SSD

I do not think that running a card in x4 slot is going to hold you back much if at all if you are using spinners and your slots are PCIe 2.0 our higher spec. Each lane of a PCIe 2.0 controller provides about 400 MB/sec of bandwidth, which can support 2 200 MB/sec drives. Multiply by 4 lanes, means that the controller can support 8 drives at 200 MB/sec speed. Put one in an x8 slot and now you are up to 400 MB/sec per drive, which no spinner can get anywhere close to. I run a -16I version of that controller in an x8 slot with no problem. Which is equivalent bandwidth per drive of running a -8i version in an x4 slot. If this were a PCIe 1.1 slot, the bandwidths would be cut in half and you would need an x8 slot to not restrict bandwidth. Physically fitting an x8 card into an x4 slot can be a challenge. Newer motherboards have open ended slots that let you insert them. But older motherboards might require melting the back of the slot. But an x8 card will work in an x4 slot. Even an x16 card will work in an x1 slot, just with reduced bandwidth.

I had reserved 25% more space for the metadata, and copied the old to the new and it fit (as expected). But seems Plex wanted to do some database update and it immediately ran out of space. Turns out BTRFS was taking about 25% more space to store than XFS! So it used up all of the excess and the upgrade failed. Going back to XFS for the metadata. I am keeping in a loopback file to avoid the huge file count and associated headaches on the cache drive.

Was just posting. I ran out of space. Fixed and now the Plex docker is up! Thanks!!

Need a little help. I am trying to move my Plex installation from serverA to serverB. I copied over the appdata folder to the new server. Installed the my_plex template. Tweaked the mappings a little to match new server. And started the docker. But the WebUI refuses to connect. And in the log it continues to say "Starting Plex Media Server." over and over - updating every 15 seconds or so. See detailed log below. Any help appreciated. How do I debug this to understand what might be going wrong. The server name is different and the IP address is different, everything else is same. Thanks! ------------------------------------- _ () | | ___ _ __ | | / __| | | / \ | | \__ \ | | | () | |_| |___/ |_| \__/ Brought to you by linuxserver.io We gratefully accept donations at: https://www.linuxserver.io/donations/ ------------------------------------- GID/UID ------------------------------------- User uid: 99 User gid: 100 ------------------------------------- [cont-init.d] 10-adduser: exited 0. [cont-init.d] 30-dbus: executing... [cont-init.d] 30-dbus: exited 0. [cont-init.d] 40-chown-files: executing... [cont-init.d] 40-chown-files: exited 0. [cont-init.d] 50-plex-update: executing... ##################################################### # Login via the webui at http://<ip>:32400/web # # and restart the docker, because there was no # # preference file found, possibly first startup. # ##################################################### [cont-init.d] 50-plex-update: exited 0. [cont-init.d] done. [services.d] starting services Starting dbus-daemon Starting Plex Media Server. dbus[271]: [system] org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied: Failed to set fd limit to 65536: Operation not permitted [services.d] done. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Avahi daemon Found user 'avahi' (UID 106) and group 'avahi' (GID 107). Successfully dropped root privileges. avahi-daemon 0.6.32-rc starting up. No service file found in /etc/avahi/services. *** WARNING: Detected another IPv4 mDNS stack running on this host. This makes mDNS unreliable and is thus not recommended. *** *** WARNING: Detected another IPv6 mDNS stack running on this host. This makes mDNS unreliable and is thus not recommended. *** Joining mDNS multicast group on interface vnet0.IPv6 with address fe80::fc54:ff:fec8:a4c0. New relevant interface vnet0.IPv6 for mDNS. Joining mDNS multicast group on interface virbr0.IPv4 with address 192.168.122.1. New relevant interface virbr0.IPv4 for mDNS. Joining mDNS multicast group on interface docker0.IPv4 with address 172.17.0.1. New relevant interface docker0.IPv4 for mDNS. Joining mDNS multicast group on interface br0.IPv6 with address fe80::7804:13ff:fec6:9dc6. New relevant interface br0.IPv6 for mDNS. Joining mDNS multicast group on interface br0.IPv4 with address 192.168.1.252. New relevant interface br0.IPv4 for mDNS. Joining mDNS multicast group on interface bond0.IPv6 with address fe80::7285:c2ff:fe54:d3c3. New relevant interface bond0.IPv6 for mDNS. Network interface enumeration completed. Registering new address record for fe80::fc54:ff:fec8:a4c0 on vnet0.*. Registering new address record for 192.168.122.1 on virbr0.IPv4. Registering new address record for 172.17.0.1 on docker0.IPv4. Registering new address record for fe80::7804:13ff:fec6:9dc6 on br0.*. Registering new address record for 192.168.1.252 on br0.IPv4. Registering new address record for fe80::7285:c2ff:fe54:d3c3 on bond0.*. Server startup complete. Host name is merlin.local. Local service cookie is 3021989262. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Starting Plex Media Server. Got SIGTERM, quitting. Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface vnet0.IPv6 with address fe80::fc54:ff:fec8:a4c0. Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface virbr0.IPv4 with address 192.168.122.1. Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface docker0.IPv4 with address 172.17.0.1. Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface br0.IPv6 with address fe80::7804:13ff:fec6:9dc6. Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface br0.IPv4 with address 192.168.1.252. Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface bond0.IPv6 with address fe80::7285:c2ff:fe54:d3c3. avahi-daemon 0.6.32-rc exiting. [cont-finish.d] executing container finish scripts... [cont-finish.d] done. [s6-finish] syncing disks. [s6-finish] sending all processes the TERM signal. [s6-finish] sending all processes the KILL signal and exiting.

There is a free tool called "TeamViewer that you can install in Windows on your home network. And you can install the Teamviewer client on a variety of devices (even phone and tablet). Once installed, you can access your Windows workstation from a computer on the internet. Obviously you want a strong password, but it is hardened for Internet use and won't be hacked (or at least the risk is very low). Once connected you are remote controlling the workstation, which would let you access your files as though you were sitting at home. It also has upload/download features depending on the client you are using. Is this what you are looking to do?

You're welcome. Use the reputation feature when you feel you've gotten good support here in the forums. (Click the heart on lower right of any post) Glad you got your VNC connection working. Now is a good time to install NoMachine. It's free and works very well - as close to pass through performances I've seen. And as you've seen, it is good to have a couple connection options to avoid losing access completely! Good luck and enjoy your array!

No, you need to install NoMachine. You need VNC access to do so. Weird VNC not working. I do remember have a VNC problem and was able to access with RealVNC. You might give that a try. This licensing story seems a little odd. Earlier you said the license was a financial hardship. Now suddenly you are ready to buy another license. Seems odd. If you legitimately purchased a license Tom will get you squared away. I am 100% sure of that. I'd suggest getting it straightened out now. If you don't, or if you got a resale or something, it is unlikely the flash will fail, but you are at risk should it ever happen. Please understand that the only person that can help you with that is LimeTech. Discussions here in the forum not productive.

I highly recommend NoMachine, a VNC like tool that provides a much better experience than VNC IMO. It is the first thing I install in a new VM. It will also run alongside passthrough video. It is therefore very handy if the passthrough should ever stop working to gain access to the server and fix the issue. VNC might work the same, but as implemented, VNC is not enabled when video is passed through. And VNC sorta sucks compared to NoMachine. Sorry can't help with your VNC challenge. A PM / email to @limetech might straighten this out. He is very fair with these situations. Not sure all the details of what happened with you. License transfers are not allowed.

Would Plex metadata create a significant write amplification issue? Plex metadata files are tiny, but there are a zillion of them!

Looking at the Samsung 960 PRO, the endurance of the 512G version is 400TB. That basically means that it can be filled 800 times. That is a pretty big number. But I am assuming that is looking at a usage pattern in which wear is effectively managed. If wear were to be poorly managed, let's say the hardest hit blocks get hit 10x more than other parts, that number goes from 800 to 80. (Maybe that is not realistic - I am not an expert. But without trim I am not sure.) Running frequent parity rebuilds re-writing every sector would take chunks out of its lifespan that would add up. Generally I would say that the cache pool is a better place for data requiring high speed access. That or a HW RAID controller that is designed with SSD usage in mind, running as a UD. High speed access to a large media library really doesn't make a lot of sense.

I have not. Instead of using an unassigned device ssd, could you make the ssd the cache. Then I think the mover would do what you want.

Rebuilding parity is a particularly expensive operation for an SSD given its limited # of writes.

I would not hold my breath for unRAID to offically support SSD arrays. I don't know how SSD parity would ever work. The whole idea of unused space has no real meaning with parity, unless we treat a block of parity as unused if the corresponding blocks on all disks are unused. unRAID would have to be very aware of the inner workings of the file systems to know. And if you filled a disk, parity would always be considered full and never able to be trimmed - hence would slow down. I think we're looking at a paradigm shift for SSDs to be supported. You could use SSDs in the array if parity is a spinner and trim runs periodically (let's say ever 2 months), and that when you trim all the SSDs, you rebuild parity. Not sure it is worth it. So I'd stick with spinners for the array. If you have a specific use case that requires faster speed and redundancy, go with a cache pool and you'd get speed and redundancy . Or go with a RAID card in the unRAID server and run it as a UD alongside the array on the server.

I'll check. Updated it pretty recently but its a new board and there might be another.

Strangely - when it boots with this option, the syslinux menu does not count down. It just sits there saying it is going to count down but it is stuck at 5 seconds. After a while the machine reboots. If I hit enter to select one of the syslinux options, it boots fine.

@nthu9280, @johnnie.black, I have been having other boot issues - seems that if an HBA has too many hard disks, that the BIOS overflowed or something and the boot would hang (keyboard lights stopped working), always a bad sign. Only if i hit the button to manually pick the boot device could I get unRAID to boot. So went searching BIOS for options. I found this setting called "CSM (Compatibility Support Module)" with choices of Enabled or Disabled. When enabled it initializes each disk controller and recognizes the drives like normal, but when disabled, it skips all that completely. The USB boot just happens right away. When unRAID boots, it recognizes the controllers and disks just fine. I think that is all I need! Nice BIOS feature, that didn't exactly jump off the screen as something useful at first glance. Maybe this info will help someone else in the future. But when I move this card into the backup server, I will want to flash it if it is generating long boot delays as that is an older MB and I'm pretty sure does not have this feature. Thanks again!

I am on MPT2BIOS-7.19.00.00 (2011.05.16). Is this a newer BIOS? Should I upgrade?

Thanks Fireball3 and @johnnie.black, So help me with what I need to do to be able to run the sas2flash program. Do I need to boot into DOS? Where would I find the current version of sas2flash? Is there a thread that I could follow? I am seeing flashing instructions but nothing for the 9201 specifically. Thanks!

I deactivated the BIOS. It still sits there forever on boot.

Hey - hoping someone here can point me in the right direction. I have an IBM M1015 controller that I crossflashed a very long time ago - when this tread was young. I have no idea what process i followed, but it worked. When I boot the server says: LSI Corporation MPT SAS2 BIOS MPT2BIOS-7.19.00.00 (2011.05.16) Copyright 2000-2011 LSI Corporation It will sit there for at least 2-3 minutes - probably longer than that. Eventually it will boot and works fine. But I am setting up a new server and boots are common. I've lived with it for years, and one lengthy boot in a great while is not an issue, but I am doing several a day trying to resolve some issues and am going nuts. Is there an easy flash process that I could perform to update the firmware on this card and avoid the lengthy delay in the boot process? Help greatly appreciated!

@MrOnionSkins - For any motherboard upgrade, suggest that you burn in the new system thoroughly, including memory testing. You definitely don't want to subject your data to risk of a bad motherboard or memory. While a motherboard swap can be simple for a NAS only array, if you have VMs with passthrough GPU and/or USB controllers, these will not move over smoothly. Advanced server tuning can also include configurations that won't move over. And even if you don't use these features, there are other considerations beyond just the motherboard swap. I'll try to cover some of these topics and considerations. If you have VMs, you really need to back them up, get them working without passthrough (using VNC or something like NoMachine), and configure the keyboard without passthrough. You also need to remove passthrough directives and tweaks to your syslinux configuration. Get these working on the current motherboard and they will move over better. If you have done tweaks to your VMs and/or Dockers limiting/specifying cores, you would need to consider those in the upgrade. The core matching may be different on the new CPU. Your logical core count may have even gone down (e.g., moving from a quad core i7 to a hex core i5, logical core count could go from 8 to 6). Not sure how KVM or docker would react to referencing non-existent cores. As was mentioned, if you don't have a backup server, an upgrade is a good opportunity to set one up. You can set up the new motherboard in the backup server, do the burn in, and get everything figured out in terms of passthrough and tuning, and then do the case or drive swap. Depending on what your server does, like host your Windows workstation, logical router, downloader, media library, even basic TV, whatever - it may be desirable to be able to bring up the backup server as the primary server so critical functions are not impacted. There is no cookbook here, but something to consider. I'm actually working on this with an upgrade I am working on, so my old server is both a data backup as well as redundant server for critical functions. You also need to consider if you are upgrading your cache to NVMe or new SSD. You'd need to transfer the contents over. If your USB stick / cache contents are old, going back to older versions of unRaid, or even if your Docker configs are old and unnecessarily complex, you might consider starting from scratch and rebuilding the stick and cache and Dockers. The setups and defaults have changed over time. This can also be an opportunity to rethink your library setup in Plex for example. Starting clean eliminates the hodge podge, and uncomfortable feeling of not knowing what is real and what are remnants of a prior generation. If this is your plan, you might think of standing up the new server, getting everything working, and as the last step moving just the disks to the new server. And your current server runs largely unchanged and ready for backup duty. So an upgrade can be very straightforward, but can also be pretty involved. There can be quite a lot to think about. Give it some thought so the cutover goes smoothly. Feel free to ask questions as you consider your upgrade. (#ssdindex - Server upgrade)

I remember at the time these features were being implemented, there were a lot of problems with DVD files getting split across different disks, which resulted in pauses as the other disk spun up. Tom implemented a lot of different options trying to get the secret sauce (including spin up groups), so we have a lot of options that are somewhat similar.

Yea, understanding split level and the fact that a disk can be excluded from a user share but still get files based on the split level is important to understand. The included disks only come into play when writing and there is no split level match. For tv shows shares, you can use something like most free. That will result in new TV shows going to the disk with the most free space. But with the split level set properly, new episodes of tv shows are steered to the disks containing that show.

Thanks! Is there a way to know what release number I last installed? binhex uses the app's version number which would make it easier to figure out.

Not seeing it.