That makes sense — if it just presents as a generic network timeout, reliable detection would be tricky.
No worries, it was just a passing thought while I was out walking the dogs. Thanks for taking the time to look into it and for the quick fix. Your fast turnaround and clear responsiveness to feedback are genuinely appreciated, and it really shows how quickly you iterate on new releases and bug fixes.
One additional thought: if it’s reasonably straightforward to implement, Summit could potentially surface a small notification or hint when this specific cursor issue is detected, pointing users to the relevant setting. That way, users who run into the problem but aren’t aware of the workaround have some guidance, without forcing the setting globally or degrading the experience for everyone else.
Just a thought — I realize this depends entirely on how easy it is to reliably detect the condition in practice.
Thanks for looking into this and for confirming that you can reproduce it, even with raw API calls. That strongly suggests the issue is either an edge case or an inconsistency in how the post list API behaves when cursors are involved, rather than something specific to your implementation.
Given that, a temporary, user-toggleable option does sound like a pragmatic workaround, even if it’s not ideal from a UX perspective. As you noted, fully disabling cursor-based loading globally could introduce regressions on other instances, so making it optional at least avoids breaking existing behavior elsewhere.
It might also be worth checking with the Lemmy instance admins or developers directly (e.g. via the relevant lemmy.world or Lemmy dev communities) to see whether this cursor behavior is a known issue or a configuration-specific problem. Since multiple instances appear to be affected, it does feel more like an upstream bug or API quirk than something you can reasonably fix client-side.
Ultimately, I agree this puts you in a difficult spot, and whatever approach you choose here is understandable given the constraints.
Sorry to add to the list, but I can only get 5 maybe 10 posts on lemmy.world before the feed is empty. Reloading for new posts is just displaying the reload symbol and mostly gives an error. A few times I might be lucky and get another new 5-10 posts, other times it just shows the same posts as I just read, now marked unread again, the experience is the same in subscribed feed and all feed, so it’s not related to “no more posts to read” either.
Killing the app or switching between wifi and 4G/5G gives me also 5-10 new posts, but then it’s back to the same story again.
It’s been like this in the two last versions and worked perfectly before the last two upgrades.
edit: screen shots added for the refresh and the server error that shows up when trying to fetch new posts/changing feeds, etc
That’s genuinely great to hear, and I’m glad it worked out.
You did the hard part here: you kept testing methodically, provided solid data, and were willing to slow down and verify assumptions instead of guessing. That’s why this ended in a clean recovery instead of a dead drive.
For what it’s worth, I’ve hit more than a few of these bumps myself. I started out self-taught on an IBM XT back in 1987, when I was about six years old, and the learning process has never really stopped. Situations like this are just part of how you build real understanding over time.
This is also a good example of how enterprise hardware behaves very differently from consumer gear. Nothing here was “obvious” as a beginner, and the outcome reinforces an important lesson: unusable does not mean broken. You handled it the right way.
I’m especially glad if this thread is kept around. These kinds of issues come up regularly, and having a complete, factual troubleshooting trail will help the next person who runs into the same thing.
Enjoy the RAIDZ2 setup, and good luck with the additional vdev. Paying this forward is exactly how these communities stay useful.
Happy holidays, and all the best in the new year. 🥳
That’s good news — what you’re seeing now is the expected state.
A quick clarification first:
Power cycle means exactly what you did: shut the machine down completely and turn it back on. There is no command involved. You did the right thing.
Regarding the current status:
The drive showing up in Disks but marked as unknown is normal
At this point the disk has:
No partition table
No filesystem
“Unknown” here does not indicate a problem, only that nothing has been created on it yet
About sg_readcap:
sg_readcap -l is correct
There is no direct “comparison” mode; running it separately on sda and sdb is exactly what was intended
The important thing is that both drives now report sane, consistent values (logical block size, capacity, no protection enabled)
Next steps:
Yes, the next step is normal disk setup, just like with any new drive:
Create a partition table (GPT is typical)
Create one or more partitions
Create a filesystem (or add it back into ZFS if that’s your goal)
At this stage the drive has transitioned from “unusable” to functionally recovered. From here on, you’re no longer fixing a problem — you’re just provisioning storage.
If you plan to put it back into TrueNAS/ZFS, it’s usually best to let TrueNAS handle partitioning and formatting itself rather than doing it manually on Linux.
Nice work sticking with the process and verifying things step by step.
Thanks for the update, that’s helpful.
Confirming that the controller is a Broadcom / LSI SAS2308 and that it’s the same HBA that was used in the original TrueNAS system removes one major variable. It means the drive is now being tested under the same controller path it was previously attached to.
The device mapping you described is clear:
sda = known-good identical drive
sdb = the problematic drive
Running:
sudo sg_format --format --size=512 --fmtpinfo=0 --pfu=0 /dev/sdb
as you did is the correct next step to normalize the drive’s format and protection settings.
A few general notes while this is in progress:
At this point it makes sense to pause any further investigation until the current sg_format has fully completed and the system has been power-cycled.
Once that’s done, the next step will be a direct comparison between sdb and the known-good sda using:
sudo sg_readcap -lla
Reported logical and physical sector sizes
Protection / PI status
As a general note going forward: on Linux / FreeBSD it’s safer to reference disks by persistent identifiers (e.g. /dev/disk/by-id/ or UUID (this is safer but not so direct human readable) on Linux or glabel on FreeBSD) rather than /dev/sdX, as device names can change across boots or hardware reordering as you have had some experience with now.
Post the results when you’re ready and the sg_format complete and we can continue from there.
Sorry for the mess with replies.
Please see the last comment I made on my own comment instead of yours where it should have been.
Your drive is almost certainly not dead, you just need a T10 / DIF capable controller to disable the PROTECTION flag.
Read more in the other post.
One more hopefully happy update:
Based on everything you’ve shown so far in the information you have given, the most probable cause is that the drive was formatted with T10 DIF / Protection Information enabled (PROTECT=1), and you are now accessing it through a controller path that does not support DIF.
This is a very common failure mode with enterprise SAS drives and sg_format.
(edit: oh, how I am in a love/hate relationship with my brain on delayed thoughts…)
In your paste from sg_format you can see this flag:
sudo sg_format -vv /dev/sda open /dev/sda with flags=0x802 inquiry cdb: [12 00 00 00 24 00] SEAGATE ST4000NM0023 XMGG peripheral_type: disk [0x0] PROTECT=1
(end of edit)
What this means in practice:
PROTECT=1 = the drive was formatted with DIF Type 1This is not bricking. It is a configuration mismatch.
You need to connect the drive to a DIF-capable SAS HBA (LSI/Broadcom, same type as originally used if possible).
Best option is to do this on the original hardware, even via a USB live Linux environment.
Once the drive is on a T10-capable controller, reformat it with protection disabled.
Example (this will ERASE the drive and might take a LONG time to complete):
sudo sg_format –format –size=512 –fmtpinfo=0 –pfu=0 /dev/sdX
Key flags:
--fmtpinfo=0 → disables DIF / PROTECT--size=512 (or 4096 if you prefer standard 4K)--pfu=0 (disables PROTECTION flag, your GPT forgot to include this which actually disables the protection)/dev/sdXAfter this completes and the system is power-cycled, the drive should behave like a normal disk again on non-DIF controllers.
sg_format alone almost never permanently damages SAS drivesIf you cannot access a T10-capable controller, the drive may remain unusable on that system, but still be perfectly recoverable elsewhere.
A case of a user with another problem but where he needed to disable DIF, got it fixed after a new format with these parameters (from Google):
Thanks for the additional details, that helps, but there are still some critical gaps that prevent a proper diagnosis.
Two important points first:
The dmesg output needs to be complete, from boot until the moment the affected drive is first detected.
What you posted is cut short and misses the most important part: the SCSI/SAS negotiation, protection information handling, block size reporting, and any sense errors when the kernel first sees the disk.
Please reboot, then run as root or use sudo:
dmesg -T > dmesg-full.txt
Do not filter or truncate it. Upload the full file.
All diagnostic commands must be run with sudo/root, otherwise capabilities, mode pages, and protection features may not be visible or may be incomplete.
Specifically, please re-run and provide full output (verbatim) of the following, all with sudo or as root, on the problem drive and (if possible) on a working identical drive for comparison:
sudo lspci -nnkvv
sudo lsblk -o NAME,MODEL,SIZE,PHY-SeC,LOG-SeC,ROTA
sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdX
sudo sg_inq -vv /dev/sdX
sudo sg_readcap -ll /dev/sdX
sudo sg_modes -a /dev/sdX
sudo sg_vpd -a /dev/sdX
Replace /dev/sdX with the correct device name as it appears at that moment.
Why this matters:
The Intel SATA controller you listed is not the LSI HBA. We need to see exactly which controller the drive is currently attached to and what features the kernel believes it supports.
That Seagate model is a 520/528-capable SAS drive with DIF/T10 PI support. If it was formatted with protection enabled and is now attached to a controller/driver path that does not expect DIF, Linux will report I/O errors even though the drive itself is fine.
sg_format -vv output alone does not tell us the current logical block size, protection type, or mode page state.
Important clarification:
Formatting the drive under TrueNAS (with a proper SAS HBA) and then attaching it to a different system/controller is a very common way to trigger exactly this situation.
This is still consistent with a recoverable configuration mismatch, not a permanently damaged disk.
Once we have:
Full boot-time dmesg
Root-level SCSI inquiry, mode pages, and read capacity
Confirmation of which controller is actually in use
…it becomes possible to say concretely whether the drive needs:
Reformatting to 512/4096 with protection disabled
A controller that supports DIF
Or if there is actual media or firmware failure (less likely)
At this point, the drive is “unusable”, not proven “bricked”. The missing data is the deciding factor.
One more important thing to verify, given the change of machines:
Please confirm whether the controller in the original TrueNAS system is the same type of LSI/Broadcom SAS HBA as the one in the current troubleshooting system.
This matters because:
DIF/T10 PI is handled by the HBA and driver, not just the drive.
A drive formatted with protection information on one controller may appear broken when moved to a different controller that does not support (or is not configured for) DIF.
Many onboard SATA/RAID controllers and some HBAs will enumerate a DIF-formatted drive but fail all I/O.
If the original TrueNAS machine used:
then the best recovery path may be to put the drive back into that original system and either:
Reformat it there with protection disabled, or
Access it normally if the controller and OS were already DIF-aware
If the original controller was different:
Please provide lspci -nnkvv output from that system as well (using sudo or run as root)
And confirm the exact HBA model and firmware used in the TrueNAS SAS controller
At the moment, the controller change introduces an unknown that can fully explain the symptoms by itself. Verifying controller parity between systems is necessary before assuming the drive itself is at fault.
(edit:)
One last thing, how long did you let sg_format run for?
It can take hours to complete one percent if the drive is large, probably a full day or more considering the capacity of your drive.
I was just wondering if it might have been cut short for some reason and just needs to be restarted on the original hardware to complete the process and bring the drive back online.
Right now there isn’t enough information to conclude that the drive is “bricked”.
sg_format on a SAS drive with DIF enabled can absolutely make the disk temporarily unusable to the OS if the format parameters no longer match what the HBA/driver expects, but that is very different from a dead drive.
To make any determination, more data is required. At minimum (boot with a live Linux USB drive if you are unable to get to this information):
Please provide verbatim output from:
Also specify:
Common possibilities (none can be confirmed without logs):
Things that are usually recoverable on SAS drives:
Actual permanent bricking from sg_format alone is rare unless firmware flashing or vendor-specific commands were involved.
Until logs are posted, all anyone can honestly say is:
The drive is not currently usable, but there is no evidence yet that it is permanently damaged.
If you can share this information it might be possible to get the drive back online, though I make no promises.
(edit typos)
No, dd won’t work reliably when copying from a larger drive to a smaller one. To do this, you would need to resize and align the partitions first, handling each partition individually, or use a different cloning method.
A better approach is to use something like Clonezilla. In advanced mode, it allows you to clone from a bigger disk to a smaller one, provided that the used space on the source drive does not exceed the capacity of the target drive. Without this, it won’t be possible with any tool, not just dd.
Here’s a tutorial for Clonezilla advanced mode:
https://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/doc/11_lite_server/advanced/09-advanced-param.php
(edit added link, and saw the second post just before me with the same answer, not trying to steal from it @ProfessorNeurus@programming.dev, sorry!, you posted while I wrote mine, so please feel free to ignore this, feels so dumb to just delete posts)
Or a VESA Local Bus card … remember when I got my first Cirrus Local graphics card after years with ISA cards 🙂
If you want to try it again, the command you’re looking for is distrobox-export, and it needs to be run from inside the distrobox container. It’s basically what allows you to expose software installed in the container so the host can run it directly.
Manual for reference: https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/noble/man1/distrobox-export.1.html
deleted by creator
Thank you!
There are many good answers here already, just wanted to add to it.
It sounds very much like what you’re seeing could be either a driver fault or a memory-related issue. Both can manifest as hard system freezes where nothing responds, not even Ctrl+Alt+Fx or SysRq. You mentioned this briefly before, and that still fits the pattern.
If it’s a driver issue, it’s often GPU or storage related. A kernel module crashing without proper recovery can hang the whole system—especially graphics drivers like NVIDIA or AMD, or low-level I/O drivers handling your SSD or SATA controller. Checking dmesg -T and journalctl -b -1 after reboot for GPU resets, I/O errors, or kernel oops messages might reveal clues.
If it’s memory pressure or the OOM killer, that can also lock a machine solid, depending on what’s being killed. When the kernel runs out of allocatable memory, it starts terminating processes to free RAM. If the wrong process goes first—say, something core to the display stack or a driver thread—you’ll see a full freeze. You can verify this by searching the logs for “Out of memory” or “Killed process” messages.
A failing DIMM or a bad memory map region could also behave like this, even if Windows seems fine. Linux tends to exercise RAM differently, especially with heavy caching and different scheduling. Running a memtest86+ overnight is worth doing just to eliminate that angle.
If your live USB sits idle for hours without freezing, that strongly hints it’s a driver or kernel module loaded in your main install, not a hardware fault. If it does freeze even from live media, you’re probably looking at a low-level memory or hardware instability.
The key next steps:
Check system logs after reboot for OOM or GPU-related kernel messages.
Run memtest86+ for several passes.
Try a newer (or older) kernel to rule out regression.
If it’s indeed a driver or OOM event, both would explain the “total lockup” behavior and why Windows remains unaffected. Linux’s memory management and driver model are simply less forgiving when something goes sideways.
Not to step on anyone’s toes, but HTTP 4xx errors usually mean the request isn’t allowed or can’t be fulfilled on the client side (like needing to log in, an expired link, or access restrictions). 5xx errors are the ones that point to real server issues. So in this case it might just be the hosting platform enforcing access rules rather than a problem with Summit itself. Just sharing a thought.
Network edge cases — interrupted or partial requests can reach the server in an incomplete form, which results in 400.
Edit/afterthought:
Something that occurred to me afterwards: sometimes 400s can also pop up from network edge cases — like an interrupted or partial request reaching the server in an incomplete form (RFC 7231 §6.5.1). And since you’re on a different Lemmy instance, it could just be that side acting up. Lemmy servers typically run behind an nginx reverse proxy (default setup), and if that proxy or backend gets overloaded, it may return 400s. Add in federation quirks like sync or backlog delays, and it would explain why it sometimes works fine and sometimes doesn’t — different people see different images fail at different times.
That’s true for some types of signal boosters, especially the simple passive ones. But many building systems aren’t just passive repeaters — they use distributed antenna systems (DAS) or active repeaters that re-broadcast the signal from outside towers. From the phone’s perspective, those can sometimes look like a new connection point, even though they’re not rogue towers reading data.
So while your point is absolutely right that a normal repeater doesn’t act as a tower or capture phone info, the way modern indoor coverage solutions are implemented can still trigger the same kinds of warnings. That’s why it can be hard to tell apart a harmless booster from something more suspicious.
More information about DAS systems and cellular repeaters, and how they differ, if you’re interested:
🔗 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_antenna_system
🔗 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_repeater
(edit, added Wikipedia links)
You could take a look at AWStats.
I used it years ago when I was running my own web server, and it worked well for exactly this type of use case: generating basic reports directly from server access logs (most viewed pages, browsers, referrers, status codes, etc.) without relying on any client-side tracking.
It processes standard web server logs (Apache, Nginx and similar), so there is no JavaScript involved and nothing for visitors to block. That also means your numbers will generally align much more closely with what the server actually handled, compared to client-side tools like Matomo.
From a quick glance it looks like development activity may have slowed after 2023, but log formats have been relatively stable for a long time. If you run it as an offline analyzer (generate static reports from logs and do not expose the CGI interface publicly), the security surface is minimal.
Regarding bots: since it works purely on access logs, you will still need to filter at the log level. Typical approaches include:
It is not a perfect solution, but if your goal is simple, privacy-respecting, server-side statistics without client-side scripts, it is a relatively lightweight option worth considering.