SoftRAID Volume Locked error

@softraid-support 

I downloaded the latest DMG (6.2.1b13) over wifi on my phone and copied it to my Mac.

After installing, I allowed the extension in System Preferences and restarted my Mac.

The kext is not quarantined, but I am still getting the "internal part not working" error.

@softraid-support 

I'm getting a little concerned because I'm currently unable to use the SoftRAID application to monitor both the Thunderbay 4 and the Accelsior 4M2 SSD module I purchased from OWC. I'm fine with retiring the Thunderbay 4 (I did not anticipate the sleep / eject problems when I bought it) and I just ordered a Synology DS1821+ with a 10Gbe card to take over as my primary RAID storage device but I would rather not have to replace the Accelsior module if I don't have to. I'll try to restore from a TimeMachine backup and see if I can get back to a state where the SoftRAID application was working a few days ago. Not being able to monitor the RAID status with SoftRAID would make it difficult for me to rely on this product. Let me know if there is anything else you want me to try to get this working again, and thank you for your help and support!

@tarantula 

You can also create a new volume (A feature of APFS) on your internal startup disk. Install macOS into that. You will need to do a couple things to enable third party security, but since it "shares" space, it actually works like an additional folder, sharing space on your boot disk.

You will be able to install SoftRAID onto that, at least so it is running on the computer. I need to see what we can do to help you resolve this. It may require a debugging version of SoftRAID.

If you do a second startup volume, do this:

Run Disk Utility. Select your internal disk. "Add Volume".

restart, hold command r until you get the setup window.
"reinstall macOS" and select this volume.
(BTW, it may be an option to reinstall on your current volume and see if it can fix this issue, its possible)

After macOS installs, follow these steps, or you will get frustrated:
restart into your current system.
restart, with command r
go to the System Startup Security, I think in the utilities menu.

Set System Security to enable third parties, as you did before.
Use your main (existing) admin name and password when prompted.

Now you should be able to restart into this new system and install SoftRAID's driver.

@softraid-support 

It's been a busy few days for me. I managed to get my new NAS up and running and migrated my data. SMB is much slower than Thunderbolt but I don't have any more sleep/eject issues. Once this was done I made a TimeMachine backup and I followed your advice to reinstall macOS on the existing Macintosh HD volume. Unfortunately this did not resolve the SoftRAID issue for me. I continue to get the "an internal part of the SoftRAID monitor has stopped functioning properly" error and the app forces me to quit.

I am concerned because the Accelsior M4 SSD module showed a bad disk a few weeks ago and so I rebuilt it from a JBOD to a RAID10 configuration, just in case. I've been in contact with the RMA department at OWC but I'm not sure if it was just an anomaly reported by SoftRAID at the time or if one of the disks is genuinely going bad. I'd really like to continue using the Accelsior SSD and need SoftRAID to be functional to tell me if the disk is OK or not. It's showing up in Finder and the last validation I ran was fine but I have no way to monitor it at the moment.

I'll keep trying to get SoftRAID working... any advice would be appreciated. 

@softraid-support Just a correction - the Thunderbay 4 uses Thunderbolt 2 which maxes out at 10Gb/s, so assuming the same drives are used, a NAS connected by 10Gb ethernet cable should in theory have the same transfer speed.

@tarantula 

The best test is "certify" the blade (may as well do all 4), when you get a chance. It confirms the disks are OK now, or should isolate any that is not reliable.

@softraid-support 

Sounds like good advice... I would gladly try to certify the blades if I could only get SoftRAID up and running again on my Mac. I tried to completely uninstall again and reinstalled the latest 6.2.1 version but I still get the same error when I launch it. 

Is there a SoftRAID log file I can look at? I can't open the app to generate a support file, so it seems like I'm stuck. You mentioned you could share a debug build that would provide more information?

@tarantula 

I need to make the application quit happen on a local machine to get this fixed by engineering. It is being worked on.

Can you go back to 6.2? (Assuming that will run?)

Also, you can certify via command line. Lets say your disk numbers are disk2 disk3 disk4 and disk5. Change these numbers accordingly. You get this from using diskutil list in terminal.

softraidtool disk disk2 disk3 disk4 disk5 certify 3

Will certify the disks mentioned, with 3 passes.

Note: remember this is a destructive test. You must unmount the volume before running this.

@softraid-support 

Thanks for the reply. I created a new APFS volume on my startup disk as you recommended and reinstalled macOS on it. Then I was able to install SoftRAID 6.2.1 and get it working again. Will certify the blades and let you know if any issues. Thanks for your help!

@tarantula 

Good that means it is macOS dependent. some setting somewhere.

Can you get me a support file from the other system, it does not run on? You can use terminal to do that. Paste this in and attach it:

softraidtool generatereport ~/Desktop/tarantula.2022.2.17.sr_supt

You can attach it here.

@softraid-support

I ran this command using the softraidtool from my old startup volume as requested. Hope it helps.

@tarantula 

Might need more, will get back to you.

@softraid-support 

Ok, a little OT but I attempted to certify the blades. I had to use 'sudo diskutil unmount ' to unmount it. The SoftRAID app would not unmount the volume. Then I tried the command you shared and had to modify it a bit and run it 4 times, once per disk:

softraidtool disk disk1 certify 3
SoftRAIDTool status: certifying disk at disk1
Number of passes is 3

It finished almost instantly and did not report any errors so I have my doubts about what this command actually did. The SSD module has 4 x 2TB disks so I would expect writing to every sector should take a few minutes, at least.

I tried to use the SoftRAID app to perform the certify operation but it reported a bad result almost right away with the message "an error occurred certifying a disk (error # 0)". I found that if I disable "Enable Random Access Test" option in the certify dialog that it made no difference. Safeguard was disabled on the volume.

Do I need to delete the volume before I certify the blades?

Should I start a separate thread for getting support on this process? 

@softraid-support

I was able to start the certify process in the SoftRAID app. No need to delete the volume, but a reboot helped since I guess the volume was in use and this prevented unmounting. Hoping for a good test result... thanks again for the support.

@tarantula 

Sorry for the inaccurate certify command, most of our internal tools allow multiple targets, so my mistake.

Glad it is certifying now. It should take 8 hours to 16 hours for those blades to certify.