Kernel Panics in Catalina 10.15.4/Thunderbay 4

Posted by: @softraid-support

Yes, you can use Apple's standard driver, but no RAID 5.

I do not see SoftRAID in the back trace, which is why I asked you to test the RAM. The fact there is a sound just before the panic is interesting. Possibly it is the enclosure, or a drive.

You replaced one of your disks in the past couple months, correct?

Did you get a predicted failure alert? What were the symptoms?

Its possible a disk is failing, but it would be unusual to have no symptoms in the log, or even a disk error.

How long ago did you purchase your enclosure?

Is it on a Power Conditioner, or UPS?

 

Ram Tested it's not the issue

No, I did not replace a drive I ordered it with your Enterprise Toshiba drives and they are only 6 months old.

It's on a UPS

Interestingly since I upgraded to Soft Raid 6.0.1 no issue so far, a bit early to tell but I will update.

@steve223

I am confused then. In your support file, you have WD drives, 4 of them, 3 are 27K hours old, one is 2K hours old. None of them are Toshiba.

There are no driver changes in the release from beta, so lets still keep working on this. Let me know what is going on with drives. Did you have the wrong enclosure connected when you saved the support file?

Posted by: @softraid-support

@steve223

I am confused then. In your support file, you have WD drives, 4 of them, 3 are 27K hours old, one is 2K hours old. None of them are Toshiba.

 

There are no driver changes in the release from beta, so lets still keep working on this. Let me know what is going on with drives. Did you have the wrong enclosure connected when you saved the support file?

Sorry my bad I disconnected the Thunderbay with the new Toshiba Enterprise Drives a few weeks ago, I'm waiting for the Promise Pegasus to arrive and will re-use the Toshiba drives in that and then sell the enclosure. The second Thunderbay still used is a little older, I think I used drives I still had and one was a new spare drive so it's newer.

I never used the Beta (not a fan of Beta testing for a production machine) I always used the latest version 5x (5.8.4)

@softraid-support so far a whole day without a Kernel Panic or are locked drive cautiously optimistic... Is there any way to use the Thunderbay enclosure without your software? Can I use MacOS to create the raid?

@steve223

MacOS can create RAID 0 or RAID 1. there is no monitoring.

@softraid-support I had the Mac now running 36 hours straight, even overnight (could not do that for a long time). I also enabled the machine go to sleep again. I could not do all this unless I accepted that the device would restart itself or that the HD would lock itself.

I also had previously on an issue where the screen would go black from time to time, and the machine would go to sleep, but in most cases could be woken up again.

What is very disappointing is that that it seems all these issues I'm dealing with for many months now were caused by SoftRaid 5.8.4.

Your support blamed on many occasion now the disk locking issue on Apple, but it seems like it was also an issue with Soft Raid 5.8.4 Software as it has not occurred since changing to 6.0.1.

Don't get me wrong I'm glad that 6.0.1 solved this but it also shows that I cant rely on such buggy software for a production machine and to keep my data safe. Please OWC create Hard Ware with internal Raid Cards and without the need for Soft Raid.

@steve223

These issues were not caused by 5.8.4. There were no driver changes that I can think of that would affect this scenario. We try to minimize driver changes to avoid introducing issues. I know you think the opposite, which is OK. Most users have no sleep issues, but they can be vexing when they occur.

I wish Apple would spend a year fixing bugs, rather than release a new OS every year, regardless of macOS stability. It seems Microsoft finally learned thi lesson and has become a much more stable operating system by sitting on Windows 10 for several years, slowing improving quality, over quantity of OS releases.

i’m not sure the only change I made on the system is uninstalling 5.4.8 and then installing 6.0.1 nothing else has changed. Beside ambient temp down from 27-28c to 22c . I will continue monitoring but so far so good.

im using apple for 27 years started with a Mac SE with 1MB ram and would  wholeheartedly agree the state Apple is in in regards to usability and overal software stability is the worst so have seen in 27 years with a Mac. windows all of a sudden starts looking like a viable alternative. 

@softraid-support ok I got happy too early the Disk locking issue is not gone but so far no Kernel Panic Restart or Black out. Any way will take another 3-4 weeks for Promise to arrive till then the Thunderbay will need to make do so time will tell in regards to kernel panics.

@steve223

Were you able to copy a small file to the volume, or did you need to restart?

@softraid-support always need to restart 

Then this is not a SoftRAID bug, it is a preventive from a kernel issue. I have probably said this before, sorry if it is a repeat.

Disks are assigned bsd numbers when connected. These should never change until you remove the disks. If this number changes, it can cause havoc on a RAID volume, as writes would happen to different disks than they should. This test SoftRAID performs prevents data damage from this issue.

I have collected "before and after" from a few users, but we have not gotten attention to this issue from the kernel team at Apple.

very frustrating, doubly so for you.

@softraid-support yes mate I don't say it is but no matter the cause it renders your Hardware only partially usable and should be clearly advised on your sales pages.

It seems like SoftWare raid devices just don't work properly on Apple anymore it's just not acceptable to spend well over $2000 on a device, which house important data and it sometimes requires a restart several times a day to continue working.

I honestly feel for you and find it disgusting that Apple has not fixed this (and the many other bugs) in over a year but it does not change that in my opinion the Hardware should not be sold for Apple until this is addressed or at least you should make people aware of the issues before the purchase. Personally, I would not have bought any of the two Thunderbays if I would have known and now will lose a substantial amount of money on devices which don't operate as advertised.

@steve223

I cannot debate your experience, however the vast majority do not experience this issue. And in hardware situations where you convert your disks to Apple RAID, the experience would not be a dialog box, but data corruption. single disk volumes are not going to suffer from this bug, only RAID volumes, whether Apple's RAID or SoftRAID.

Nethertheless, this kernel bug needs to be addressed.

@softraid-support yes hence I will not go with an Apple Raid either but with the Promise and TerraMaster Raid''s which do have build in Raid Cards and have so such issues.