Follow up to Drobo 5N issue and fix

In the previous post I wrote about finding the issue by doing a slot flush on each drive.  When I reached the 4th drive the slot flush did not work, and the Drobo exhibited the same pattern I saw when attempting to boot it.

Having no other answers to what I was seeing I made the assumption that drive 4 was bad.  I went to the store and bought an identical drive of same size and speed.  With the Drobo powered off, I removed the old drive in slot 4 and inserted the new drive.  I also verified that all 5 drives were securely locked in.

I powered on the Drobo and within a relatively short period of time was able to once again gain access to it through the Drobo Dashboard software.  It showed me that Data Protection was running and estimated (way too high) how long until the new drive would be rebuilt.

I do have a 64GB m-SATA drive (accelerator) in the slot on the bottom of the Drobo 5N.  I'm not sure if this made a difference but aside from what the Dashboard reported as the amount of time to for data protection to restore the new drive, the actual time ended up being about 11 hours.  This is on a unit with a total of 20TB of drive space, and about 14.9TB usable.  I had used 80% so this device was close to full.  The Dashboard started off saying it would be 93 hours to restore.  That estimate went down over time but still remained higher than the actual time.

I am not sure if the m-SATA helped speed things up, or if the fact I use 7200RPM drives helped, but I wanted to let others know the restore can happen relatively quickly.  I have read where other's have taken days.

I wanted to make sure nothing attempted to write to the device during the restore so I disabled anything I use that might have tried to write to the Drobo during the restore.  One thing that is incredibly nice was I had access to my data during the restore process.

I hope this additional information answers some questions others may have if they go through the same experience I did.

My Drobo 5N nightmare (it didn't tell me I lost a drive)

I have a Drobo 5N with (5) x 4TB Hard drives in it.  It also has a 64GB m-SATA accelerator drive.  The Drobo was working Wednesday night and Thursday when I woke up it had no lights except a solid orange power light.  I did troubleshooting the first day but made no progress.

Here is what I saw:

1. Power on, drive lights all solid orange, power light green, cycling quickly through colors.  
2. Next, side drive lights all go out, power light flashes green, blue lights move from sides to center
3. Power light continues to flash green, blue led's at bottom move from left to right stopping on third light from left, the moving on to right.  In the end I would end up with this:
1. 00X0000XXX (x is a illuminated blue led).
4. Power light would continue to flash green, and eventually turn orange and blue led's would all go out.  It would sit with solid orange power light for a while and then restart the whole process over.

The next day I tried contacting Drobo and as usual (support in general) I got waived off unless I wanted to purchase a one time support ticket.  In my email to them I listed everything I had tried, everything I had observed.  The response, as usual, appeared they didn't read a word of it as it told me to do all that I had already done.

I was concerned that a drive had failed, but I had no indication.  I had a working email notification system configured on the unit and had never received a message.  No drive light indicated an error drive.  In panic, I ordered a new Drobo 5N but wanted to leave it as a last resort.

I reached the last resort stage, and after following all preparation instructions, finally moved my drives to the new Drobo.  It displayed the exact same boot sequence (and loop).

I came across some discussion of slot flushing, and I had not performed this step.  I put the drives back into my original Drobo, and step by step did a slot flush on each drive.  Each flush worked as documented.  But when I reached the 4th drive, it did not.  I actually exhibited the sequence I had been seeing all along, eventually turning to a solid orange power light.  

This made me believe I had to have a faulty drive.  So a quick trip to the store and came back with a replacement drive of same size and spec.  Having successfully slot flushed the other four drives, and with the device powered down, I inserted the new drive, made sure all were secure in their slots and powered up.  

Finally a normal boot.  Finally the Drobo Dashboard software saw my Drobo.  I should note that was another symptom.  No access to the device using the dashboard unless I removed all drives and directory connected the network cable to my laptop.  

Now the dashboard is reporting 93 hours to restore.  But as the documentation states, I can already access the data stored on the Drobo, I just cannot write to it (and that is fine).  I have a feeling the actual restoration of the new drive will take less time but I really don't care because I have my data back.  

For a while there I was not happy with Drobo.  The whole reason for this large investment was to protect my data, and now I was in a state of no access to my data, and no help from them at all.  Even though I had registered my Drobo after purchase it was out of warranty and I guess they don't care to read what someone writes and instead just send back boilerplate 'make sure you drives are all connected' type stuff.

I had never found an exact description and solution to the problem I experienced when searching, so I wanted to document it in case anyone else runs into the same situation as myself.

I wish I knew why I was not given any indication I had a bad drive.  That would have saved an enormous amount of time and money.  

Be cautious whenever troubleshooting your Drobo.  The last thing you want to do is mistakenly do something that will cause it to wipe your data.

Here is an example of the slot flush procedure.  I am not saying 'do it' but since it gave me the clue to the solution I would like to offer a link:

https://myproducts.drobo.com/article/AA-01429

Server 2012 or 2012R2 - RDP takes long time to logon (10 to 25 minutes)

I have found in our environment we have two particular network settings that have been linked with various issues.  If, when making an RDP connection to a Windows 2012 server the logon takes a long, long time try running these commands from an ELEVATED (Admin) command prompt:

1) netsh int tcp set global rss=disabled

Now test RDP.  If it works normal you are done.  If not, run this second command.

2) netsh int tcp set global chimney=disabled

Try again.  Hopefully it works now.  The values can be checked by running this command

netsh int tcp show global

if the problem re-occurs it can be addressed using a group policy preference modifying the registry settings as shown here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

-EnableTCPChimney and EnableRSS will most likely need to be created as 32-bit REG_DWORDs.

• Right-click EnableTCPChimney, and then click Modify.
• In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
• Right-click EnableRSS, and then click Modify.
• In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.

Another option is executing a computer based script running the above two netsh commands.

Repost of Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide

I found this guide helpful.  The original website is:
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

I wanted a pdf copy to read on my tablet but the link on the site is broken.  So I am reposting a pdf version of the guide here (dropbox download):

I found that the problem on the original site was an incorrect URL.  To access the pdf on the original site visit:
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/abs-guide.pdf

Much appreciation to the author Mendel Cooper.  I hope you don't mind me reposting this valuable guide.

Teamviewer issues with screen refresh on remote host

I use Teamviewer a lot.  It is a great tool and for personal use, it is free.  I've never really had any issues with it until recently.  I setup a Linux Mint (Rosa) and when remoting to it using Teamviewer, I've had issues with the remote screen not refreshing properly.  I may close a window, but portions of the window will remain behind, buttons, chunks of the previous window, things like that.  Eventually the desktop will become so cluttered I cannot use it.

Sometimes toggling the quality settings will clear up the screen for the moment but I really need a reliable solution.

So far, the only thing I have found is a setting on the local teamviewer client.  Bring up the top menu, under View, click to expand (if necessary) to show 'custom settings'.  Then select the box for 'better compatibility' or 'improve application compatibility' depending on what version of Teamviewer you are using.

This may help.

Having issues with node-red-contrib-freeboard and your own instance of freeboard?

node-red-contrib-freeboard 

a npm node by urbiworx

The instructions for node-red-contrib-freeboard say 'Just install this plugin to your Node Red installation by using npm: "npm install node-red-contrib-freeboard" in your Node Red root directory'.- That is supposed to be all that needs to be done for this to work...

When I do this, essentially, freeboard is missing.  The freeboard page is not there and attempting to access yields a 'cannot GET /freeboard' error.The issue is the actual freeboard node is getting placed in the same node_modules folder as the node-red-contrib-freeboard node, and that is not what the 'contrib' node expects. Instead, the contrib-freeboard node is looking for the freeboard directory under it's own node_modules directory, but it is not there.  To remedy this issue, we need to move it to the location where node-red-contrib-freeboard expects it to be.

From the command line go to your node-red/node_modules directory.  If you run: ls free* [enter]
you should see freeboard listed as a directory.  Let's move that...

node-red/node_modules $ mv freeboard ./node-red-contrib-freeboard/node_modules/
Now if you take a look at the contents of node-red/node_modules/node-red-contrib-freeboard/node_modules/ you should see freeboard along with a few other directories. Now when you launch node-red, and open http://localhost:1880/freeboard, it should be there. The above is assuming you are using that port and localhost.

Printable version of the Alexa Skills Kit documentation

I took all of the documents linked from this page:
https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/getting-started-guide

And made them into a single, printable, PDF file.

Download Here

I removed color from the images and embedded the fonts.  I also applied optimization to reduce size and, although I have not tested yet, made it viewable on mobile devices.

I am not attempting to skirt around the Amazon site.  I know that myself, and some others learn better from a physical document.  I guess since we spent much of our lives studying that way (or atleast I did), it seems more comfortable to me.

This may not be perfect, I apologize ahead of time.  You can always download it and look it over before printing.

Also all section from the list below are included *except* the entire Publishing section.  Please refer to the website for the publishing guidance.

This is the articles included in this PDF, in the same order (minus the Publishing section)

Getting Started

• Getting Started with the Alexa Skills Kit

Voice Design

• Voice Design Handbook
• Defining the Voice Interface

Developing:

• Developing an Alexa Skill as a Lambda Function
• Developing an Alexa Skill as a Web Service
• Handling Requests Sent by Alexa
• Implementing the Built-in Intents
• Linking an Alexa User with a User in Your System

Getting Sample Code:

• Using the Alexa Skills Kit Samples
• Deploying a Sample Skill to AWS Lambda
• Deploying a Sample Skill as a Web Service

Testing:

• Choosing the Invocation Name for an Alexa Skill
• Registering and Managing Alexa Skills in the Developer Portal
• Testing an Alexa Skill
• Deploying a Web Service for an Alexa Skill to AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Publishing:

• Submission Checklist
• Policy Testing
• Security Testing
• Functional Testing
• Voice Interface and User Experience Testing
• Submission Testing Walk-through: Tide Pooler
• Submitting the Skill for Certification

Reference:

• Alexa Skills Kit Interface Reference
• Alexa Skills Kit Interaction Model Reference
• Alexa Skills Kit Java Library Reference
• Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Reference
• Supported Phrases to Begin a Conversation
• Alexa Skills Kit Glossary
• Migrating to the Improved Built-in and Custom Slot Types

Download (same link as above)