Noob question about hard drive burn in testing(yes, I read the thread)

[owsleygarcia95]

So I just got into the Web UI for the first time about 30 minutes ago. I'm using refurbished 8 18TB Seagate x20 drives, and I would really like to run Badblocks on them before my 90 day return window ends. I have 2 currently, the other 6 are supposed to arrive tomorrow. The "good" news is that I can't get any more Phanteks hard drive brackets for my case, until at least February 11th (out of stock). I have 4, and really don't want to use more than 4 drives at a time until I get the brackets, as I hear that large drives can be extremely sensitive to vibration, and need to be properly mounted. So I have some time for testing before I actually set all 8 of them up in a raid z2.

I've been doing my best to understand Linux terminology over the last few weeks, but I definitely don't understand it yet lol. I've read through the "Hard Drive Burn-in Testing" thread. I know this is a complete noob question but I'm basically just wondering if I go to the shell in the Web UI under system settings, or if I should do it on the actual NAS itself?

Hard Drive Burn-in Testing

@jgreco did a nice system build/test/burn-in guide here, but I (and many others) found the details a bit lacking in the hard drive section. He mentions S.M.A.R.T. tests, but doesn't go over how to run them, or how to view the results, etc. and...

www.truenas.com

"Unlike the S.M.A.R.T. tests, badblocks runs in the foreground, so once you start it, you won't be able to use the console until the test completes. It also means that if you start it over SSH and lose your connection, the test will be canceled. The answer to this is to use a utility called tmux:"

 

[Etorix]

You do not need to run it in the NAS itself, but be aware that it takes a LONG time to complete—probably over a week. It doesnt matter if you initiate a tmux session in the web console or in a SSH session… but for your own sake, learn to use SSH, the web console is seriously broken.

 

[owsleygarcia95]

You do not need to run it in the NAS itself, but be aware that it takes a LONG time to complete—probably over a week. It doesnt matter if you initiate a tmux session in the web console or in a SSH session… but for your own sake, learn to use SSH, the web console is seriously broken.

Ok thanks. I know this is a stupid question but I just want to make sure I'm understanding this right. To start an SSH session I just go to System Settings - Shell in the Web UI right?

Also, can I just run this on the NAS itself? It uses a lot less power than my other PC. And according to the other thread, if I lose my connection to the NAS, I will have to start the test over. Is there any reason not to run this directly on the NAS?

 

[NugentS]

I think
badblocks (from memory) won't work (by default) on an 18TB drive. Its something to do with 32bit numbers
You need to up the block size to (again from memory) 8192 and it will work then

To run on the NAS you need to do so under tmux.

• Read up about tmux
• SSH to the NAS (don't use the shell from the GUI)
• type tmux and proceed from there

a tmux sessions continues even if the SSH session breaks.

 

[Etorix]

To start an SSH session I just go to System Settings - Shell in the Web UI right?

No, you initiate from the client. From a Mac, launch Terminal and type
ssh -l root IP_OF_YOUR_NAS

And according to the other thread, if I lose my connection to the NAS, I will have to start the test over. Is there any reason not to run this directly on the NAS?

It won't halt if you launch it asynchronously (add '&' at the end of the badblocks command), but you won't see the progress, and the potential errors, if the connection breaks. tmux is "somewhat" arcane, but it's the Unix way.
Whatever computer you use, triple check that you're targetting the right drive before unleashing a destructive test!!!
badblocks -b 8192 -c 128 -ws /dev/sdX

 

[owsleygarcia95]

I think
badblocks (from memory) won't work (by default) on an 18TB drive. Its something to do with 32bit numbers
You need to up the block size to (again from memory) 8192 and it will work then

To run on the NAS you need to do so under tmux.

• Read up about tmux
• SSH to the NAS (don't use the shell from the GUI)
• type tmux and proceed from there

a tmux sessions continues even if the SSH session breaks.

Thanks. I just read through a couple of threads about the difficulty with 18tb drives. Apparently multiple people still weren't getting it to work with an 8192 block size. It's a bit discouraging, as I really don't want a test that goes on for a week to just fail at the end. Since there's a good chance the full long test isn't going to work with my 18TB drives anyways, should I just do the short and long smart tests and hope for some luck? I tested them in crystaldiskinfo on Windows and am getting perfect values. Since these are refurbished drives, I have a feeling they won't swap them out anyways if they have perfect smart values (although maybe running badblocks itself is what will cause some of those values to change, due to the reads and writes?).

 

[danb35]

You need to up the block size to (again from memory) 8192 and it will work then

There's no reason not to increase it further. On the 16 TB drives I'm testing right now, I'm running with -b 65536.

 

[Etorix]

Short and long SMART tests are a pre-requesite.
If you're worried about badblocks on 18 TB drives, you can still use solnet-array-test, but it won't test writes. Same procedure: Launch from tmux.

 

[owsleygarcia95]

No, you initiate from the client. From a Mac, launch Terminal and type
ssh -l root IP_OF_YOUR_NAS


It won't halt if you launch it asynchronously (add '&' at the end of the badblocks command), but you won't see the progress, and the potential errors, if the connection breaks. tmux is "somewhat" arcane, but it's the Unix way.
Whatever computer you use, triple check that you're targetting the right drive before unleashing a destructive test!!!
badblocks -b 8192 -c 128 -ws /dev/sdX

I know this is like the most basic thing, but I've tried googling it multiple ways and can't seem to find an answer I can understand. How do i initiate SSH from a windows client? Would I just use that same command in command prompt?

 

[danb35]

Would I just use that same command in command prompt?

Yes, though the -l flag isn't necessary (with Windows or with macOS).

 

[owsleygarcia95]

There's no reason not to increase it further. On the 16 TB drives I'm testing right now, I'm running with -b 65536.

Does this increase the speed of the test significantly?

 

[owsleygarcia95]

No, you initiate from the client. From a Mac, launch Terminal and type
ssh -l root IP_OF_YOUR_NAS


It won't halt if you launch it asynchronously (add '&' at the end of the badblocks command), but you won't see the progress, and the potential errors, if the connection breaks. tmux is "somewhat" arcane, but it's the Unix way.
Whatever computer you use, triple check that you're targetting the right drive before unleashing a destructive test!!!
badblocks -b 8192 -c 128 -ws /dev/sdX

So I tried it a few different ways, when I tried it with the -1 in there like you said, it's giving me this " SSH protocol v.1 is no longer supported" message. Couldn't find anything about this related to truenas googling.

I was at least able to create a vdev for testing purposes, so at least I've accomplished something today lol.

 

[danb35]

I just looked more closely at that command, and while it seems valid, I've never seen the username specified that way. The more common way to use ssh is ssh username@host, and you can omit username if it's the same as the username you're currently logged in to the client system as. So, if I'm logged into my Mac as dan, and I want to ssh to a system called caddy as the user dan, I'd just ssh caddy. But if I wanted to ssh as user fred instead, I'd do ssh fred@caddy.

In this case, you want to connect as the user root, so you'd do ssh root@TRUENAS_IP, where TRUENAS_IP is the address of your TrueNAS machine.

 

[winnielinnie]

The command is quite simple:

Code:

ssh <username>@<hostname or IP address>

So in your case, something like this:

Code:

ssh root@192.168.12.233

Replace "root" with an unprivileged username (on TrueNAS), if you did not allow root access via SSH.


EDIT: I broke my computer monitor, because I turned it sideways to read your photo.

 

[owsleygarcia95]

The command is quite simple:

Code:

ssh <username>@<hostname or IP address>

So in your case, something like this:

Code:

ssh root@192.168.12.233

Replace "root" with an unprivileged username (on TrueNAS), if you did not allow root access via SSH.


EDIT: I broke my computer monitor, because I turned it sideways to read your photo.

Lol I tried editing the photo but for some reason every time I uploaded it, it wanted to be in that orientation. Sorry about your monitor.

 

[Pitfrr]

It seems the OP misread -l with -1.
And it looks like a windows commande line and apparently in windows command line, the syntax is ssh -l <login> <IP address> (well I didn't know that and I just learned something! )

@owsleygarcia95 in the command line, try to enter ssh alone, you should get the following (or similar) result:

Code:

C:\Users\owsle>ssh
usage: ssh [-46AaCfGgKkMNnqsTtVvXxYy] [-B bind_interface]
           [-b bind_address] [-c cipher_spec] [-D [bind_address:]port]
           [-E log_file] [-e escape_char] [-F configfile] [-I pkcs11]
           [-i identity_file] [-J [user@]host[:port]] [-L address]
           [-l login_name] [-m mac_spec] [-O ctl_cmd] [-o option] [-p port]
           [-Q query_option] [-R address] [-S ctl_path] [-W host:port]
           [-w local_tun[:remote_tun]] destination [command]


C:\Users\owsle>

If this works, it means ssh is available on your system and you can proceed with the original command from @Etorix ssh -l root IP_OF_YOUR_NAS to connect to your system.

 

[danb35]

And it looks like a windows commande line and apparently in windows command line, the syntax is ssh -l <login> <IP address>

That's valid with any version of OpenSSH, but it isn't required with any of them--the more-common ssh user@host works just as well in Windows as it does anywhere else.

 

[owsleygarcia95]

It seems the OP misread -l with -1.
And it looks like a windows commande line and apparently in windows command line, the syntax is ssh -l <login> <IP address> (well I didn't know that and I just learned something! )

@owsleygarcia95 in the command line, try to enter ssh alone, you should get the following (or similar) result:

Code:

C:\Users\owsle>ssh
usage: ssh [-46AaCfGgKkMNnqsTtVvXxYy] [-B bind_interface]
           [-b bind_address] [-c cipher_spec] [-D [bind_address:]port]
           [-E log_file] [-e escape_char] [-F configfile] [-I pkcs11]
           [-i identity_file] [-J [user@]host[:port]] [-L address]
           [-l login_name] [-m mac_spec] [-O ctl_cmd] [-o option] [-p port]
           [-Q query_option] [-R address] [-S ctl_path] [-W host:port]
           [-w local_tun[:remote_tun]] destination [command]


C:\Users\owsle>

If this works, it means ssh is available on your system and you can proceed with the original command from @Etorix ssh -l root IP_OF_YOUR_NAS to connect to your system.

Well I feel like I'm making some slow and tedious progress, but progress none the less lol. Any idea why it's refusing to connect?

 

[danb35]

If you're getting the "Connection refused" error, you haven't enabled the SSH service on your NAS.

 

[owsleygarcia95]

If you're getting the "Connection refused" error, you haven't enabled the SSH service on your NAS.

How do I do that?