USB disks with or without volumes? How to eject them when a volume is created?

[jollino]

Hello all, I have a F4-423 running the latest TOS 6.

After the upgrade to TOS 6 I had some issues with a USB disk that I used with Time Machine, with some random kernel panics when accessing files with SMB, so I formatted the disk and created a storage pool and a volume on it (obviously as a single disk).
This seems to have sorted out the issues, but now the USB disk doesn't show up in the "USB Device" screen. It actually says "No mounted USB storage devices".

I have two related questions:
1) When a USB disk is meant to be used permanently with the NAS, rather than as a temporary device to move data to or from the NAS, should one create a storage pool and volume like I did? Or is it still better if the USB disk remains as a "simple" USB disk?
2) In the former case (storage pool + volume), is there any way to unmount it and then eject the disk? I can't seem to find anything.

I'm asking this also because I just got a D4-320 that I plan to use to expand my F4-423, and in that case I think I'll have to create the storage pool as I plan to use multiple disks in a RAID configuration. However, I'm also not sure what would happen if that becomes Volume 3 (with Volume 2 being the current single USB disk) and I end up having to remove/replace Volume 2. Would the second RAID become Volume 2 at that point?

Thanks!

[jollino]

An update: I needed to sort out the cables so I shut down the NAS, since I couldn't just eject the USB disk with the storage pool + volume. After rebooting it, I plugged it back in but it won't come back online. I can see this in the logs:

Code: Select all

Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova kernel: usb 2-2: new SuperSpeed USB device number 32 using xhci_hcd
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova kernel: usb 2-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0480, idProduct=0900, bcdDevice= 3.22
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova kernel: usb 2-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova kernel: usb 2-2: Product: EXTERNAL_USB
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova kernel: usb 2-2: Manufacturer: TOSHIBA
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova kernel: usb 2-2: SerialNumber: 20220811008386F
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova kernel: usb-storage 2-2:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova kernel: scsi host5: usb-storage 2-2:1.0
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova systemd-udevd[29012]: 2-2: Process '/usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxCreateUSBNode.sh 189 159 00' failed with exit code 1.
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova systemd[1]: Condition check resulted in Kernel Security Modules - SMACK being skipped.
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova systemd[1]: Condition check resulted in Security Spcack being skipped.
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova systemd[1]: [email protected]: Deactivated successfully.
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova systemd[1]: Stopped UPS Device Add Event.
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova systemd[1]: Stopping UPS Device Add Event...
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova systemd[1]: Starting UPS Device Add Event...
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova systemd[1]: Started UPS Device Add Event.
Dec 14 16:51:18 Supernova upsconf_add.sh[29020]: unsupported
Dec 14 16:51:24 Supernova kernel: scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access     TOSHIBA  EXTERNAL_USB     5438 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
Dec 14 16:51:24 Supernova kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
Dec 14 16:51:24 Supernova kernel: [1001]: scst: scst_register_device:1089:Attached to scsi5, channel 0, id 0, lun 0, type 0
Dec 14 16:51:24 Supernova kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: [sde] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
Dec 14 16:51:24 Supernova kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: [sde] 7814037164 512-byte logical blocks: (4.00 TB/3.64 TiB)
Dec 14 16:51:24 Supernova kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: [sde] 4096-byte physical blocks
Dec 14 16:51:24 Supernova kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: [sde] Write Protect is off
Dec 14 16:51:24 Supernova kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: [sde] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
Dec 14 16:51:24 Supernova kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: [sde] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Dec 14 16:51:24 Supernova kernel:  sde: sde1 sde2 sde3 sde4
Dec 14 16:51:24 Supernova kernel: sd 5:0:0:0: [sde] Attached SCSI disk

but the volume that existed on that disk (Volume 2) is not mounted:

Code: Select all

master@Supernova:/# mount
/dev/md9 on / type ext4 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,data=ordered)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,size=4096k,nr_inodes=131072,mode=755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,size=51200k)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,size=1594868k,nr_inodes=819200,mode=755)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
cgroup2 on /sys/fs/cgroup type cgroup2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,nsdelegate,memory_recursiveprot)
efivarfs on /sys/firmware/efi/efivars type efivarfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
bpf on /sys/fs/bpf type bpf (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700)
systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=30,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct)
hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime,pagesize=2M)
mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tracefs on /sys/kernel/tracing type tracefs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=524288k)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
ramfs on /run/credentials/systemd-sysusers.service type ramfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
/dev/mapper/vg0-lv0 on /var/subvols/8vEbTxkKvwa type btrfs (rw,noatime,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/)
/dev/mapper/vg0-lv0 on /Volume1 type btrfs (rw,noatime,space_cache=v2,subvolid=766,subvol=/@)
/dev/mapper/vg0-lv0 on /home type btrfs (rw,noatime,space_cache=v2,subvolid=768,subvol=/@/homes)

There just seems to be no trace of that volume anwyhere, as pvscan only lists the volume on the internal F4 disks:

Code: Select all

master@Supernova:/# pvscan
  PV /dev/md0   VG vg0             lvm2 [21.80 TiB / 0    free]
  Total: 1 [21.80 TiB] / in use: 1 [21.80 TiB] / in no VG: 0 [0   ]

Obviously, the Control Panel also lists nothing. Now this is not the end of the world as it's just a time machine backup, and I can recreate it from scratch. but it's making me uncertain about how reliably I can use the D4 as an expansion.

Can someone please shed some light on how external disks are supposed to be used safely?

[TMroy]

As soon as you create a storage pool and volume on your USB disks, they became part of the system storage. You can't eject it like normal USB, and you can't see it on USB list. The storage pool and volumes on USB only mounted when the system startup, so you have to attach your USB before system startup.

[jollino]

Thank you TMRoy, I had rebooted with the USB disk already connected, but it just wouldn't find anything on it. I re-created everything and it worked, but it was concerning.

I also just created another topic about a much more pressing issue with the performance of a D4-320 as external storage with the F4-423 (viewtopic.php?t=7055) before I had seen your reply here; sorry about that.
Note that I also sent a support request about that, complete with a log file, but I used wetransfer since the log file itself was over 30 MB. Should I also send a "regular" email with the link to wetransfer? I don't want to clog your support mailbox.

Thanks!

[TMroy]

See my reply your thread.