itimpi

Probably but if so I have no idea of the detail. All I know is that I cannot run in GUI mode on my server with any of the recent Unraid releases while earlier v6 releases could run in GUI mode. Could also be related to changes made with the more recent Linux kernel releases?

What version of Unraid are you trying to use? Many recent motherboards require the 6.9.0 rc version to have driver support for the onboard NICs.

It is selecting GUI mode at the boot menu that should work but does not for some people.

That SHOULD work but some people find that they cannot boot into GUI mode. I do not think that it has ever been resolved as to why it does not work for everyone.

The normal recommendation is to go for any LSI based controller flashed to work in IT (i.e. not RAID) mode and that would support 8 drives (there are also 16nport models but they are more than twice the price of the 8 port ones). The 8 port models can be got for very reasonable prices on eBay. It is often better to go fo a used one recycled from a server as new ones from China have sometimes turned out to be fake.

FYI: this is mentioned here in the online documentation accessible via the ‘Manual’ link at the bottom of the Unraid GUI.

You cannot remove any drives without invalidating parity sounds like your best way forward i Tools->New Config and select the option to keep current assignments. return to the Main tab and remove the drive(s) you np longer want in the array start the array to rebuild parity based on the remaining drives. Unraid will recognise those data drives that are already in an Unraid compatible format and will leave their data intact. The risk you take (which I think is unavoidable) is one of drives you are keeping failing before rebuilding parity is complete. Do you have backups of anything critical (you always should have) as parity is about high availability - not guaranteeing that you will never get data loss.

are by-passing it by explicitly specifying disk1 User shares (which can multiple disks) all have a path of the form /mnt/user/share_name

You are changing the default location for vdisks and it can be set to any valid path.. User Sharer cannot exist on an Unassigned Device which is why the UD device is not selectable as a share. Whether you keep or delete the domains share is up to you.

Does not necessarily mean that there is a problem with the flash drive. You had to do a hard reset so it could be a by-product of that. Having said that if you do decide to replace it I would suggest go for a USB2 drive (e.g. something like the Kingston Data Traveller SE9) as experience has shown that USB2 drives are less prone to failure than USB3 ones (probably because they tend to run much cooler), and Unraid gets no significant advantage to using a faster drive as after the initial boot it is running from RAM.

What is the output from this?

Nowadays is is expected that all plugins/docker containers be installed via Community Apps if at all possible. I suspect installing any other way is no longer being validated by the developers of the plugins/containers.

This suggests that there was corruption on the flash drive so that Unraid could not read your configuration information.

Do you mean rebuild parity or rebuild the data drive? If the data drive was showing as unmountable at that point then the rebuild would also result in an unmountabje drive. The correct way to fix an umountable drive is to run a file system check/repair. Ideally this is done on the 'emulated' drive before doing a rebuild so that you still have the original drive unchanged if needed for any data recovery attempt.

You need to also install the UD plus plugin and then enable destructive mode under the plugin settings. You will then be able to format the drive.

A bit more background on why you were trying the rebuild might help and what lead up to it might help with giving guidance. It the disk was being emulated and showing as 'unmountable' before you started the rebuild then it will still show this state afterwards. Handling of 'unmountable' disks is covered here in the online documentation that can be accessed via the Manual link at the bottom of the unraid GUI.

Chances are that the files belong to a share(s) that has Use Cache=Prefer set and if so this is expected behaviour. The help built into the GUI has more detail on how the various options for this setting work both with regard to where new files are initially placed and how they might later be moved.

Have you tried deleting (or renaming) the config/network.ctg file on the flash drive and rebooting to get a new one generated with default settings? If you want more informed feedback you should post your system’s diagnostics zip file (obtained via Tools -> Diagnostics) attached to your next post in this thread.

If you post your system’s diagnostics zip file attached to your next post in this thread (so we can see what is going on) we might be able to give some informed feedback. You can penetrate this zip file either via Tools->Diagnostics in the GUI or via the ‘diagnostics’ command at the CLI. If using the CLI it is written to the ‘logs’ folder on the flash.

Prior to 6.9 you could only have one pool and it was always called ‘Cache’. Starting with 6.9.0 you can have multiple pools and call them what ever you like. You can now configure at the individual share which pool (if any) it should be associated with.

No data drive can be larger than the smallest parity drive You can, however, achieve what you want using the Parity Swap procedure that is documented in the online documentation that can be accessed using the 'Manual' link at the bottom of the Unraid GUI.

FYI: This is covered here in the online documentation that can be accessed via the ‘Manual’ link at the bottom of the Unraid GUI.

It could be worth running the appropriate make_bootable command for your OS from the USB stick (running as administrator) . I have see cases where the USB Creator tool seems to fail writing to the boot sector to make the flash drive bootable for some reason.

You can achieve this using rsync to do the copy with the --sparse parameter. I think the cp command has an equivalent option.

You currently have disk1 excluded under Settings -> Global Share Settings