PsiCzar

I'd like to install additional packages into the Docker Container like exiftool, what is the best way or commands to do this? Can I just put in the apt-get commands as a variable?

Is Limetech working on an alternative licensing method for future versions? I find the requirement for a specific USB stick a bit antiquated, like the old dongles software vendors used to provide which you had to plug into the back of your computer. In my case I have to do USB pass through for the UNRAID VM which works fine but i'm concerned the USB stick will die at some point. I keep a backup of the configuration but when it dies so does my license. Would a Microsoft online activation method work?

This is exactly the case, I have disabled Docker functionality so it doesnt show up in the menus across the top but VM's is still listed because I am unable to disable it. My request is also not necessarily specific to the above, I think giving people the option of using UNRAID as a pure NAS only solution by allowing them to disable/hide those extra features would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hi, I have been using UNRAID since v4.7 and think it's a great product but since v5.0 there is a lot of extra functionality being added that is not storage related. I virtualise UNRAID under ESXI and use it purely as a NAS, If I need additional services I typically add it to another VM as I want UNRAID to do one job only. I see UNRAID continuing to expand and add extra features that will be a benefit to the community but as this occurs I'd like the option to disable them within the settings of the WEBUI. I don't want to see references to VM's etc except under settings where the option can be enabled/disabled. If they are turned off there is also the potential to reduce the memory/CPU footprint as the processes for these features wouldn't be running? Thanks!

Hi, I'm attempting to update to the latest beta using Dynamix's cool web interface, unfortunately it downloads the unraid server.zip file OK but when it attempts unzip it I get the following error. -bash: ./unzip: cannot execute binary file unzip is located in /usr/bin folder and if I attempt to execute it manually I get the same error. I am running Beta Quasi's Unraid .vmdk on ESXi 5.5 with my USB key passed through to the Unraid VM and everything works perfectly, I would just like to update through this method instead of copying the manual method of copying the bzroot and bzimage files. Thanks for any help

I'm running ESXi 5.5 Update 2 with an IBM M1015 flashed to IT mode passed through to the Unraid VM and everything working sweet. Definitely the way to go!

Running ESXi 5.5 here with an M1015 card passed through to an UnRaid 5.0 VM. Connected to the card are a 3TB parity drive and 7 2TB WD Green drives, I don't use a cache drive. Couple of things that make my environment run reasonably stable. I stripped all plugins out of Unraid except for Open VMtools and the standard webgui so i could keep it very simple. I built an Ubuntu server VM and this is what runs everything I used plugins for, couchpotato, sickbeard, mysql etc. I pass the USB stick through for licensing but I use BetaQuasi's Unraid vmdk for booting http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=26639.0 I have setup Resource Pools and given Unraid the highest priority, everything else is set to normal or low. I run a vcenter appliance as well for managing ESXi 5.5-only functions but most of the day to day stuff I still do through the vsphere client because vcenter is a resource hog so I leave it off when i'm not using it. The only time you won't be able to use the vsphere client is if you upgrade the VM's hardware to version 10, then you won't able to edit any of the VM settings without vcenter. I upgraded to 5.5 mainly because of the SSD cache drive functionality http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2058983 which should improve the performance of all VMs on the host although I havent picked up the drive yet. Hope this helps.

So I did a bit more reading on the forum and one of the posts mentioned that kernel errors are usually the result of memory issues so I ran a memtest program against my 16GB RAM and sure enough, 94 errors. So looks like i'll be replacing at least one stick.

I'm running UnRaid 5.0 as a VM on my ESXi 5.5 host with an IBM M1015 card passed through. Disk 3 in my system red balled, I believe the cause was a faulty SAS cable because smartctl said the disk had no errors so I replaced the cable and followed instructions on here to re-add the drive which kicked of a data rebuild. The estimated speed at the beginning was around 50-70MB and it said it was going to take roughly 8-10 hours to complete. After a couple of hours I went back to check and the speed had dropped to 400Kb and it was going to take a 100 days to complete. I checked the syslog and noticed a bunch of errors that occurred almost an hour after the rebuild started (at 8:23). I've attached my complete syslog, can someone advise what the issue might be? I have tried rebuilding the disk a number of times but it ends the same way although at different times in the rebuild process. Thanks. syslog.txt

I picked up a Cooler Master Storm Trooper full tower case the other day, I would've loved a Lian Li d8000 but after shipping to Perth, Australia it would be $500-600 which is well out of my budget at the moment, this case was $175 and available locally. It's a bit over the top for an Unraid server but for the price it's got plenty of room, loads of external connections and is very moddable. it comes with 9 5.25 drive bays top to bottom and includes 2 4-in-3 drive cages. I already had a CM 4-in-3 cage which I transferred across from my old Unraid server giving me 12 drive bays. When it comes time to expand i'll look at replacing them with 5-in-3, there is also an external 2.5" dock which would be suitable for a SSD cache drive and then there is another SSD cage sitting at the bottom of the case which could probably be replaced with another 5-in-3 drive cage as there is lots of space. Only 2 negatives, the new drive cages have red LEDs and my old one is blue, so it looks a bit odd when they're lit. Also the grommet which surrounds the power supply cable hole is pretty flimsy and came out while I was feeding the power cables through, other than that i'm very happy with it. http://www.bjorn3d.com/2011/09/cooler-master-storm-trooper-full-tower-case/

Awesome! It's 5.0RC12a so all good there. Thanks!

Hi generalz, thanks for the tip but I managed to get it working without configuring passthrough as per Johnm's tutorial. I figured out my problem was that ESXi can see the Asmedia USB 3.0 controller on my motherboard and it is available for passthrough, but it doesn't seem to work for virtualising. I was using the Asmedia controller because the ESXi USB stick was connected to the Intel USB 2.0 controller and I didnt want to pass that through because then my host wouldnt boot. I decided to swap the 2 devices around to see if ESXi would boot off the Asmedia controller which it did so, I then noticed I was able to see the Unraid USB stick plugged into the Intel controller from the CLI. I tried to do passthrough of the Intel controller but as before, on the next reboot it disappeared. Not sure why that didnt work, my hardware supports VT-d and VT-x, ESXi confirms it, I was also able to passthrough my M1015 card without issue. Anyway after a some cursing and Googling I managed to make it work by skipping the whole passthrough bit, I went straight to the VM, added a USB controller configured as XHCI, then added a USB device and bang the Unraid USB stick was there in the list. I booted the VM with BetaQuasi's vmdk attached and it came up perfectly. After all that I only have one question, given that the M1015 card is passed through, will the Unraid VM see the disks and data if I move them from the old server to the new one? I'd like to be able to just move the disks across without having to do a massive data migration. Thanks.

Hi, I'm trying to pass an 8GB USB 3 Corsair Flash Voyager stick which holds my Unraid install through to the Unraid VM i've setup but for some reason ESXi 5.1 won't detect that it has been plugged in. I followed the steps I found on this website http://www.progob.nl/robmaaseu/index.php/vmware-esxi-determine-which-usb-bus-to-pass-through/ to identify the correct USB controller to passthrough. I ran this command to get a list of USB devices attached to the system lsusb -v | grep -e Bus -e iSerial but i'm not seeing it in the list. I tried the same command with it unplugged and the number of listed devices didnt change, I then tried a different USB stick (same brand but 16GB) and it appears in the list, so it must be something to do with this particular USB device. Unfortunately as my Unraid Pro licence is tied to this one I can't just swap it with the other. I inserted it into my Windows 8 machine, did a chkdsk and it came back with no errors, I also tried copying the files off and formatting it again with the same file system (FAT32) but again it didnt make any difference. Is there anything else I can do to get the host to see this device or should I try setting it up with the other USB stick and see if Tom will update my licence? Thanks!

I had this issue as well recently, I found the only way to get rid of them was to go the actual disk where the files reside and delete them from there, so /mnt/diskx/Films/ instead of /mnt/user/Films/. When I did this I was able to delete the files successfully. Good luck

Thanks for tip, i'll look at doing it that way instead.

When you build an Unraid VM and use virtualised drives that are VMDKs sitting on datastores, are pre-clear times faster than when you pre-clear an equivalent sized physical drive or about the same? I'm about to embark on a hardware upgrade with a move to ESXi and i'm curious how long pre-clearing a 2TB VMDK will take.

Taken from an Ars Technica article on Facebook's DIY servers Each storage server has 2 trays of 15 4TB drives, that's a lot of disk space in what looks like a 2RU chassis. Wonder if they take orders

Thanks for the advice, i'll look at doing that.

Changing the disk settings to ones specified by Garycase didn't make any difference to the parity check speeds, still hovering around 30MB/s. Do I need to stop the array or reboot the server for these to take effect? According to the smartctl command none of my disks have errors. One of them had a single reallocated sector, the rest were at zero. One of them had a high UDMA CRC Error Count which red balled the drive a few months ago but I resolved the issue by replacing the SATA cable. I am due a hardware upgrade for this box, may just go ahead with that, add each drive to the new box and monitor the parity check speeds to see if they drop off. Thanks.

OK, will get a SMART report for all of my disks, what variables should I be looking for to establish if there is an issue?

I have not touched the disk parameters they would be set to whatever the default is. I'm at work at the moment, will check out the values tonight when I'm home again and try the ones you suggested. If I have 1 disk that has an issue would that throw out the whole parity check process or only affect it during the check of that one drive? Thanks for your reply!

The specs of my Unraid box are as follows: ASUS P5B M/B 8GB RAM (2x 4GB DDR2 800) Intel Core 2 Quad CPU 1x IBM M1015 Card 6 WD 2TB Green Drives 1 Samsung 2TB drive 1 WD 1TB Green Drive (Cache) 1 WD 3 TB Red Drive (Parity) Unraid 5-RC12a Parity and Cache drives are connected to onboard SATA ports, the other drives are connected to the M1015 card. I find that when Unraid is doing a parity check it averages around 28MB/s, takes about 28 hours to complete with an average of 35MB/s. As other people on these forums appear to be getting speeds significantly faster than I am with similar hardware or not much better I have been trying to diagnose why mine are so slow. I initially thought I had it cracked when I discovered the PCIE slot I had the M1015 card plugged into was x4 and not x8 so I moved it to the PCIE x16 slot. I expected big numbers when I booted it up again and kicked off another parity check only to find it was running at the same speed, zero performance improvement. Now that I think about it, I didnt really see any improvement moving my drives from 2 generic PCI SATA cards to the single M1015 card. I checked the syslog for errors and nothing is appearing to indicate a fault with a particular drive that may slow things down, is there another log file I should be checking? Is my hardware bottlenecked somewhere or are these speeds roughly what you would expect for the above hardware configuration? Any advice appreciated. Thanks!

Running 6x 2 TB WD Greens, a 3TB WD Red for parity and a 1TB WD Green for cache. Any drive I add to it is pre-cleared once because it's compulsory, otherwise I probably wouldn't bother. I'm not going to spend days stress testing a drive to within an inch of it's life because that doesnt represent the kind of load I put on them and besides if a drive fails i'll replace and rebuild.

Make sure you don't have any telnet/ssh sessions open to the unraid box either, had the same issue despite stopping all of the addons, once I logged out of the CLI the array stopped successfully.

Thanks guys for the info, I ended up downgrading to my previous version of unraid and everything is working fine again. If there are write errors on the disk why does none of the SMART tests show a problem?