How to set a modify flag?

A1R2N3A4K5

Hi,

I have a NAS320

When attempting to expand 2 x 2tb drives from 2 x 1tb drives I have a message no modify flag set.

How do you set a modify flag?

I have scanned the drives and then attempted to expand them but it does not expand even although the 2 x 2tb disks are seen as 2tb seperately their combined total is only 980gb

Any advice would be most welcome as I have followed the instructions to the letter.

Thanks,

Martin

Mijzelf

Yes, should work. I think if you simply delete the volume and create a new one, the filesystem will span the whole 2TB.

Of course, I don't understand why the NAS does not sort out the problem for itself.

It's a budget NAS. And the number of possible problems is that big that you can't catch them all automatically. For most people it works fine.

A1R2N3A4K5

Hi,

Thanks very much for the advice, I'll give that a try.

Martin

Mijzelf

How exactly does that message come to you? As I told you, the process of growing the filesystem consists of 3 distinguished steps. Neither of them has a 'modify flag', AFAIK, but knowing which step causes this message would help.

And are you sure you want to set a modify flag, and not unset a 'no modify' flag?

A1R2N3A4K5

Hi,

I have performed the operations as per the instructions.

The final step where I attempt to expand the drives to use the full space gives this:-

Then I tried an expand and got this

Scan Result Phase 1 - find and verify superblock...
Phase 2 - using internal log
- scan filesystem freespace and inode maps...
- found root inode chunk
Phase 3 - for each AG...
- scan (but don't clear) agi unlinked lists...
- process known inodes and perform inode discovery...
- agno = 0
- agno = 1
- agno = 2
- agno = 3
- process newly discovered inodes...
Phase 4 - check for duplicate blocks...
- setting up duplicate extent list...
- check for inodes claiming duplicate blocks...
- agno = 0
- agno = 1
- agno = 2
- agno = 3
No modify flag set skipping phase 5
Phase 6 - check inode connectivity...
- traversing filesystem ...
- traversal finished ...
- moving disconnected inodes to lost+found ...
Phase 7 - verify link counts...
No modify flag set skipping filesystem flush and exiting.

That is why I wondered about the NO modify flag as the drives do not expand as expected.

They show individually as 2 x 2tb drives but the space available after the expansion is only 980gb.

Martin

Mijzelf

That output puzzled me. It's not the filesystem check or resize of an ext3 filesystem, so I did a grep on the filesystem of my 520 to find which tool could output that. None. Then I extracted a 325 firmware and grepped that, and the output is generated by xfs_repair. Apparently your filesystem is xfs.

In contrast to ext3 the filesystem has to be mounted to resize it. (https://linux.die.net/man/8/xfs_growfs), while the filesystem may not be mounted to repair it. (https://linux.die.net/man/8/xfs_repair). To check the filesystem for errors while mounted, you specify the 'no modify flag'.

-n No modify mode. Specifies that xfs_repair should not modify the filesystem but should only scan the filesystem and indicate what repairs would have been made.

So apparently the firmware checks the filesystem for errors before resizing it (which is sane), but does not unmount it before (which is not needed when there are no errors). There are errors, so it cannot be resized.

So to be able to resize the filesystem, it has to be repaired first, and to repair it, it has to be unmounted. You have either to connect both disks to your favorite Linux system, assemble the array and repair it, or open the telnet backdoor on your NAS and do it on your NAS, or create a new filesystem on your disks.

A1R2N3A4K5

Hi,

Thanks for the excellent explanation.

Unfortunately, that repair is beyond me so I have to manage it as it is for now.

I cannot find a backdoor for such an old NAS so the only other option is to buy a new one and hope that can repair the errors.

Martin

A1R2N3A4K5

One idea came to mind, would it be possible to copy the data onto a Windows spare drive as a backup and then re-format the 2 x 2tb drives then put them back into the nas then copy the data back from the backup drive and see if that uses the whole of the available disk space.

As it seems that despite performing a scan and a rebuild the NAS index is still not right and as I don't have any other means to backdoor the NAS I am unable to correct the problem.

Of course, I don't understand why the NAS does not sort out the problem for itself.

Martin,

Mijzelf

Yes, should work. I think if you simply delete the volume and create a new one, the filesystem will span the whole 2TB.

Of course, I don't understand why the NAS does not sort out the problem for itself.

It's a budget NAS. And the number of possible problems is that big that you can't catch them all automatically. For most people it works fine.

A1R2N3A4K5

Hi,

Thanks very much for the advice, I'll give that a try.

Martin