Menu

#485 Sambe / External USB Drive write cache issue

v0.69x
open
Volker
5
2012-10-28
2009-01-08
No

I worked on small files using a Samba share with an external hard disk.

I saved the files and re-opened them from an XP client. Everything was fine.

When I shut down the FreeNAS box in the evening using the power switch, the files were corrupted after next startup (needed to use chkdsk on the USB drive)

Seems that the caches are not flushed correctly when shutting down the FreeNAS using the power switch (no hard stop, after pushing the power button, it shuts down smoothly, but the data is lost).

Is a umount carried out on shutdown?

I am using an external USB drive (WD Elements / 1.000GB, NTFS formatted) and FreeNAS installed on a hard drive in an old PC to which the USB drive is attached. I did not remove the USB drive before the FreeNAS box was powered off.

Is there a way to disable any write caching on the FreeNAS system?

Shouldn't this be an option at the mount point / disk management?

Is the behaviour when pushing the power button different from a web interface shutdown? (if yes, this IS the bug)

Regards
Holger

Discussion

  • Volker

    Volker - 2009-01-08

    Hi,

    i had this problem long time ago with older 0.69 releases. In the latest nighty build (post 0.69RC2) i've adapted some modifications from FreeBSD, see the followging CHANGES comment:

    Add knobs to the fusefs rc.d script (NTFS support) to safely wait until all
    data has been written on shutdown. To enable this feature you have to set
    the rc.conf variables 'fusefs_safe=YES' and 'fusefs_safe_evil=YES' in
    'System|Advanced|rc.conf'.

    Maybe you can test this and report back if this helps.

    Regards
    Volker

     
  • Holger Willenborg

    Thanks Volker,

    I did that and had the same problem again (only difference: this time I have a backup).

    I have an RC1 version. Are there other changes in RC2 that address this issue?

    In the rc.conf file the setting reads fusefs_safe="YES" (YES qith quotes) Should I edit the rc.conf with nano and remove the quotes?

    This time I didn't use the power button but the Shutdown option in the web interface.

    Here's the log excerpt of the shutdown:

    Jan 12 07:40:07 freenas shutdown: power-down by root:
    Jan 12 07:40:10 freenas lighttpd[1667]: (server.c.1464) server stopped by UID = 0 PID = 0
    Jan 12 07:40:13 freenas nmbd[1468]: [2009/01/12 07:40:13, 0] nmbd/nmbd.c:terminate(58)
    Jan 12 07:40:13 freenas nmbd[1468]: Got SIGTERM: going down...
    Jan 12 07:40:39 freenas rc.shutdown: 30 second watchdog timeout expired. Shutdown terminated.
    Jan 12 07:40:39 freenas init: /bin/sh on /etc/rc.shutdown terminated abnormally, going to single user mode
    Jan 12 07:40:39 freenas init: /bin/sh on /etc/rc.shutdown terminated abnormally, going to single user mode
    Jan 12 07:40:39 freenas syslogd: exiting on signal 15

    Any idea?

    Regards
    Holger

     

Log in to post a comment.

Want the latest updates on software, tech news, and AI?
Get latest updates about software, tech news, and AI from SourceForge directly in your inbox once a month.