SidebandSamurai

I just wanted to suggest another Windows Editor to use to edit the config files on unraid. Its called Notepad ++ and it can be downloaded here: http://notepad-plus-plus.org/. Its free, and edits just about any file you can throw at it. --Sideband Samurai

Now that the flash key is NOT working. have you tried to read it on another system like a laptop? It should be readable by any windows system. You will need to copy off your configuration files BEFORE you try to re-install or format that flash key. -- Sideband Samurai

I see you are still on RC-5. Any chance to upgrade to RC-11? or is that not working at all? --Sideband Samurai

IceDraongsLair, We need to troubleshoot this in a logical manner. Lets focus on your system. I read through the thread, The memory work around is for the Supermicro system boards. This slow down is not known to happen in any other system boards that I know of. Can you re-install RC-11 WITHOUT plugins, then let us know what happened. Including a syslog would be very helpful also. There are articles elsewhere on the forum about a script you can put on your flash drive that will let you switch between RC-5 and RC-11 easily. In regards to the screen blanking. Be aware, if you turn off the blanking feature you could burn in your screen. Spacebar simply turns your screen back on. The screen blank feature was put in Linux long time ago to prevent the burn in of older CRT type monitors. Even modern flat panel monitors WILL burn in. Keeping it on is not doing any harm. Have you run memtest86+? and if you have, have you run it for more than one loop? 10 loops is preferable to make sure you don't have hardware problems. Yes this takes a long time (sometimes over two days) but if memtest86+ passes after 10 loops with NO ERRORS then you know your RAM, CPU and Memory, and system board are all in good condition. How about a BIOS update, are you current on your BIOS updates? Older Bios images can cause performance issues. Sincerely, --Sideband Samurai I don't necessarily agree with that. If its an Intel system, the CPU will slow down first. Then it will lock up, not reboot. Also AMD systems will simply lock up to save the CPU, not reboot. He has not told us his hardware configuration yet, and he is about to replace the system board with out really troubleshooting it properly. Its like trying to shoot a duck with a howitzer. You get the duck, but not much of it after you are done. In your posted syslog I see the following error: Feb 20 12:08:12 Tower kernel: sdg: unknown partition table Also I see this at the beginning at your syslog: Feb 20 13:54:55 Tower emhttp: WDC_WD30EURS-63SPKY0_WD-WMC1T1399862 (sdg) 2930266584 Is this the drive you are having problems with?

NewEgg has a sale on 3TB hard drives: Name: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 ST3000DM001 Size: 3TB Speed: 7200 RPM Cache: 64MB Interface: SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive Was $139.99 NOW: $119.99 with code EMCXVVW22 Here is the link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=22-148-844&Tpk=N82E16822148844 --Sideband Samurai

Browsing through the thread, and noticed most people are not on ESXi 5.1 any reason for that? or is the old saying "it ain't broke don't fix it" ringing true? --Sideband Samurai

Is this promo still going on? I was just at my local Costco in Moreno Valley, CA today and I have a picture of a sign that tells me its 179 instead of 159. SKU 695080 Seagate 4TB Backup plus Dektop Hard Drive. $179.99 --Sideband Samurai

Justin, As you may or may not know, you don't need a monitor always attached to your unraid box to access the "console" there is an application called putty that will do that for you. Using the telnet protocol you can have console access at any time with out a monitor attached. Make sure you set the "translation option" within Putty to UTF-8. google "putty" to find and download it. --Sideband Samurai

64 bit - ooooooooo I am going to have a doughnut just for that announcement! -- Sideband Samurai

I don't see a problem with moving to final. Provided that all features that were scheduled to have shipped with 5.0 have been adequately tested and work as specified. It appears that most of these new features have been properly tested. I don't know what the new features are, so I am in the dark here. One of them is the Advance Format drives and drives larger than 3GB. What about the bugs in 4.7 did they re-appear in 5.0? have they been addressed properly? Documentation should be updated to reflect new features and any issues that can be resolved by simple parameter fixes for 5.0. HCL updated to include the hardware known to work with unRAID 5.0. Does the Wiki need to be gone through and to make sure it is current with 5.0 before 5.0 is released? I will remind Tom, that while 5.0 is just about ready for release, It would have been nice to be testing updates to the shutdown script so that it dismounts the array properly. I have made my point in previous posts. Again I don't have a call in that. It should have been addressed long ago, and I don't mean by Wiki or Plugin. This is small potatoes that can be released in an later fix is suppose, so that should not hold up release in this case. Personally I am not having any problems with this current build and have seen some improvements. I think with all things considered I would agree that its time to release to 5.0. Of course everyone is saying "release. release. release" I am not agreeing with the masses because that is what everyone else is saying, I am just giving suggestions as a person evaluating the current RC. Sort of like a Quality Assurance Manager. Only Tom can be the judge of his product. If this current code is as good as it gets, excluding minor fixes, then its ready for release. The Slow Write issue is of concern as I just bought the Super Micro board that is having the problem. Hopefully with the suggestions I have seen, I will not see this issue. I might suggest that a check list be created and each item checked off. If all items are checked off as completed then its ready to release. Those are my thoughts. --Sideband Samurai

Sorry, I don't have comparisons from rc8a from which I have upgraded from. Here are the stats I have right now: Copy from unRAID: 61 mb/s <<< this is a new high as I use to get 45-50 mb/s never over 50 mb/s Copy to unRAID: Top 29mb/s Low 20 mb/s <<< This is an improvement as I use to see as low as 15mb/s on rc8a Please note, Then I ran this test. I started the copy (after the copy from test) and it took about a minute to actually start copying the file. The server was acting like it was frozen. and then during the first half a gig it was in the kb range then slowly recovered as the copy continued. I don't know if this is a problem or the server is just doing some stuff in preparation to take the file. I will not unRAID NEVER did this before. I will keep an eye on this and run more tests. Parity Check High: 120 mb/s Low: 84 mb/s I don't have realtek NIC but using a Tigon3 driver. (running an HP xw4300 currently)

@Ostrich I have been running RC8a for several months now with out any issues. I actually used a new USB key to make sure I had a way of going back if necessary, and performed the upgrade. Everything came through like a champ. What issues are you having? Maybe you should try again, making sure you are not running any plugins and follow the directions in the release notes. --Sideband Samurai

@madburg I can see you are not a programmer. The reason this has not been done is because your feature request requires extensive updates to Unraid which also means lots of extra time. We don't know what Tom is doing between fixes, so let me explain what might happen. First the WebGUI has to be updated. Possibly a whole new page built just for checking the file system, scripts have to be written to support the web page. This includes capturing the output of what the file system check is telling you. Then the whole thing has to be tested. Bugs have to be fixed, and those bug fixes have to be tested. I can see Tom's point, there are bigger fish to fry than making a webgui for checking the disks. Mac OS is a good example of a mix between GUI and command line. Most functionality is provided from the GUI interface. The rest is provided by the command line. especially functions you don't want "normal" uneducated users to get at. I understand it can be frustrating that no graphic interface exists for checking the disks. Even the Linux community as a whole has never written one. Well I agree, but again Tom could be doing other things which makes this a low priority. I don't think Joel's script is supported by Tom, still supported by Joel himself, he just includes it as part of the package. The linux community is a lot like that. Linus Turvalds team provide the kernel, the rest of the community provides the rest. Which is called a distribution. Together it all just works, or sometimes it doesn't --Sideband Samurai

@tom Well you are in charge. I understand your position, and you understand mine. I don't necessary agree with you but there it is. You feel that this is additional functionality as unraid is meant to be controlled through the web interface. Microsoft windows is meant to be controlled through the Graphic User Interface, but it unmounts the file systems cleanly through the CLI. Yours does not. That is a bug in my books. With a project such as this, you can never please everyone. You do the best you can with what you have. You have your priorities. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of it. It appears you are very aware of this issue. Thanks for all your work! --Sideband Samurai

@graycase, @dgaschk, I agree with you but... I don't agree that this should be dependent on a Wiki or Unmenu. @mejutty The linux native mode is command line. This operating system does not have a graphic Gui, it uses web services to execute command line commands to make the server software perform functions. Since unRAID has a NATIVE command line mode, the SHUTDOWN / REBOOT script should accommodate the fact that the array needs to be shutdown and unmounted before shutting down the hardware or rebooting the operating system. This is really important to understand, THIS is a distribution of a server operating system. ALL server operating systems that I know of, including MICROSOFT WINDOWS provide a command line utility to shutdown / reboot the operating system WHICH includes properly dismounting the file system (in our case its the Unraid file system). @mejutty, @graycase, @dgaschk, Yes, we can fix it our selves using one of the suggestions above. Lets face it, most people don't read the documentation (in this case the wiki) to make sure BASIC functionality is available to the operating system. Its like buying an Iron (to iron cloths) only to find out no power cord was provided. Yes we can install a new power cord, but should we be doing that? I wonder if I reboot the server from the GUI WITHOUT shutting down the array if this will cause a parity check. If it does cause the parity check, then that also should be fixed, and may be fixed if we can get the shutdown/reboot scripts fixed before release. As it stands, we have had serveral issues which caused the web interface to be unresponsive with only a reboot to fix this problem. It is only fixed from the command line by issuing a reboot command. That command should not cause the array to shutdown dirty and cause lengthy parity checks. --Sideband Samurai

Tom, With out testing RC9 (a,b,c?) I read the release notes for RC9, but have not found any notes about addressing the ability to shut down unRAID from the command line. If unraid is shutdown from the command line, it causes a parity check because the array was not dismounted before shutdown/reboot. This should be addressed before final, as I would expect the array to be dismounted when a shutdown/reboot command is issued, without having to visit the web interface to shutdown the array first. Thanks for the new RC. Cant wait to go home and try it! --Sideband Samurai

@maz_atenza Cache Drive I'll have to agree with other posters, Your cache drive is really small. You will only be able to transfer one BluRay disk per day with out overloading the cache drive (one BD disk can be up to 50GB). One other concern is your drive is solid state. Most solid state drives support the TRIM command. Unraid DOES NOT. Make sure this drive has the garbage collection built in, instead of depending on the OS to perform the tasks. Otherwise performance of the disk will slow to a crawl. For me personally I use XBMC. Never been happier, and runs my predominant media container MKV. I have also used an Acer Veriton ATOM mini pc and it has worked really well also. I don't trans code anything. I keep everything uncompressed from my DVD's and BluRay's. --Sideband Samurai

Hi Tybio I might refer you to this thread here in this forum: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=14695.0 It will explain everything. Norco RPC-4224 >> Nice Case SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O // Xeon-1275V2 //8GB ECC DDR3 >> This motherboard is excellent and the basis of my build (still in the purchase stage for me). Others have built ESXi servers on this board including the OP in the above thread. I would raise your memory from 8GB to 16G or 32G (max for this board as well as the trial license for ESXi). The more memory the more flexibility you will have. You will have to turn on Vx-D to pass the hardware through to the VM. The above thread will take you through the whole process. You will also need a couple of drives for ESXi data store. I say a couple because you will probably want to mirror them. 1TB or even 500GB will be fine. If you find 2TB on special, you could use a couple of them. I would like to caution you that you SHOULD NOT install ESXi with your unRaid drives plugged in. The drives will be ERASED during the ESXi install. 2x AOC-SASLP-MV8, Corsair TX850M, W/ APC 1300VA >> Looks good here. Drives: 1x4TB, 7x2TB, 2x3TB, 1x.5TB Cache Drive 16TB of 88TB Installed (based on 4TB drives) >> The more drives the better I aways say. The above thread is some 65 pages, so there is a lot of reading and a lot of info. It should answer most of not all your questions. Good Luck! --Sideband Samurai

@dheg I would recommend visualizing OI/Nappit directly on the ESXi server that way you can use the 10GB virtual switch instead of the 1GB external copper connection.

@dheg OpenIndiana is a fork of NexentaStor. The main difference between OpenIndiana and NexentaStor is the interface. NexentaStor has the superior interface. Under the covers they perform the same. Please also understand that both OpenIndiana and NexentaStor use Solaris. Mainly OpenIndiana uses Open Solaris and NexentaStor uses regular Solaris. Solaris is different from Linux. One main difference is the block devices are labeled differently. I think Solaris versions of Unix allow for more block devices (instead of Linuxs 26). NexentaStor community, that is the actual version name, is the free version of commercial NexentaStor Storage Appliance. NexentaStor community, supports up to 18TB of storage. It has no support, and no support for plugins. The cost for the commercial product beyond 18TB but up to 32 TB is roughly $4,750 for silver support and $6,950 for Gold Support and much higher (not quoted on website) for Platinum support. The commercial product can go up to 1 petabyte of protected storage. I have been told by people who work with NexentaStor product that if you do not need technical support but want a good solid commercial product then NexentaStor community is the way to go. If you don't want any restrictions and at least community support go with OpenIndiana / Napit. Here is a link on how to setup a nappit server: http://www.napp-it.org/doc/downloads/napp-it.pdf Here is a link on how to setup ESXi datastore with Nappit: http://www.napp-it.org/doc/downloads/all-in-one.pdf Both of the above documents go hand in hand. I have also read in several forums that FreeNas is not quite ready yet. Though it does support zfs, I have read that performance is slow. I believe this is due to how ZFS has been implemented in that distribution. Using one of the above options will give you better performance. I will keep looking to see if there is anything else that would be worth posting on this subject. Please also note that any option that utilizes ZFS requires memory. LOTS of memory. The more memory you can throw at it the better ZFS performs. I do understand this is a lab environment but when troubleshooting performance issues with ZFS, more memory the better. If you can't afford gobs of memory, then ZFS should be allocated as much as you can afford. By that I mean a minimum of 4GB. 2GB is asking for real trouble. --Sideband Samurai Here is another link with OpenIndiana and ESXi 5.0: http://www.servethehome.com/install-openindiana-esxi-50-allinone-zfs-server/

Can't you boot ESXi on a USB key? set up a small guest on that usb that key that will contain the FreeNAS guest operating system which autostarts and mounts the main datastore? After some research, It is very possible. I found this link that should help answer some questions: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1573038 --Sideband Samurai

What about Visualizing ESXi servers? Have a dual processor board maxed out in memory, Install ESXi, which will allow 32Gig, then setup two hosts, use one virtual ESXi host, maxed to 32Gig dedicated to one processor, and then set up a second virtual ESXi sever dedicated to the other CPU, with 32Gig? I don't know if that would truly work, probably not, but worth a try. --Sideband Samurai

Your Flash drive should be formated FAT32. NOT NTFS! --Sideband Samurai

All; I was reading in one of the many forums here on LimeTech, someone mentioned something about using an SDHC reader. You see the unique key used for licensing your unraid is located in the logic that supports the memory, not the memory its-self. Usually the memory is what goes first and not the logic. By using and SDHC reader such as this one at NewEgg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0SF0BP6496&Tpk=9SIA0SF0BP6496, if the memory does fail, you just replace the memory, the logic stays with the unraid thus your Key still remains valid even after replacing the memory. No need to contact Tom for a replacement license. Would the simpler readers also work? Sometimes these USB readers are included with the SDHC memory for Phones etc like this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313273 Granted this is a 32GB memory stick as well as the faster Class 10 memory. Any thoughts on using unRaid in this setup? --Sideband Samurai

Sounds Like I will wait in the 4TB drives for now. Maybe I will spend the money on a RED 3TB drive and get a little better performance. --Sideband Samurai