GHunter

Upgrade went smooth. Congrats to the LT Team and the community members that continue to work on the webGUI and their plugins! Thank You! It's great to have made it to RC and I'm sure you guys are as thrilled as the rest of us. unRAID is really such a great product and the amount of work put into really shows. Thanks again. Gary

You can't do both. It's either VNC or GPU pass-through. You can always setup RDP on your VM and go that route. That works regardless of VNC or GPU pass-through settings. Gary

The only reason I can think of for wanting Xen over KVM is that it runs Windows 7 in a VM rock solid (this could be true for other OS's). I don't have any pass-through experience with it though as I never rolled back my Xen version. Even today I started up a new Win7 VM under beta 15 and I still get a random BSOD. But I'm still sold on KVM. I'll buy more Windows 8.1 licenses if I have to. Gary

The new GUI is awesome! I've been playing with it using existing VM's and creating new ones. I just edited a Windows 8.1 VM that DOES NOT use pass-through which was previously created under beta 14 by using the new GUI in beta 15. This worked out just fine. There were of course some minor differences between the Before and After XML files (which I expected). I'm only posting this for informational purposes. Some users are probably hesitant doing this for fear of screwing up their VM. Of course I made backups just in case! Here are my XML files in case you're wondering what was changed using the new GUI when editing a VM created under a previous beta. I used bold text to highlight the differences between the 2 versions. Windows 8.1 VM created manually with an XML file under beta 14: After editing the Windows 8.1 VM with the new GUI (You know, the sexy form to add or edit a VM): Hope that helps some of you that are curious about updating a VM with the new GUI, Gary

Does this also apply to VM's with static IP addresses? I seem to have problems with this where every time I restart the VM, I'm back on a public network and have to change it to private before using RDP with a static IP to the VM. This is more of a problem with beta 15 than previous betas. I've been using br0 as the bridge as defined in the unRAID network settings for my VM's. If there is a more reliable way to do this, I'm all ears. Gary Gary can you send me PM with an example setup for what you are trying to do so I can try to replicate? JonP, I sent you a PM about this but the problem seems to have resolved itself. The VM has been responding to the static IP fine over the last day or so. I think it is just Windows being quirky with detected network changes. Thanks, Gary

Yeah, I'm heading to work now so I'll send you details when I get home. Thanks. Gary

Does this also apply to VM's with static IP addresses? I seem to have problems with this where every time I restart the VM, I'm back on a public network and have to change it to private before using RDP with a static IP to the VM. This is more of a problem with beta 15 than previous betas. I've been using br0 as the bridge as defined in the unRAID network settings for my VM's. If there is a more reliable way to do this, I'm all ears. Gary

This looks cool! Any recommendations for a Windows Phone 8 and Windows Tablet push service? I don't have any experience using push notifications. I had a quick look at the app store and found this https://pushalot.com/api which looks like I could use. I'll have more time next week to give this a try. Gary

I use an EVGA 750ti for GPU pass-through using KVM. It works just fine. You can use any of the video card outputs. I have even done multi monitor with it playing Battlefield 4 using 2 monitors. The card is listed in my sig. I was experimenting with KVM last week and I had 1 VM running Emby server (MB3) and it was streaming / transcoding to 4 clients and started up another VM and played BF4 on it. It worked really well. No problems with the videos or gaming. I was working the CPU and memory pretty hard and wondered how stability would be. Was rock solid for over an hour during my testing. Gary

I did it through a telnet session and used screen just in case I lost my telnet connection. If you have a monitor and keyboard attached directly to your unRaid server, screen isn't needed. There is info on using screen in the wiki here: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Configuration_Tutorial#Install_Screen_without_using_UnMENU Yes, in that example code, I was moving files from disk6 to disk5. Gary

I just finished converting 9 data drives from RFS to XFS. I save 1.5 to 2.5GB on every disk. Most disks were media files but 2 of them had hundreds of thousands of small files. I think the space savings is just due to file system differences. Data transfer to and from the array is much more consistent now. The transfer rate is probably the same though but the consistency makes it seem a faster. I'm glad I took the time to do this as it was worth it. A near full 3TB drive (50GB free) took about 19 hours. This was pretty consistent too. I used this rsync method: rsync -av --progress --remove-source-files /mnt/disk6/ /mnt/disk5/ Thanks to everyone who helped with their ideas on this conversion. Gary

Do you mean the "Use cache disk: No/Yes/Only" option in each User Shares set to No? If so i already did that. Yeah, that's it. Gary

Yeah. If the cache drive is set to disabled, it doesn't show up on the "main" page. Limetech is aware of the issue already. I got around it by enabling the cache drive and then disabling its use on each share. I only use it for VM storage. Gary

It's not the first time I've heard this. You cannot go by free space alone, use the filelist, du and wc commands to make sure. I've converted 3 disks from ReiserFS to XFS so far. On all 3 disks, I have gained a little bit of free space. 3TB RFS drive to 3TB XFS drive - Went from 49.5GB to 51.1GB Free 3TB RFS drive to 3TB XFS drive - Went from 10.7GB to 12.3GB Free 2TB RFS drive to 2TB XFS drive - Went from 53.6GB to 54.7GB Free These are media drives and contain mostly larger files. Source and destination drives between copies are of the same model number. I'll post some results from other drives that have smaller files when I get to them. Gary

One other problem I foresee here is where you might remove a drive but don't replace it which leaves a slot as unassigned. I had my array with 2 drives marked as unassigned for about a year before I did a new config. Gary

Can you post your entire XML? If you want your VM to use 12 CPU's, the pertinent part of your XML should be something like: <!-- TOTAL NUMBER OF CPUS FOR VM --> <vcpu placement='static'>12</vcpu> <cpu mode='host-passthrough'> <!-- SOCKETS X CORES X 1 THREAD EQUALS VCPU COUNT --> <topology sockets='3' cores='4' threads='1'/> </cpu> You can play around with the <topology ...> line, for example: <!-- SOCKETS X CORES X 1 THREAD EQUALS VCPU COUNT --> <topology sockets='6' cores='2' threads='1'/> If you're doing CPU pinning, there should be 12 lines for that also. Gary

This looks really good! I love where you are heading with this. Smart and simple VM creation with abilities for advanced uses too. Are you planning on adding CPU host passthrough, cpuset and pinning? I think those options and with what you have shown in the picture will cover 95% of the manual xml creation. Hot plugging USB devices would be great too. That would kill the need for USB bus passthrough. Gary

Thanks for the info. I just read your thread on it and will have a look at the blog too. Gary

I have mine set for 10 minutes for each of the 3 settings listed and then I have it set to turn off the UPS. This gives me about 15 minutes of runtime before shutdown. I think it is best to turn off the UPS as you don't want to run the battery down to 0 if the power doesn't come back on soon. Gary

Look at the drive under disk management and see if there is unallocated space. You might need to resize the partition in Windows. Gary

I don't know if that is possible because Windows won't see the disk until virtio drivers are loaded. You can try this: 1. Make a backup of your Windows img file and current XML (copy your XML and save it somewhere). 2. Add a second hard drive of virtio type to your XML 3. Boot into your VM and you'll either be prompted for drivers for the 2nd hard disk or go to device manager and find the drive with the yellow exclamation point on it, right click on it, and install the virtio drivers. Now virtio drivers are installed and Windows should see your second hard drive. 4. Shut down the VM and change your boot drive from the current type to virtio. 5. Start your VM and hopefully Windows will update the drivers for the boot drive and boot up. Again, I don't know if this will work. At least you'll have a backup of your img file and XML to restore if it doesn't. Gary

Well, I guess I am just fine without those 2 <timer .../> lines. I played Battlefield 4 on it for about 30 minutes with the GPU passed through with 2 monitors hooked up for 3820 x 1080 goodness. It was stable and pretty fluid. I'm curious what the frame rate was, but I need a break. I'll play more later! Gary

So I've been experimenting with KVM and passthrough of an Nvidia 750ti, mouse, and keyboard, and have had some issues with Nvidia driver installation. Particularly with the <clock> node in the XML. This is the node in question which is put in by the KVM Manager plugin: <clock offset='localtime'> <timer name='hypervclock' present='yes'/> <timer name='hpet' present='no'/> </clock> And here is my current XML for reference: <domain type='kvm' xmlns:qemu='http://libvirt.org/schemas/domain/qemu/1.0'> <name>Win7Test</name> <uuid>b0a7b11b-c3b0-5825-fa80-34a773754676</uuid> <memory unit='KiB'>4194304</memory> <currentMemory unit='KiB'>4194304</currentMemory> <vcpu placement='static'>2</vcpu> <cputune> <vcpupin vcpu='0' cpuset='2'/> <vcpupin vcpu='1' cpuset='3'/> </cputune> <os> <type arch='x86_64' machine='pc-q35-2.1'>hvm</type> <boot dev='hd'/> </os> <features> <acpi/> <apic/> </features> <cpu mode='host-passthrough'> <topology sockets='1' cores='2' threads='1'/> </cpu> <clock offset='localtime'> <timer name='hypervclock' present='yes'/> <timer name='hpet' present='no'/> </clock> <on_poweroff>destroy</on_poweroff> <on_reboot>restart</on_reboot> <on_crash>restart</on_crash> <devices> <emulator>/usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64</emulator> <disk type='file' device='disk'> <driver name='qemu' type='qcow2'/> <source file='/mnt/SSD/KVM/Win7Test/Win7Test.qcow2'/> <target dev='hda' bus='virtio'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x03' function='0x0'/> </disk> <disk type='file' device='cdrom'> <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/> <source file='/mnt/user/Programs/Technet/en_windows_7_enterprise_with_sp1_x64_dvd_620201.iso'/> <target dev='hdc' bus='sata'/> <readonly/> <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='0' target='0' unit='2'/> </disk> <controller type='usb' index='0' model='ich9-ehci1'> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x02' function='0x7'/> </controller> <controller type='usb' index='0' model='ich9-uhci1'> <master startport='0'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x02' function='0x0' multifunction='on'/> </controller> <controller type='sata' index='0'> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x1f' function='0x2'/> </controller> <controller type='pci' index='0' model='pcie-root'/> <controller type='pci' index='1' model='dmi-to-pci-bridge'> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x1e' function='0x0'/> </controller> <controller type='pci' index='2' model='pci-bridge'> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x01' slot='0x01' function='0x0'/> </controller> <interface type='bridge'> <mac address='52:54:00:79:71:2e'/> <source bridge='br0'/> <model type='virtio'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x01' function='0x0'/> </interface> <hostdev mode='subsystem' type='usb' managed='no'> <source> <vendor id='0x046d'/> <product id='0xc31c'/> </source> </hostdev> <hostdev mode='subsystem' type='usb' managed='no'> <source> <vendor id='0x046d'/> <product id='0xc05a'/> </source> </hostdev> <memballoon model='virtio'> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x02' slot='0x04' function='0x0'/> </memballoon> </devices> <seclabel type='none' model='none'/> <qemu:commandline> <qemu:arg value='-device'/> <qemu:arg value='ioh3420,bus=pcie.0,addr=1c.0,multifunction=on,port=1,chassis=1,id=root.1'/> <qemu:arg value='-device'/> <qemu:arg value='vfio-pci,host=01:00.0,bus=root.1,addr=00.0,multifunction=on,x-vga=on'/> <qemu:arg value='-device'/> <qemu:arg value='vfio-pci,host=01:00.1,bus=pcie.0'/> </qemu:commandline> </domain> The latest Nvidia driver does not seem to like the <timer> settings in the <clock> node, so I changed this part: <clock offset='localtime'> <timer name='hypervclock' present='yes'/> <timer name='hpet' present='no'/> </clock> to this: <clock offset='localtime'> </clock> And then I don't seem to have any issues with the latest drivers. Do I really need this <timer name='hypervclock' present='yes'/> for a stable Windows VM with GPU passthrough to game on? Or is there something else wrong with my XML that is causing Nvidia driver issues? The problem I'm having is that the display adapter / drivers aren't installing correctly and show an error in the device manager. Doing a clean reinstall of the driver sometimes works but when I reboot, I either get the error again in the device manager or the Geforce Experience program crashes. Oddly, if I use an older driver, v340.52, I don't have this issue. I'm not sure what that line is for but many seem to use it on their Windows VM's. I have this problem on both Win7 and Win10. Haven't tried a Win8 VM yet, but that is next on my list of things to try. Gary

Hmm, I'll boot into unRaid w/ KVM and post my whole XML file. It was generated from using the VM Manager plugin, then I made edits for GPU and USB passthrough. It was quick and easy to do and I had fun playing with it. My previous attempts with passthrough in the beta 11 and 12 time frame resulted in BSOD's and I tried a number of XML examples that you and others had posted. So I figured I'd wait a bit. I have a feeling it was due to the VirtIO drivers I was using at the time. Also, I'm not saying that those <timer /> lines are being detected by Nvidia, just that the new drivers wouldn't install correctly which showed up in Windows device manager with the yellow exclamation point. I wanted to try another driver and since you mentioned v340.52 resolved the Nvidia flag problem, I figured that version would be good for me to try. I'll start a new thread for this. This one is getting off topic. Sorry Gary

Thanks again for such a great plugin! I was able to setup 2 VM's in a matter of minutes without any problems. After a few XML edits, I had added GPU and USB device pass through and was playing around with them. I had experimented with KVM and this plugin back in beta 11 and 12 time period but had some stability issues (BSOD) with Windows VM's, so I put it off until things matured a bit and I had more time. So I spent a good few hours with it tonight and had some fun! Thanks! Gary