SidebandSamurai

Definitely a good deal. I just upgraded last night. -- Sideband Samurai

um question teacher ... the Hot Spare, Auto Rebuild, and Multiple redundancy levels, aren't they all part of a RAID controller? --Sideband Samurai

Yea I read that one too, but Micro$oft is in the process of appealing the decision. Right now this only affects the European Union. --Sideband Samurai

My two cents worth here. I use XBMC. I use to use Boxee, that is until they stopped developing for every os Except the Boxee Box I use XBMC now for both TV shows and movies. I have separate shares for both on Unraid. I do not have a central database for my xbmc install but right now I only have one machine using it. For me I have a sickbeard server to access TV show content. It retrieves the show and transfers it to XBMC. XBMC updates automatically by scanning for new content upon startup, it takes only a minute or two. Same for movies. When I add a movie from my DVD or BlueRay collection I will encode with MakeMKV. Then I use Media Center Master (another program) which creates the necessary folders and downloads all the meta data to the Unraid server (movie share) for XBMC. When I start XMBC, It will then update itself with the added movie information and then I can watch it. The really cool part of XBMC is an addin called Cinema Experience. This is really a movie night add-in for when you have guests over. I can queue up a movie or two and have this addin run and it displays trivia, movie quizzes, advertizements (pre downloaded on to unraid) and current trailers from youtube, just like you were at the movie theater. You can even have it control automation, like lowering the screen, dimming the lights, opening up a curtain, lowering the shades. Really a cool add in. You can add this to XBMC at no cost. Yes you can add central database capabilities, XBMC forums are great for that. No XBMC DOES NOT run on top of unraid. When it comes to my network everything is client-server based. For example, I can use a RasberryPI running Rasbmc OS and with a little tweaking hear and there add a system that displays my media in no time using XBMC. I would then probably start using the central database features of XBMC to keep everything in sync. BUT one XBMC system MUST update the database by scanning for new content. That is how XBMC is updated. Again the scan only takes a minute or two, and its done. XBMC has a real steep learning curve. There are somethings that need to be configured, and they are in odd places. XBMC is fully skin-able, as well as fully customizable. I use the Transparancy! skin which features the display of fan art as the background while you select your movies. It took me about a day after I installed it to really get comfortable with XBMC. I am still learning how to use it. For me, XBMC has really been a great asset to our media watching experience and I have been real happy with it. With some configuration, XBMC has been able to adapt nicely to what I want it to do. I would run XBMC in a fully linux OS environment. My problem is Netflix and their use of Silverlight for DRM. Silverlight only runs on Windows machines. Which means if I use a RasberryPi, I wont be able to watch Netflix on it. -- Sideband Samurai

Yea that is what I am exploring myself for a build I am about to start. -- Sideband Samurai

Thought this requirement was for Dedupe not ZFS in general. I'm also considering doing this, NFS datastore for ESX, the approach I was going to use was 10gb Ethernet adaptors connected back to back using twinax. Dual port on the NFS box and single port on the ESX servers. I am fairly certain that you need 1GB of RAM for every TB of storage. Its a caching thing. The more ram the better your performance. Also you could supplement your build by adding a SSD for ZIL and L2ARC which will speed thing up considerably. This was pulled directly from a post on another forum about this exact same question: Also recommended is a 64bit operating system to overcome the 32bit memory limitation of 4GB. I think most of the distros are 64 bit now and ZFS was written for a 64bit OS anyway. Also keep reading this post on AndandTech.com. There is one poster that answers a series of questions that might help answer questions here. Its like a "Things you want to know about ZFS but were afraid to ask sort of subject". The link is here: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2251048 --Sideband Samurai

...the distro is an enterprise grade OS...it is all in OI or Solaris. napp-it GUI will help...install is 1,2,3, finish..really. Here are some docs to read: http://napp-it.org/doc/downloads/napp-it.pdf http://www.napp-it.org/doc/downloads/all-in-one.pdf ...you should also read some tipps regarding the advantage of using ZFS snapshots with an ESXi datastore. I know this topic is old. but I thought my comment had relevance. There is a commercial product called Nexcentastor. They offer a free version of of the product which I know works with ESXi. I believe it uses a slightly older version of Solaris. This version of Solaris is very reliable. But then Solaris is what ZFS was developed under. I had also heard that under Freenas and Linux in general that there are other problems that make the FreeNas version of ZFS not really a viable solution. If your VMWare Datastore is under 18TB, then this would be an excellent alternative. It has an excellent web interface and is supported through their forums. Of course the commercial version costs 10's of thousands of dollars. I think a 198TB raw datastore, with Gold support is roughly $50,000. You can download a copy and give it a try here: www.nexentastor.org/projects/1/wiki/CommunityEdition On the other hand, if you were over the 18TB limitation, I have seen installations of Open Indiana and NappIT work very well. I don't know how well under ESXi, but on its own it is very reliable. Also, ZFS NEEDS LOTS of ram. Dare I say it again? LOTS of RAM. Typically 1GB for every Terabyte of storage in the volumes.

Hi, Please forgive the sarcasm, its not meant that way. Sounds like a "Half baked" idea. A little more thought needs to go in to it. For example, how many drives are you going to use, Type of drives (Laptop or desktop) type of power supply, kind of cooling how you will mount the motherboard and so forth. Maybe you can use Sketchup to see if what you want will fit into an ammo can. Though this is an interesting idea, I would not go lower than 1TB because if you do then you will need to have more drives to store data. At minimum you will need 3 (2 data 1 parity). With an ammo can space is at a premium. You should be thinking of MicroATX or smaller. I wonder if a Rasberry PI will run Unraid? If not maybe you can make it run some how. Here are your dimensions based on the type of motherboard you are considering to install: Mini-ITX is 6.7 x 6.7 in or 170mm x 170mm Nano-ITX is 4.7 x 4.7 in or 120mm x 120mm Pico-ITX is 3.9 x 2.8 in or 100mm x 72mm --Sideband Samurai

Hmmm. is the Hard drive in the Keyboard? This is what I was led to: Tt eSPORTS MEKA G1 KB-MEG005USC Black & White 7 Function Keys USB Wired Gaming Mechanical Keyboard in Brown Box Limited time Shell Shocker® deal 7 Function Keys USB Wired Tt eSPORTS

Then would you agree that changing "Total Size" to "Parity Size" would make more sense? --Sideband Samurai

Hello, I have just upgraded from rc-14 to RC-16b. In RC-14 I noticed this but thought it was a fluke. It is still present in 16b, so I thought I would mention it. Please take a look at the picture below: I have a 4GB array right now (yes its tiny) Next you will notice while a parity check is running, you see Total Size: 2TB (yes Terabytes). This is a bit confusing, but I believe that this area is showing the status of the parity check, and therefor the size of the parity drive correct? This value would not be the "total size" of the array as the label suggests. If this is the case, shouldn't "Total Size" in this section be replaced with "Parity Drive Size"? to avoid confusion? Also I know this is a formatting issue, but shouldn't all of these labels on the left be moved over closer to their values instead of sitting off on the far left like that? I know these are small potatoes compared to what you are really trying to fix, but shouldn't these small issues be addressed also before release? These formatting errors have been around for a very long time. I know they don't hurt anything but before release I think these should be fixed. I am performing a Parity Check right now but I don't think I will find anything wrong. I have been following along for quite a while and Tom, I do have to say, the wait has been worth it. Very good job. -- Sideband Samurai

This is a very intresting project. my thoughts were what size wood are you going to use for the carcass. Also safety is a big concern with MDF. Here is a quote from wikipedia about these concerns: You also have to be careful when fastening MDF together. The wood screws can easily split MDF making that part useless. I wonder if using 1/2" standard plywood, and placing an inexpensive veneer on top to hide imperfections would make a better, stronger, Safer product. -- Sideband Samurai

According to the link provided, its 150 now.

I have a feeling that you are running your unraid as a headless system like we all do. But while you are having this problem if you could connect a monitor and keyboard and use that to access your system that will be extremely useful. That way if telnet goes off line you still have control from the console of the unraid system. We don't have any information about your system. What system board, network cards, processor, memory PSU number of disks etc so we can begin to get the whole picture. This info would be very helpful. Remember that rebooting your unraid, you could loose your syslog, that is why its important to have a monitor and keyboard connected to the unraid server so that you can copy it to the flash drive before reboot. If the console is locked up and not responding, then you will be looking at a hardware failure with the motherboard, memory or processor. In which case you need to run the memtest 86+ for at least 2 days (should give you 10 complete loops of memory testing). If you get no errors after 10 complete loops of memory testing then we can move on to other problems. You could also have a cooling issue with your processor. The motherboard is just protecting the processor from overheating by locking up the processor. Can you ping the server when this happens? Good luck! -- Harold

Hi Zoggy, sorry for the delay. If you log into your router. Go to the DNS section of the router software (NOT DYNDNS) and place the host name and IP address in that section then save the configuration, that should solve your problem. Make sure the DNS service is turned on also. -- Harold

Hi Zoggy, Caught your post in the RC-12 release thread, so I came over here to help you out. Yes, your friend was correct. This can be fixed so it will not occur again, Can you tell me what firewall you are using? How many PC's in your network? -- Sideband Samurai

Yes but today's machines are so much powerful from machines from 10 years ago. Systems today are really wasted because of how fast they process requests. I can see how adding more drives can introduce more problems. How about a parity drive for each 26 letters? Since you have /sda-sdz and it has one parity, why not /sdaa-sdzz supported by another parity drive? It keeps the array stripe to a manageable size and utilizes the code already developed for the first 26 letters. I guess this is the "multiple arrays that Tom had mentioned before". Anyway, I was just wondering why only 26 letters and not the "unlimited" capabilities of what Linux offers. Visualizing mitigates that somewhat but at a price of a license for each array you want to have on the network. Then you have the multiple shares on the network, replicating user accounts if they exist ... etc ... etc ... etc -- Sideband Samurai

Well Yes and no. Yes it will fix it for that ONE PC, but not fix it for the entire network. Clearly his DNS server is not working properly and the PROPER way to fix it is to troubleshoot why its not working. Its why I asked him what he is using for a firewall. Clearly this issue is not for this thread. It should be in its own thread so we can help him better there. @frank1940 What kind of questions are these. obviously he is using the windows environment (based on his command prompt of c:\nslookup husky). And that second question, is, a bit confusing also. It does not matter who or what he is supplies the name look up service for. To answer that question for zoggy, he is providing name look up service for his local network. His name service is just not working. period. In my network, I have a statically assigned pool of addresses. The static area is from .1 to .30 with the DHCP pool starting at .31. I update my DNS server with the host name and ip address assigned the new host and it starts working for the entire network. I don't have to update a local host file, and I don't have to statically assign a DHCP address to the new host. Simple as that. @zoggy, if you want to start a new thread in the "General Support" section we will help you there. OK? --Sideband Samurai

@zoggy C:\>nslookup husky 1.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa primary name server = localhost responsible mail addr = nobody.invalid serial = 1 refresh = 600 (10 mins) retry = 1200 (20 mins) expire = 604800 (7 days) default TTL = 10800 (3 hours) Server: UnKnown Address: 192.168.0.1 *** UnKnown can't find husky: Non-existent domain Zoggy, this is not a normal output of windows nslookup. I don't know where you got this from but it should look like my previous post. From the looks of this it appears that you have picked up the reverse look configuration file from a linux named setup. Possibly left over in your clipboard from another copy/paste process you did earlier. I can tell this because of all the options included in the record. This is a reverse lookup because of the 1.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa phrase at the top (you will notice the ip of that is reversed). No ... updating the BIOS will not resolve your name resolution issues. The update may improve network performance but that is not what we are troubleshooting right now. If I execute 'nslookup davyjones' this is the result I get: server: bluemaumau address: 10.1.1.1 name: davyjones address: 10.1.1.10 and nothing else. You can also try this: ping husky if you get Ping request could not find host husky, please check the name and try again. then this is a name resolution issue not a network connectivity issue. Things a BIOS update might fix are slow transfer speeds, connection/disconnection from the network, getting the wrong linkspeed stuff like that. Not what you are having now. As you can contact the server via IP but not by name. What are you using for a firewall/gateway? The "unknown or non-existant domain" error is also a clue your DNS server is not working correctly. -- Sideband Samurai

Sorry yes, I did see your hint. I just thought it was odd it only allowed 26 from the start. I figured it was because of the Parity drive and its size. -- Sideband Samurai

You might have not had a chance to read my edited post. the Linux kernel has limitations, but it is so high for all purposes of this discussion it has no limits. If you refer to my post above (which I was editing when you answered) you can have devices like sdaa-sdzz and sdaaa-sdzzz (etc). So just its not just because there are 26 letters in the alphabet. Support beyond 26 devices is already supported by Slackware and the Linux kernel. -- Sideband Samurai

All, I really don't know if this has ever been asked, but why is unraid limited to 24 hard drives? I understand physical limitations of the case or power supply and cooling. Lets just suppose you had a power supply as big as necessary and a case that would hold 50 hard drives that was placed in a refrigerator. Why would unraid be limited to only 24 drives? The linux kernel does not have a theoretical limit on devices beyond 24. In-fact, you can have a devices named sdaa-sdzz and even sdaaa-sdzzz and even sdaaaa-sdzzzz and on and on and on... Is it because of the Parity drive? Sincerely, Sideband Samurai

I am currently running RC12a with no plugins or issues at this time. Parity check Non-Correcting speeds started at around 120MB/s and at the 25% mark have dropped to 108 MB/s By the end of the check speeds had dropped to about 80mb/s This is a small 3 disk system all with 2TB Green drives installed. -- Sideband Samurai

Well Not crazy. The change that was made to the network driver would not affect Name (DNS) resolution for your unraid server. Go to the unraid menu then click on Settings -> Network settings to make sure you have configured your unraid system to point to your DNS server. Generally this is the same address as your gateway or firewall appliance. And updating the BIOS is suppose to help with what? With Name Resolution? Not likely. or how your NIC operates ... possibly but also not likely. BEFORE, you update your BIOS, check the settings above. Also check your PC make sure its configured correctly. Use NSLOOKUP from the windows PC command line type in the name of your system like as below: Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601] Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. c:\User\PlaceNameHere\nslookup Default Server: bluemaumau <- thats the name of my DNS server Address: 10.1.1.1 <- Thats the address of my DNS server >davyjones Server: bluemaumau Address: 10.1.1.1 Name: davyjones.shipwrekcove.net Address: 10.1.1.10 >exit C:\Users\PlaceNameHere>_ If you see: DNS request timed out. time out was 2 seconds. DNS request timed out. time out was 2 seconds. *** Request to [PlaceServerNameHere] timed-out Then something is definitely wrong with your DNS server and it needs to be looked at. If you are not using DNS, then maybe your hosts file has become corrupted or is missing this entry. Either way, updating BIOS will not solve this issue. If your DNS server is the same server as your ISP, you have mis-configured your DNS settings. You should have your own DNS server (usually provided by your firewall appliance) with all requests that are not cached on your local DNS server forwarded to your ISP DNS for resolution. This makes your name lookup response faster and allows you to add host names to your network without having to modify your hosts file on every PC in your network. Sincerely, Sideband Samurai

OOOooooOOOooo a release on my Birthday. Thanks for the Present Tom!