Why

I'm running a ZFS pool of 4 external USB drives. It's a mix of WD Elements and enclosed IronWolfs. I'm looking to consolidate it into a single box since I'm likely to add another 4 drives to it in the near future and dealing with 8 external drives could become a bit problematic in a few ways.

ZFS with USB drives

There's been recurrent questions about ZFS with USB. Does it work? How does it work? Is it recommended and so on. The answer is complicated but it revolves around - yes it works and it can work well so long as you ensure that anything on your USB path is good. And that's difficult since it's not generally known what USB-SATA bridge chipset an external USB drive has, whether it's got firmware bugs, whether it requires quirks, is it stable under sustained load etc. Then that difficulty is multiplied by the number of drives the system has. In my setup for example, I've swapped multiple enclosure models till I stumbled on a rock-solid one. I've also had to install heatsinks on the ASM1351 USB-SATA bridge ICs in the WD Elements drives to stop them from overheating and dropping dead under heavy load. With this in mind, if a multi-bay unit like the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad proves to be as reliable as some anecdotes say, it could become a go-to recommendation for USB DAS that eliminates a lot of those variables, leaving just the host side since it comes with a cable too. And the host side tends to be reliable since it's typically either Intel or AMD.

Initial observations of the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad

• Built like a tank, heavy enclosure, feet screwed-in not glued
• Well designed for airflow. Air enters the front, goes through the disks, PSU, main PCB and exits from the back. Some IronWolf that averaged 55°C in individual enclosures clock at 43°C in here
• It's got a Good Quality DC Fan (check pics). So far it's pretty quiet
• Uses 4x ASM235CM USB-SATA bridge ICs which are found in other well-regarded USB enclosures. It's newer than the ASM1351 which is also reliable when not overheating
• The USB-SATA bridges are wired to a USB 3.1 Gen 2 hub - VLI-822. No SATA port multipliers
• The USB hub is heatsinked
• The ASM235CM ICs have a weird thick thermal pad attached to them but without any metal attached to it. It appears they're serving as heatsinks themselves which might be enough for the ICs to stay within working temps
• The main PCB is all-solid-cap affair
• The PSU shows electrolytic caps which is unsurprising
• The main PCB is connected to the PSU via standard molex connectors like the ones found in ATX PSUs. Therefore if the built-in PSU dies, it could be replaced with an ATX PSU
• It appears to rename the drives to its own "Elite Pro Quad A/B/C/D" naming, however hdparm -I /dev/sda seems to return the original drive information. The disks appear with their internal designations in GNOME Disks. The kernel maps them in /dev/disks/by-id/* according to those as before. I moved my drives in it, rebooted and ZFS started the pool as if nothing happened
• SMART info is visible in GNOME Disks as well as smartctl -x /dev/sda
• It comes with both USB-C to USB-C cable and USB-C to USB A
• Made in Taiwan

Testing

• No errors in the system logs so far
• I'm able to pull 350-370MB/s sequential from my 4-disk RAIDz1
• Loading the 4 disks together with hdparm results in about 400MB/s total bandwidth
• It's hooked up via USB 3.1 Gen 1 on a B350 motherboard. I don't see a significant difference in the observed speeds whether it's on the chipset-provided USB host, or the CPU-provided one
• Completed a manual scrub of a 24TB RAIDz1 while also being loaded with an Immich backup, Plex usage, Syncthing rescans and some other services. No errors in the system log. Drives stayed under 44°C. Stability looks promising
• Will pull a drive and add a new one to resilver once the latest changes get to the off-site backup
• Pulled a drive from the pool and replaced it with a spare while the pool was live. SATA hot plugging seems to work. Resilvered 5.25TB in about 32 hours while the pool was in use. Found the following vomit in the logs repeating every few minutes:

Apr 01 00:31:08 host kernel: scsi host11: uas_eh_device_reset_handler start
Apr 01 00:31:08 host kernel: usb 6-3.4: reset SuperSpeed USB device number 12 using xhci_hcd
Apr 01 00:31:08 host kernel: scsi host11: uas_eh_device_reset_handler success
Apr 01 00:32:42 host kernel: scsi host11: uas_eh_device_reset_handler start
Apr 01 00:32:42 host kernel: usb 6-3.4: reset SuperSpeed USB device number 12 using xhci_hcd
Apr 01 00:32:42 host kernel: scsi host11: uas_eh_device_reset_handler success
Apr 01 00:33:54 host kernel: scsi host11: uas_eh_device_reset_handler start
Apr 01 00:33:54 host kernel: usb 6-3.4: reset SuperSpeed USB device number 12 using xhci_hcd
Apr 01 00:33:54 host kernel: scsi host11: uas_eh_device_reset_handler success
Apr 01 00:35:07 host kernel: scsi host11: uas_eh_device_reset_handler start
Apr 01 00:35:07 host kernel: usb 6-3.4: reset SuperSpeed USB device number 12 using xhci_hcd
Apr 01 00:35:07 host kernel: scsi host11: uas_eh_device_reset_handler success
Apr 01 00:36:38 host kernel: scsi host11: uas_eh_device_reset_handler start
Apr 01 00:36:38 host kernel: usb 6-3.4: reset SuperSpeed USB device number 12 using xhci_hcd
Apr 01 00:36:38 host kernel: scsi host11: uas_eh_device_reset_handler success

It appears to be only related to the drive being resilvered. I did not observe resilver errors

• Resilvering iostat shows numbers in-line with the 500MB/s of the the USB 3.1 Gen 1 port it's connected to:

      tps    kB_read/s    kB_wrtn/s    kB_dscd/s    kB_read    kB_wrtn    kB_dscd Device
   314.60       119.9M        95.2k         0.0k     599.4M     476.0k       0.0k sda
   264.00       119.2M        92.0k         0.0k     595.9M     460.0k       0.0k sdb
   411.00       119.9M        96.0k         0.0k     599.7M     480.0k       0.0k sdc
   459.40         0.0k       120.0M         0.0k       0.0k     600.0M       0.0k sdd

• Running a second resilver on a chipset-provided USB 3.1 port while looking for USB resets like previously seen in the logs. The hypothesis is that here's instability with the CPU-provided USB 3.1 ports as there have been documented problems with those
  • I had the new drive disconnect upon KVM switch, where the KVM is connected to the same same chipset-provided USB controller. Moved the KVM to the CPU-provided controller. This is getting fun
  • Got the same resets as the drive began the sequential write phase:

Apr 02 16:13:47 host kernel: scsi host11: uas_eh_device_reset_handler start
Apr 02 16:13:47 host kernel: usb 6-2.4: reset SuperSpeed USB device number 9 using xhci_hcd
Apr 02 16:13:47 host kernel: scsi host11: uas_eh_device_reset_handler success

• 🤦 It appears that I read the manual wrong. All the 3.1 Gen 1 ports on the back IO are CPU-provided. Moving to a chipset-provided port for real and retesting... The resilver entered its sequential write phase and there's been no resets so far. The peak speeds are a tad higher too:

      tps    kB_read/s    kB_wrtn/s    kB_dscd/s    kB_read    kB_wrtn    kB_dscd Device
   281.80       130.7M        63.2k         0.0k     653.6M     316.0k       0.0k sda
   273.00       130.1M        56.8k         0.0k     650.7M     284.0k       0.0k sdb
   353.60       130.8M        63.2k         0.0k     654.0M     316.0k       0.0k sdc
   546.00         0.0k       133.2M         0.0k       0.0k     665.8M       0.0k sdd

Verdict so far

~~It's passed all of the testing so far with flying colors. I'm buying another one for the new disks.~~ Retesting resilver on a different USB port shows more resets.

Pics

Swapped out the stock Gateron Brown switches for MX2A Ergo Clear. Added o-rings to shorten the key travel to 2.5-3mm. The result feels dramatically different. Individual key presses feel amazing. I'm not sure about typing yet.

It's a very interesting feel, unlike any other mechanical keyboard I've had. I've been typing on DSA for over half a decade now so I'm used to the flat row profile but the increased surface size still messes with my brain bit. I like it. There's some similarity to the feel of a laptop keyboard.

More info on SP G20.

Here we go. The setup was pretty trivial. The setup for the Zooz GPIO Z-Wave adapter for Yellow was trivial. Adding the T6 was trivial too. I had to install 2x Z-Wave smart plugs to extend the network from where the Yellow is to where the thermostat is. I used Leviton Z-Wave smart plugs. Finally I added the automation I wanted this whole thing for. Seems to work ™

The only downside I can see so far is that the T6 doesn’t support multi-speed fan (G1/G2/G3 wiring) so I had to choose one of the speeds while wiring and I can’t use the rest. From what I can tell Ecobee seems to be able to use G1/2/3 but I’m not ready to give up on the ethernet-independent operation T6 and Z-Wave allow to have multiple fan speeds.

Does anyone know if there’s a (non-retail) variant of the T6 that supports multi-speed fan?

I needed some thermostat automation done and I stumbled upon this thread. I just attempted this and it went about as smoothly as I can imagine. If you're also in need of an offline solution, the Z-Wave version of the Honeywell T6 seems to do the job.

#homeassistant #zwave #thermostat #homeautomation

An early experiment suggests that an injection of klotho improves working memory.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/1034471

I have a bit of data that has to be encrypted and stored into a file so that it can be moved across file systems and possibly OSes. Disk encryption like dm-crypt and a loop device isn't appropriate as it may not exist on another OS.

It's been a very long time since I needed this sort of software. More than a decade ago I used TrueCrypt. I know that VeraCrypt is the current re-incarnationn of the project. Is that still the go-to software for this sort of application? Is there something else that's popular these days?

I have a bit of data that has to be encrypted and stored into a file so that it can be moved across file systems and possibly OSes. Disk encryption like dm-crypt and a loop device isn't appropriate as it may not exist on another OS.

It's been a very long time since I needed this sort of software. More than a decade ago I used TrueCrypt. I know that VeraCrypt is the current re-incarnationn of the project. Is that still the go-to software for this sort of application? Is there something else that's popular these days?

This occurred today when trying to cast from YouTube to my Chromecast w/ Google TV (CCwGTV). The CCwGTV doesn't have any updates available and neither do the YouTube apps on the phone or the CCwGTV.

Has anyone seen it? Any solution?

Solution

Using an open drain buffer like the 74LVC1G07 did the trick. Note that this part only works for inputs with a pull-up resistor. There are other parts from the same lineup that can work with any input.

Problem

I have an ebike computer that has two inputs that accept square wave signals. The range is 0-5V. One of the inputs has no pull-up/down resistors on it. When I hook up a device producing signal, the signal is detected correctly. Both highs and lows are detected correctly. The other input has a built-in pull-up resistor. When I hook the same signal to it, only the high side is detected. Measuring the voltage of the low side, it's a bit higher than when hooked to the other input and I'm guessing it isn't crossing the low threshold the computer expects in order to register the low.

Am I right in thinking that the pull-up resistor is increasing the lows?

Is it possible to counteract the internal pull-up resistor by hooking a pull-down resistor to the input?

I'm a software guy with decent soldering skills and minimal knowledge in electronics so please answer like I'm not the brightest electronic bulb on the tree.

Thank you in advance!

Cross-posting my question from StackExchange.

Knowledge silos and expertise are two sides of the same coin. From full stack engineering to DevOps practitioner, our industry loves to pretend everyone can do everything. We’re an industry of hobbyists. We love to tinker. I don’t know if we are fooling ourselves or if the industry has been exploiting our hobby-driven nature, but it’s time for DevOps to get thrown out of an airlock.

Track list

1. For The People 05:18
2. Ta 06:12
3. Kazan 08:58
4. Vacation 05:22

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1236714

What's Changed

• QoL: Allow debug version installed next to release version by @MV-GH in #501
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