rrd_dir.tar.bz2 written to /data too often

[nathan7]

Hi everyone,

I'm using FreeNAS in 3 offices. I keep FreeNAS on a USB thumbdrive separate from the data. I have the problem that my USB drives are failing about every 3 to 6 months. I'm already using the expensive SLC kind at 45 USD for 2 GB.

After checking the mounted volumes, I found that /data is the only drive on the USB-disk with write-access. Most files there have old modificaton-dates, but rrd_dir.tar.bz2 seems to be rewritten every once in a while.

Is it possible that this is corrupting my USB drives? I disabled collectd for now and made rrd_dir.tar.bz2 read-only, since we don't need this service anyway.

What do you guys think? Any other way to see what's writing to my drives? I also have a Raspberry running from a cheap SD-card with Linux in read-only mode. Didn't have problems with that in 6 months. So it's only a matter of minimizing writes to the system drive..

 

[jgreco]

Most of the other "write leaks" have been addressed, I think.

For an SLC that costs $45 to fail in the manner you suggest screams "for chrissakes this brand stinks," because many people are using much less expensive MLC USB thumb drives and not seeing failures. SLC is supposed to be MORE resilient and MORE tolerant of lots of write cycles, and certainly ought to be able to weather the meager periodic writes of rrd_dir.tar.bz2 over a period of six months without any significant wear.

The tech difference between SLC and MLC makes me wonder if SLC on a USB is a good idea. I suspect shoddy hardware.

That having been said, it'd be nice to have a selectable set of options to control write frequency of the rrd data, ranging from the current behaviour, to maybe daily, then weekly, then "only when shutting down", and of course "never".

 

[survive]

Hi nathan7,

A couple of thoughts:

Take the $45 you were going to spend on the next SLC drive and buy a half dozen 4GB keys. I suspect that the keys aren't actually going bad, but that you are using a key that's just a hair to small for Freenas and that's what's making the keys corrupt.

-Will

 

[jgreco]

That's an interesting theory too.

 

[cyberjock]

I went looking for an SLC memory stick for FreeNAS. I spent almost 4 hours reading and trying to find a model number that is for sure SLC. After 4 hours I thought "How much is my time worth?" and I gave up and bought a 4GB Sandisk. There is ALOT of ambiguity in terms of which ones are SLC and which aren't. Even with 1 model some are SLC and some aren't and there's no way to know which is which!

I agree with survive though. Just buy yourself a name brand 4GB+ key and go with it. I think I ended up buying 8GB Corsair drives for $10 on Newegg and they've been running 24x7 for the last 9 months.

 

[William Grzybowski]

I agree with jgreco. We also have plans to move rrd files to the pool, which I believe would be the right move, as well as frequency to save them. However ENOTIME to implement such a thing.

 

[jgreco]

It might be realistic to provide for a small default dataset for FreeNAS, large enough to hold maybe two firmware revisions, a dozen old configuration backups, and the RRD data. Make it happen by default, but also make it so that if it's removed, that's fine too. That'd be very flexible and useful.