Thunderbolt Pegasus R4 Experience?

We're using the latest version of Lion server.

It's not a question of knowing how to apply permissions or how to propogate them; we're good there. We're good right up until a user creates a new folder, which then fails to inherit permissions from the parent directory; then we're hosed.

- BUT -

We're only hosed if the share point is on an external drive, not an internal drive. And this is the key point: the OS handles propogation of permissions differently for attached vs. internal storage.

Which is just plain crazy.

Look, try it yourself. Create test share points on internal and external drives on a Lion server. Assign the same permissions to both. Create a non-admin account with read/write privileges for both share points. Use the non-admin account to create a new folder in each share point. Create a new file in each of those folders, then examine permissions for each.

There shouldn't be a difference, but there will be. And that's a big problem.

Yeah, that sounds familiar, though I'm not sure if it's a new bug or the way it's always worked.

You can set your folder's permissions to be inherited from the parent, and you can use an ACL or POSIX permissions. If you're using one and it's failing, I suggest to try the other.

Getting this working properly is NEVER fun and in certainly hope it's not a new bug.

I can't try it myself. I got burned to death on Lion and Lion Server in their 1.0 release and I don't have time to waste on getting angry at Lion again.

Yeah, that sounds super strange. it shouldn't matter as all drives are just drives in the /Volumes directory. Are they all formatted as HFS+?

> Yeah, that sounds super strange. it shouldn't matter as all drives

> are just drives in the /Volumes directory. Are they all formatted as HFS+?

Yes, that's the only formatting we use for Mac drives.

And the only discernable difference we've seen is that the drives that fail to propogate permissions are external, the drives that propogate permissions properly are internal. It happens with the Pegasus RAID and with FireWire drives. We didn't try it via USB, because why would you ever use a USB drive on a server?

The one somewhat nonstandard thing we're doing is using Active Directory for authentication. But back to that core problem: it behaves differently on internal vs. external drives, and there's no way to reasonably view that as anything other than a bug.

*sigh*

Hello,

My own today experience in France. I am working with a 27" imac with the 3,4 Ghz i7 connected to the R6 12 Tb, and mainly edit with FCPX.

Today I left the editing room for 10 minutes. When I came back, 4 of the disks had red led. The promise utility said that the corresponding disks were dead.

Arggggg.

I called Apple store to whom I bought the Pegasus R6. They were very kind but could not help.
Then since there is no Promise offices in France, I called the UK offices. After a while, I managed to talk to a tech who very kindly guided me through the terminal. He managed to force the drives to come back.
Now the promise utility displays them as 'forced online'.

I opened a ticket in the Promise forum and send the log report.

I don't like this at all. Anyone with similar situation.

I also confirm that everytime I happen to put my Iphone 4 less than 10 cm away from the Pegasus, it disconnects. I have to shut it down and turn it on again.

Otherwise than this event, I am very happy with the thing and wish I could buy a second unit because it is already

full with 8,7 Gb out of 10 Gb in raid 5. Anyone knows if we can full the the max and still work or if like any drive, you must keep it under 80%.

Ever since I kept my 4 iOS devices away from my Thunderbolt cable, my external 27 inch display has stopped flickering.

Time to get extra shielding for the TB cable.

This really shows that there is a shielding design fault in the Thunderbolt cables.

I'm having the same problem. Mine has been connected to the left port from the beginning. It will randomly disconnect. I have a 4G Verizon phone so it's not just GSM and mine R4 will disconnect even when my phone is not in the room.

I have recently added a "My Book Thunderbolt Duo" drive in the daisy chain. It never disconnects. So I don't believe it's the Mac or the Thunderbolt technology in general, but the R4 itself. I'm going to try swapping the cable, but cables are rarely the issue.

How fast are your fans typically running? I just set up a new R6, and post initial sync, the fan is running steadily at 1200rpm with the Pegasus idle. This seems high to me and is a bit noisy. The firmware and utility are fully updated. I'm not going to migrate a lot of data to the R6 until I see if this is normal, or if I need to swap the unit... Promise had me dump a terminal log and confirmed the fan was running faster than expected. I am waiting to hear back from them...

Tidbits, Mine is running steady at 1100rpm, and I must say, I have my R6 sitting out in the open about 3 feet from my ears and I can hardly discern ANY fan noise at all. I am most impressed with the near-silence of this unit, having worked around racks of drives all my life. To me, the unit is amazing since I did the firmware upgrade correctly. Hope this helps...

The decision to leave it out in the open was actually a forced one because when I had it on the shelf in a hutch unit above my iMac 27", the enclosure of the hutch shelf back and sides and shelf above it was enough to make it run borderline hot temp all the time. Then, add in the heat that came from the top vents of the iMac right up toward the R6, it was suffering overtemps on a regular basis. When I moved it down to the desktop open area to the side of the iMac, it now runs 114 degrees rather than 122 degrees (backplane temp.) BIG difference! And because it is so quiet, I don't even notice it is on... truly.

This will sound too simple...

But I have found that by using "Get Info" ( Command I ) on the external drive and then scroll to the bottom of the window to find the "Ignore ownership on this volume" box. To the right should be a little ICON of a padlock. You need to click on that and enter your Mac password to unlock and get access to the little Ignore Ownership box. Once you have access to it Deselect it so that there is no check mark in the box. Click on the lock icon to relock the box and then you can close the window. I would suggest that you then reboot your Mac. This simple process on external drives is usually critical befor using backup programs like Chronosync etc. I have used this simple fix dozens of times and in fact I just used this technique on a problematic OtherWorldComputing 12 Terabyte SATA RAID system connected with Thunderbolt to a Thunderbolt 27 inch iMac via a Lacie Thunderbolt eSATA adapter. WHEW! Fantastic speed and it is now running beautifully.

I hope this helps.

Gary

Update: I contacted Promise Technical support. They asked me to run a bunch of commands and send the output to them. They found nothing wrong. So they said to go into System Preferences > Energy Saver and uncheck "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible."

I responded that this doesn't make sense because I have another Thunderbolt drive that never has this problem. If it was a system wide setting, then both drives should have the same problem.

Promise responded only with a link to the Apple website page that explains how to set the Energy Saver settings.

It remains to be seen whether this will work around the problem or not.

Regardless, they've clearly got a problem that other Thunderbolt Drives don't. (My other drive is a WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo.) And they won't acknowledge it. Last time I'll buy anything from them.

Hello, my Promise R4's fans are running constantly at 1100 RPM and they ARE noisy! Sometimes the whole chasis resonates and I need to press some parts to make it silent. But is is not silent as, I can hear it very clearly 2 metres away on the desk. Does it mean my fans are broken and I should return it for replacement? I tried to move it under the table to some small cabinet with perforated doors but I got warnings about the temperature.

Mine run at 1100 RPM all the time as well. Mine are not silent, but they are also not noisy.

I don't have the problem with resonance. Perhaps turn it off, then reseat all the drives? Also, to help keep any vibration from translating to the desktop and amplifying the sound, you might try sitting it on something like a mouse pad for a bit of mechanical isolation.

With so many problems being reported, I guess these things are just not read for prime time.

I have an independent Apple Reseller near to where I live, after 6 months of selling them they have now removed the Promise drives from their stock list; in the words of one of the sales staff, the reputation on which they built the business was being damaged by the hight number of customer issues.

It's very strange. Among so many complaints there is also a large number of us running these devises with no issue at all. Personally I've been running mine as my startup disk since last November with (touch wood) not a single incident. Admittedly if I had known then what I know now, then I may have reconsidered my purchase. I guess I consider myself one of the lucky ones!