"Internal" SoftRAID error during certification

The application lost contact with the SoftRAID Monitor. this is a bug we have had a hard time figuring out to fix. It started with a Security update.

Quit/restart the app and restart the Certify. If this is a problem, you can certify with the command line (terminal). The command line does not give feedback, but it will complete.

The application lost contact with the SoftRAID Monitor. this is a bug we have had a hard time figuring out to fix. It started with a Security update.

Quit/restart the app and restart the Certify. If this is a problem, you can certify with the command line (terminal). The command line does not give feedback, but it will complete.

Would this bug also cause volumes to be unmounted "dirty"? I have had that pop us recently since last update of Catalina.

This bug is only that the Application loses contact with SoftRAID Monitor. It has no data impact.

Operations like certify and zero disk are impacted, but that is about all. And it is annoying! We have a lot of development going on with higher priorities, but this bug is an embarrassing issue we would like to figure out.

This bug is only that the Application loses contact with SoftRAID Monitor. It has no data impact.

Operations like certify and zero disk are impacted, but that is about all. And it is annoying! We have a lot of development going on with higher priorities, but this bug is an embarrassing issue we would like to figure out.

I'm seeing this as well while I certify 14 TB drives. Is there anything I can provide or do for you to help you track down the issue?

This is on a 2018 Mac Mini i3 with 32 GB RAM. The enclosure is an OWC ThunderBay 4 connected via ThunderBolt 3. Interesting enough, I just certified 10TB drives on this machine and don't recall having this error pop up. No changes to the system config (at least that I'm aware of) between the two sets.

10TB drives: Seagate IronWolf
14TB drives: Seagate Exos x14

Does the CLI log anything (like progress) or is it any faster since it doesn't have to update a GUI? And can it resume an interrupted certification?

Thanks.

Cheers,
Jon

I wish there was someting you can do, we have not been able to identify the root cause.

The CLI is no faster, it cannot resume, but unless you restart, won't "quit".

You can use it as:
softraidtool disk disk2 disk3 disk4 disk5 certify 3
(3 is for 3 passes. Disk2-5 are the disk numbers as seen in SoftRAID)
Be careful, as certify is destructive.

And if the disk has a volume, you must unmount it first.

Use diskutil list in terminal also to help identify

The CLI is no faster, it cannot resume, but unless you restart, won't "quit".

You can use it as:
softraidtool disk disk2 disk3 disk4 disk5 certify 3
(3 is for 3 passes. Disk2-5 are the disk numbers as seen in SoftRAID)
Be careful, as certify is destructive.

I tried pasting the command above, specifying the 4 disks:
softraidtool disk disk3 disk 4 disk5 disk6 certify 3 and received an error that "disk4" wasn't recognized. I tried alternate disk identifiers (/dev/disk4) and had the same problem. I ended up creating 4 tabs, each running the certify on a single disk.

As a related question, what should I see for a successful completion? What would show if an error occurs?

Thanks.

Cheers,
Jon

You just get the "command prompt".

We are improving this, it should have completion text and progress reports.

It seems I am hit by the same issue. I have just filed a bug report (with much more details than posted here) but then - after more debugging and searching - I found this post.

So far I observe the problem under the following circumstances:

• When trying to certify my 10 TB disks "WD100EFAX" (but not when trying to certify a small 320 GB disk)
• When just having the application launched (with my two 10 TB disks "WD100EFAX" in the enclosure)
• Both using SoftRAID 5.8.4 as well as SoftRAID 6.0.5
• macOS 10.14.6 / Thunderbay IV

NB.: Every time I encounter the issue I see this assertion error in the system.log

SoftRAID[2310]: assertion failed: 18G9323: libxpc.dylib + 90649 [404F0E1A-30BC-3CFB-98D3-4A2167CC2AB8]: 0x89

Now I'll try the CLI approach on the 10 TB disk(s) and see if that behaves differently…!

Hmm - there is wrong information in the MAN page, the count parameter apparently is mandatory despite what's reported by the man page (SoftRAID 5.8.4)

certify [ count ]
Certify a disk by writing a pattern to every sector on disk, reading it back and verifying that the data read back is correct.
This can be repeated from 1 - 8 passes. The optional count parameter is used to determine 1 - 8 passes (defaults to 1 pass if
no count parameter is passed in). All the volumes on this disk must be unmounted before this disk can be certified.

[tve@TvE-MacBookPro-13 ~]$ softraidtool disk disk2 certify
SoftRAIDTool status: certifying disk at disk2
SoftRAIDTool error: invalid number of passes. Valid values are 1 - 8
### Syntax error in command line
Type "help" to see the help text
### Copyright © OWC Holdings, Inc. 2002 - 2018. All rights reserved.

[tve@TvE-MacBookPro-13 ~]$ man softraidtool
[tve@TvE-MacBookPro-13 ~]$ softraidtool disk disk2 certify 1
SoftRAIDTool status: certifying disk at disk2
Number of passes is 1

@tve

The command line never fails, fortunately. (unless there is a hardware issue)

@tve

Thank you. I added this as a change to be made in the man page.

Posted by: @softraid-support

↑

@tve

The command line never fails, fortunately. (unless there is a hardware issue)

Just wanted to clarify whether this is still current as of v8.3? I.e. when you certify via the commandline it gives no feedback on the progress of the certification, including whether there's been any errors?

If certification via the commandline does produce an error, what would it look like?

@mustgroove 

No we have not added this yet.

If a certification fails using terminal, it should spit out the drive and error. I would have to test this to confirm, however. I need to find a couple drives that will fail certification.

Thanks for that. Would relevant info still be printed to the log? E.g. certification starting / finishing and any errors produced?