Orico Case 9558RU3 problem with Fedora

jemadsen · 05-19-2021, 10:48 AM

Background

I purchased an Orico Aluminum 5 Bay 3.5 inch Enclosure SuperSpeed USB 3.0 to SATA Hard Drive HDD SSD Case RAID 0/1/3/5/10/Combine/Clear RAID Models for Mac OS Windows PC Laptop 16TB Max-9558RU3. The listing said Linux compatible. The company's web site said the same thing. I verified that the Normal/Clear mode should support Linux. When I received the Case, I quickly learned that the built-in RAID only works on Windows.

I installed my new drives in the case, set the drives as LVM, plugged it into my fileserver, mounted the drives and copied my files to the drives. I configured the fileserver for operations.
The next morning, I checked my logs and everything worked great. The next morning, errors in the logs. drives appeared off-line.

I have work this $250 problem since February and I am hitting a deadend.

Configuration

Fileserver - CentOS 7.9, no keyboard, no monitor, no GUI
Workstation - Fedora 33
Workstation, Fileserver and case are all plug into a UPS.

I used the case's Normal/Clear mode, which configures each drive as independent drive.
Drives where d1 is the bottom drive and d5 is the top drive:
d5 - 1.0 TB drive ext4 one partition
d4 - 1.5 TB drive ext4 one partition
d3 - 750 GB drive ext4 one partition
d2 - Not used - I ran out of spare drives
d1 - 4.0 TB drive lvm one logical volume

Setup

I connected the case to my Workstation. I see the same results on my Fileserver.

Commands start with #

Code:

#mount UUID=32520d50-7c54-4ad9-bcfa-9f4b9d0bf9ec /mnt/orico/d3
#mount UUID=f636519c-e99b-45b0-a1ca-167bbe27f151 /mnt/orico/d4
#mount UUID=a43bb5af-2493-43c2-81a5-b71008fab788 /mnt/orico/d5
#mount /dev/home/home1 /mnt/orico/d1

Code:

#lsblk
NAME            MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda               8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk 
├─sda1            8:1    0   200M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda2            8:2    0     1G  0 part /boot
└─sda3            8:3    0 464.6G  0 part 
  ├─fedora-root 253:0    0    50G  0 lvm  /
  ├─fedora-swap 253:1    0   7.8G  0 lvm  [SWAP]
  └─fedora-home 253:2    0 406.7G  0 lvm  /home
sdb               8:16   0 698.6G  0 disk 
└─sdb1            8:17   0 698.6G  0 part /mnt/orico/d3
sdc               8:32   0   3.6T  0 disk 
└─sdc1            8:33   0   3.6T  0 part 
  └─home-home1  253:3    0   3.6T  0 lvm  /mnt/orico/d1
sdd               8:48   0   1.4T  0 disk 
└─sdd1            8:49   0   1.4T  0 part /mnt/orico/d4
sde               8:64   0 931.5G  0 disk 
└─sde1            8:65   0 931.5G  0 part /mnt/orico/d5
zram0           252:0    0     4G  0 disk [SWAP]

Code:

#df -h
Filesystem               Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs                  32G     0   32G   0% /dev
tmpfs                     32G  446M   31G   2% /dev/shm
tmpfs                     13G  2.1M   13G   1% /run
/dev/mapper/fedora-root   50G   31G   16G  67% /
tmpfs                     32G   37M   32G   1% /tmp
/dev/sda2                976M  210M  700M  24% /boot
/dev/mapper/fedora-home  401G  364G   17G  96% /home
/dev/sda1                200M  8.8M  192M   5% /boot/efi
fs1:/export               50G   11G   40G  22% /mnt/nfs/fs1
tmpfs                    6.3G  248K  6.3G   1% /run/user/1001
/dev/sdd1                1.4T  129G  1.2T  10% /mnt/orico/d4
/dev/sdb1                687G  682G     0 100% /mnt/orico/d3
/dev/sde1                916G   77M  870G   1% /mnt/orico/d5
/dev/mapper/home-home1   3.7T  537G  3.2T  15% /mnt/orico/d1

Code:

#dmsetup -c info
Name             Maj Min Stat Open Targ Event  UUID                                                                
fedora-swap      253   1 L--w    2    1      0 LVM-bBMzdhgl8i95sqi7Eiac9nbTwyKN5fe1yB7Tc9txlqgXTi20ABDYSwGnRfgB2TUp
fedora-root      253   0 L--w    1    1      0 LVM-bBMzdhgl8i95sqi7Eiac9nbTwyKN5fe193sXjUFmpsqG9u7FCLWuLbx44SYizhRK
home-home1       253   3 L--w    1    1      0 LVM-VHLPTbFVB0HVIhxNqXKAr54f9C3nw3Ia3C7Ujg7BW1mfhFJwEcEDyZbx8vTHccJ7
fedora-home      253   2 L--w    1    1      0 LVM-bBMzdhgl8i95sqi7Eiac9nbTwyKN5fe1elcFX2k0VATMxZW1XebWY56DoZuAAmYj

Code:

#ll /mnt/orico/*
/mnt/orico/d1:
total 33140
drwx------.  3 bill  bill        98 Dec 21  2016 bill
drwx------. 16  1000  1000     4096 Feb 27 10:02 guru

/mnt/orico/d2:
total 0

/mnt/orico/d3:
total 64
drwx------.  3 bill   bill    4096 Dec 21  2016 bill
drwx------.  7 swrepo swrepo  4096 Sep  4  2020 swrepo

/mnt/orico/d4:
total 20
drwx------.  2 root root 16384 Nov 15  2020 lost+found
dr-xr-xr-x. 21 root root  4096 Dec 22 12:16 recovery

/mnt/orico/d5:
total 16
drwx------. 2 root root 16384 May 15 16:45 lost+found

The next day, I ran the same commands

Code:

#lsblk
NAME            MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda               8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk 
├─sda1            8:1    0   200M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda2            8:2    0     1G  0 part /boot
└─sda3            8:3    0 464.6G  0 part 
  ├─fedora-root 253:0    0    50G  0 lvm  /
  ├─fedora-swap 253:1    0   7.8G  0 lvm  [SWAP]
  └─fedora-home 253:2    0 406.7G  0 lvm  /home
sdf               8:80   0 698.6G  0 disk 
└─sdf1            8:81   0 698.6G  0 part /run/media/jens/32520d50-7c54-4ad9-bcfa-9f4b9d0bf9ec
sdg               8:96   0   3.6T  0 disk 
└─sdg1            8:97   0   3.6T  0 part 
sdh               8:112  0   1.4T  0 disk 
└─sdh1            8:113  0   1.4T  0 part /run/media/jens/f636519c-e99b-45b0-a1ca-167bbe27f151
sdi               8:128  0 931.5G  0 disk 
└─sdi1            8:129  0 931.5G  0 part /run/media/jens/a43bb5af-2493-43c2-81a5-b71008fab788
zram0           252:0    0     4G  0 disk [SWAP]

Code:

#df -h
Filesystem               Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs                  32G     0   32G   0% /dev
tmpfs                     32G  618M   31G   2% /dev/shm
tmpfs                     13G  2.1M   13G   1% /run
/dev/mapper/fedora-root   50G   31G   16G  67% /
tmpfs                     32G   53M   32G   1% /tmp
/dev/sda2                976M  210M  700M  24% /boot
/dev/mapper/fedora-home  401G  364G   17G  96% /home
/dev/sda1                200M  8.8M  192M   5% /boot/efi
fs1:/export               50G   11G   39G  23% /mnt/nfs/fs1
tmpfs                    6.3G  276K  6.3G   1% /run/user/1001
/dev/sdb1                687G  682G     0 100% /mnt/orico/d3
/dev/sdd1                1.4T  129G  1.2T  10% /mnt/orico/d4
/dev/sde1                916G  172M  870G   1% /mnt/orico/d5
/dev/mapper/home-home1   3.7T  537G  3.2T  15% /mnt/orico/d1
/dev/sdh1                1.4T  129G  1.2T  10% /run/media/jens/f636519c-e99b-45b0-a1ca-167bbe27f151
/dev/sdi1                916G   77M  870G   1% /run/media/jens/a43bb5af-2493-43c2-81a5-b71008fab788
/dev/sdf1                687G  682G     0 100% /run/media/jens/32520d50-7c54-4ad9-bcfa-9f4b9d0bf9ec

Code:

#ll /mnt/orico/*
ls: cannot access '/mnt/orico/d1': Input/output error
/mnt/orico/d2:
total 0

/mnt/orico/d3:
ls: reading directory '/mnt/orico/d3': Input/output error
total 0

/mnt/orico/d4:
ls: reading directory '/mnt/orico/d4': Input/output error
total 0

/mnt/orico/d5:
ls: reading directory '/mnt/orico/d5': Input/output error
total 0

Analysis

Day 2's results show that the all of the ext4 in the case moved to different devices, i.e /dev/sdb1 to /dev/sdf1. I have never seen this before, but this is my first time with a multple drive case. I have had servers with up to three drives in one computer. The company's support keeps asking for videos showing this and there response it is not their problem.

My thoughts are one of the following:
1. Linux is droping the connection with the case.
2. Linux is cannot manage these drives.
3. The case is dropping connection with the computer.

What suggestions do you have for this problem?

smallpond · 05-20-2021, 09:37 AM

Drive letters are assigned in order as drives are added. If you look in your log file it should give an idea what drive errors are occurring and why it seems like existing drives are disappearing and new ones added.

Code:

journalctl --system |grep sd[a-m]

michaelk · 05-20-2021, 11:24 AM

Quote:

plugged it into my fileserver, mounted the drives and copied my files to the drives. I configured the fileserver for operations.
The next morning, errors in the logs. drives appeared off-line.

What were the errors? Are the errors on the file server the same as the workstation?

Did you turn off the drives but not the workstation or the other way around or neither? If you turned off the drives but not the workstation at night the workstation would still assume that sdb1,sdd and sde are still connected. Without unmounting the drives, the USB devices IDs will persist in the system. However, once the drives are back on, the system would recognize a new connection and automatically create new device IDs and mount them to /run/media.

If you did not power off either device then something happened with power or maybe the USB connection to the drive case.

Update: I just looked on their website and there is a 10 minute sleep mode with no activity. I would guess this is the reason if not disabled.

jemadsen · 05-20-2021, 04:20 PM

Thank you SmallPond and Michael.

I did review the logs for errors, but I did not look at the other devices at the time.

The errors were:

Code:

#ll /mnt/orico/*
ls: cannot access '/mnt/orico/d1': Input/output error
/mnt/orico/d2:
total 0

/mnt/orico/d3:
ls: reading directory '/mnt/orico/d3': Input/output error
total 0

/mnt/orico/d4:
ls: reading directory '/mnt/orico/d4': Input/output error
total 0

/mnt/orico/d5:
ls: reading directory '/mnt/orico/d5': Input/output error
total 0

During this test, I did not turn off either the Workstation nor the case.

Yes the errors were the same. I only moved the case to my Workstation to use a GUI, as required by the Orico support team. It is very hard communicating with them. Language, time zone and limited knowledge of Linux.

I initially ask about the sleep mode, but never got a firm answer. I was hoping that someone else pointed this out.

Again thanks!