drawz

ROFL, its been stable for months and months and months and months and ..... funny how one little word can affect people's perceptions. Perception is reality! For me, it is the fact that plugins will have a stable platform (in the sense that it is not changing) upon which they can be developed. It is my belief, although it may be wrong, that the moving target of the RCs where things constantly break with the latest update has really hindered progress. I did successfully run the RC with no significant issues related to unRAID itself. I just wasn't willing to invest hard earned cash given the above. Not trying to start anything and most definitely appreciate 5.0 final. I will leave it at this and don't feel the need to further justify why I consider final important in this case.

What happens if you go to a command line (on your PC, not the unRAID box) and type in "nslookup tower" (replace tower with the name of your unraid machine). If it can't find the IP address, this could be a problem with your routers handling of hostnames. You can try this right when your box boots and the webgui works and then try again when it goes down. What router are you using?

Used the tutorial linked above in the wiki with no problems with a combination of ext3 and NTFS drives. I used midnight commander to copy the files over to the array. Did one drive at a time, then added it to the array. Worked perfectly.

Hooray! Will try it out in the next couple days and most likely purchase a plus license.

Thanks for the update - looking forward to it.

then why is it on the plugin page of the new webGUI? The plugins on the plugin page are not officially supported or checked in anyway by Limetech. It is just what is in the wiki plugin page, which is often not up to date.

This. (but save it for post 5.0)

agree

That's an opinion, not fact, despite the bold. Actually it is a fact. I'm not purchasing licenses until there's an official release with >2TB support. And if I find a better solution elsewhere in the meantime, then the opportunity to gain me as a customer will be lost. That's the long and short of it. As stated earlier, it looks like lime tech have decided some short term delayed sales is the price to pay for increased sales with a slick Big Bang release 5.0 If Toms livelihood depends on people who despite a tested and supported version of his software in RC that supports a potential users needs, refuse to buy but prefer to huff and puff in a forum because it hasn't been branded "final", then he might as well shut up shop now. Unless you have insider info somehow, you too are speculating. An update from Tom explaining this plan, if it is indeed what is going on, would at least let us know what to expect and garner significant goodwill.

Tom's account shows him active pretty frequently. Just click on his username. Makes it that much more frustrating that we don't get any updates.

That's an opinion, not fact, despite the bold. If his reading of the market and research suggest short term pain for long term gain then he needs to do what he feels he needs to do. It's my opinion but when I look at what's happening at the moment that seems to be the most logical assumption. There's at least one sale at stake as I am personally very close to buying a Synology (or installing Xpenology or FreeNAS). unRAID has some very appealing features that I want and have tried to wait patiently for, but my confidence in the product is just not there for me to pay for it at this point.

I agree that times have changed. However, right now the only "final" product available from Lime Tech is 4.7, which doesn't even support drives over 2TB. Right there, he is losing sales. Telling people to use an RC with all of the features you just mentioned missing, just to get support for >2TB sounds terrible to a potential customer. So again, more lost sales. Every day without 5.0 final results in lost sales. Having 5.0 final with official >2TB support and basic plugin support would be a step forward and create some additional sales NOW. Those sales can support further development. The next release (5.x or 6.x) could focus on making it more of a home server with a plugin manager, slick GUI, etc. I agree 100% it needs those things, but an interim final release with official >2TB support is more important for financial viability. A 5.0 final would also allow plugin authors to make up some of the deficiencies of the base unRAID build without having to deal with a moving target (the constant breakage of plugins with new RCs). If the GUI and plugin manager are essential, increase the cost of an unRAID license by $5-20 and give that money to another developer that can get it done in a timely manner. We also know that the community has been willing to work on this for free if Tom would allow the appropriate API hooks (e.g. SimpleFeatures, unMenu, boxcar, etc.). Alternatively, maybe he needs to start charging for upgrades. This has the secondary benefit of motivating him to actually release new versions with new features. Current license holders could be grandfathered in if needed.

Thanks, Joe. I bookmarked that link; to remind myself that sub exists! That forum is better than nothing (where we were a few months ago), but Tom's minimal and intermittent participation makes it less useful than it could be. When he was active for a short period of time, several bugs were noted, isolated, and fixed in short order.

The fact that we have people on rc5, rc8, beta13, etc. also shows one of the downsides of not finalizing - we have people running with known bugs, some of which may cause data loss. It also demonstrates the fragmented nature of the unRAID market at this point, which is much like the fragmented nature of the Android market. This really wreaks havoc on plugins, their authors, and the support of the plugins. In turn, this has obviously discouraged several plugin authors from making updates until 5.0 final is out.

One more thing to note regarding communication on this forum - when we briefly had a period of good communication from Tom, several bugs were identified, tracked down, and fixed due to regular back and forth with Tom. Good communication can actually help Tom move things forward more quickly. I'd even wager that some GitHub development might happen on the WebGui if Tom were actually around to help those interested in doing it.

It's not just about "final" to say it's "final." Obviously, we want a product that is reliable and works. Tom has stated that rc16c has no major bugs and is essentially final, but it has been quite a while. Here is why I personally want final: Plugin authors have almost stopped making updates since we are "close" to final, choosing instead to wait for actual final In the RC phase, we're not even supposed to running plugins Debugging plugins and other problems is hard because people are not always on the latest version I'm tired of checking this forum every day hoping for 5.0 I want to GIVE MY MONEY TO TOM for a Plus license, but I won't do it until we are final or I am confident that final is coming soon (hint, the way things are going, that won't be until it is out). When Tom actually releases 5.0, he can start to focus on features for 5.1+, such as a proper implementation of the plugin manager and an updated webGUI. The enhanced webGUI may help drive sales, but not having a product means you are missing sales left and right. I am confident that Tom has lost more sales due to the delays and lack of official support for 3TB drives than he has because of the GUI. It's like not even showing up to the game. The longer we wait and the more frustrated the users of this forum get, the more he loses customers to the competition. I'm very close to just buying a Synology box. Prospective users that visit this forum are very likely to turn and run The lack of communication from Tom leaves us wondering - is there a new bug that needs to be fixed? Am I at risk for data loss on RC16c and I just don't know it? Or do we just have feature creep for features that are nonessential? Good communication would go a long way to making us feel better about running the latest RC and that we are headed in the right direction.

+1 +1 +1 +1 +1

Given the rate of updates to unRAID and the long periods without communication from Tom, I think any solution that relies on Limetech for approval or any other interaction will not work well. Clearly, there is not a quick and obvious solution. The plugin and package managers should be a part of 5.1+.

Thank you kindly!! Is there any worthwhile info likely to be gained from the module? Fan Speeds etc.? Thanks again! Not sure, but in general, there aren't great tools for hardware monitoring in unRAID unfortunately.

aitch nailed it, but I feel like we are reinventing the wheel here. There are countless other distros out there with a variety of different ways to manage packages, dependencies, and plugins. Several of these, such as OpenELEC, OpenWrt, Synology, etc. are very specialized and limited distros. There much be a way we can work off of what they are doing. In theory, using the official Slackware package repository and one of the compatible package managers is the way to go, BUT we are still based on Slackware 13.1, which is now 3 years old. Critical security fixes are available (incorporated in unRAID though??), but it's not exactly up to date, which may cause problems when trying to keep plugins current. Ok, maybe it's not so simple....that upgrade to Slack 14.0 Tom mentioned would help. Really, if we could get on board with unRAID running on any modern distro that stays up to date in general, it would be a lot easier to do all of this. In fact, it would also make Tom's life easier with regards to hardware support and kernel updates... In conclusion - this needs to wait for 5.1 or 5.2, as much as I want it.

HDD temps will be read from SMART data directly off the HDD, so no need for that module (at least for HDD temp).

Given the confusion over secure/private/public and the fact that it apparently varies depending on protocol, it would seem to make sense for Tom to make these distinctions more obvious in the webGUI. Just a thought...

Any tips on getting hardware sensors working with simplefeatures 1.0.11? Anyone have temperature-based fan speed control working?

You could save a fair amount on the CPU IMO - an Ivy Bridge Celeron or Pentium is around $60. At idle, which is where your CPU will spend most of it's time, it will use the same or less power compared to the low voltage Sandy Bridge you listed. Not sure if Plex can take advantage of hardware video transcoding offered on the i3 (and missing on the Pentium/Celeron?). You could save even further by going with an Atom or AMD Brazos CPU if you won't be transcoding. You really don't need that much CPU power for a NAS that's mostly serving files and downloading a few things. Don't forget to factor in an unRAID license, which you'll need for more than 3 drives.

Great idea to put it on git an let the community contribute (not that I can do so, but there are some smart cookies on this board).