Why are my drives so DIRTY?! :-)

[Tom Cadorette]

I just installed 0.1RC2 on a DNS-323 B1 board (I think?), flashed over the 1.10 firmware. I have two Seagate ST31000340AS, 1TB each, RAID1, ext2 format, OS is Windows 7 64-bit. And I am a serious Linux n00b -- I likely shouldn't even be playing around with it, or I might end up launching a missile in Idaho or something.

No matter how many times I run disk>filesystems>check, my filesystems are still showing as Dirty. I don't know how much of a problem that is, since everything seems fine *right now* but I also know that it's not something to be ignored. 

I've attached a screenshot of what my status is currently reporting. Should I be doing something differently to make the Dirty status go away?

[Joao Cardoso]

On Sunday, January 20, 2013 5:30:55 PM UTC, Tom Cadorette wrote:

I just installed 0.1RC2 on a DNS-323 B1 board (I think?), flashed over the 1.10 firmware. I have two Seagate ST31000340AS, 1TB each, RAID1, ext2 format, OS is Windows 7 64-bit. And I am a serious Linux n00b -- I likely shouldn't even be playing around with it, or I might end up launching a missile in Idaho or something.

No matter how many times I run disk>filesystems>check, my filesystems are still showing as Dirty.

The Status online help (hit the (?) icon) says:

Dirty: the filesystem is in an inconsistent state, you should go to Disk->Filesystem->FS Operation and select "Check". "ext2" filesystems are marked as dirty as soon as they are mounted.

So, everything is OK. You can convert your filesystems to ext3 or ext4 (Disk->Filesystem, New FS Operations), *IF* you don't want to go back to the stock firmware, so try Alt-F a bit more before doing the conversion.

I don't know how much of a problem that is, since everything seems fine *right now* but I also know that it's not something to be ignored. 

All is OK, ext2 was used for years, it only has some issues regarding long filesystem checking (fsck) times. And of course ext3/4 has some features that ext2 doesn't has, such as better fragmentation management, big file support,...

[Tom Cadorette]

Ah, OK -- thanks for the reply. I've flashed back and forth from 1.10 to Alt-F several times (already backed up the data, so I'm not worried about constantly changing configurations). I'm pretty damn happy with ALT-F, and I've had this NAS since... well, since it first came out. 

One other quick question: under the stock firmware formatting, I had about 40-odd GB more than under Alt-F (you can see the screenshot showing you how much I have total from the 1000 GB). Is that normal, or was the 40-odd GB never really there? 

Also, while I'm thinking about it, I should donate some cash your way. :) 

[Joao Cardoso]

On Sunday, January 20, 2013 9:14:40 PM UTC, Tom Cadorette wrote:

Ah, OK -- thanks for the reply. I've flashed back and forth from 1.10 to Alt-F several times (already backed up the data, so I'm not worried about constantly changing configurations). I'm pretty damn happy with ALT-F, and I've had this NAS since... well, since it first came out. 

One other quick question: under the stock firmware formatting, I had about 40-odd GB more than under Alt-F (you can see the screenshot showing you how much I have total from the 1000 GB). Is that normal, or was the 40-odd GB never really there? 

Please search the forum, e.g. for tune2fs 

Also, while I'm thinking about it, I should donate some cash your way. :) 

Thanks, credits given :)