago, Jim Reitz said:

Seems that my ancient Celeron D 336 cpu actually *can* run 64-bit.  Created a new 6.3.3 flash drive with a Trial Key, booted up, figured out which was the parity drive (the unmountable one), did a New Config, assigned all the drives - and amazingly, all of my shares and files are still there!  It will take a while to rebuild the parity drive, so hopefully no hardware failures in the next 7 hours.

 

After this finishes rebuilding parity, tomorrow I will look into replacing the new Trial key with the original Pro key I bought 10 years ago. Will almost certainly be upgrading all the hardware as well very soon, it's using pretty old 2TB drives still.

 

Thanks again for the quick advice!

Another thing to also look at is converting the format of the drives to XFS.  ReiserFS which 4.7 utilized is very old, and the odd issue with it pops up occasionally for people running v6.

 

Now with the hardware upgrade, you can start looking at all the extra things you can do with v6 instead of simply having your system being a file server....

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Having one issues since the upgrade from 4.7 to 6.3.3 - existing shares that were set to "Public" can no longer be accessed from my Windows 10 machines. Newly-created public shares (since the upgrade) seem to work fine.

 

Steps:

  1. Win 10 File Explorer, open Network, open TOWER
  2. Open one of the existing shares, say \\TOWER\DVD - you see all the subfolders.
  3. Try to open a sub-folder, say \\TOWER\DVD\A Fish Called Wanda - get error message "Windows cannot access \\Tower\dvd\A Fish Called Wanda, You do not have permission to access .... contact your network administrator... etc"

If I create a new share in the webUI (set to "Public" by default) I can access it just fine from my Windows 10 machines - both read & write. Just the old, existing shares don't seem to be working. I thought it might be related to the AllowInsecureGuestAuth issue, but I changed that registry setting on my Win10 machine, rebooted, and saw no difference. And anyway - "insecure guest auth" seems to be working just fine with new shares.

 

Suggestions? How to get existing public shares to work again after this upgrade? Thanks!

 

EDIT: also tried from Windows 7 machine. Same issue - so it seems to be a server/upgrade issue, not a client one.

Edited by Jim Reitz
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Yep - that was the problem, thanks!  Afraid I just followed the suggestions in this thread, without reading thru the actual "Upgrading to UnRAID v6" wiki article. Pretty clear now that I've actually read it :-)

 

The New Permissions tool hasn't finished all my shares yet - but for those shares that have finished, they're now working fine again from Windows.

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