TSM

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Everything posted by TSM

  1. You could replace the 4 in 3 enclosures with 5 in 3 ones.
  2. I may try this when I get home today. I wonder why that would be?
  3. The AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 is a better card, some on here have had problems with it, but always worked well for me. I had AOC-SASLP-MV8, and the 2 is much faster.
  4. Good catch. The 10TB version which Best Buy has had on sale frequently over the past year and a half or so, is right now more expensive than the 14 and 12 terabyte versions. I've shucked 3 of the 10TB, and all are working well.
  5. You can right now setup an unraid vm on your unraid server, I've done it. There are other threads that offer some good information on how to do this. I spent quite a bit of time fussing around with it to get everything working correctly because I had issues other people probably wouldn't, but at the very basic level I just passed a usb controller card and a sata controller card through to the vm. I agree that Limetech making it possible to create 2 array's on the same server would be more elegant, but if you're looking for a way to expand past 30 drives on the same hardware right now, you could do this.
  6. Hello All, This post is sort of a troubleshooting thing, and sort of a software suggestion thing. I'm wondering how other unraid users handle mass file copies from their Windows workstation, to their unraid servers. My use case is simple, I'll download torrents and other files to various directories on my Windows workstation, and then weekly or so copy\move them to unraid. I'm not looking for something automated, because maybe I don't want to move everything to unraid, maybe I want to delete it, or keep it on my windows machine for a little while longer and then delete it, before moving it to what I consider to be the more permanent storage of my unraid server. For years I've used Teracopy 2.3 for this function, and I was very happy with it. Fast and stable. Recently it has started randomly locking up. The behavior may have coincided with an unraid upgrade, but I couldn't swear to that. So then I upgraded to the most recent version of Teracopy and that wouldn't work at all, kind of bizarre. It opens, just won't move anything. Completely uninstalling Teracopy, windows default file copy mechanism was reinstated, and it works just as it always did, no odd lockups, just no intelligence. There are alternative applications that provide this type of functionality. For example, I downloaded supercopier, but it did the same thing the newer version of teracopy did, which was wouldn't move any files. For comparison sake, I reinstalled the old version of teracopy and it's behavior was same as it had been, it worked, but would just stop copying files randomly.
  7. +1 I'm a member of the camp that delays doing parity checks because I don't want my server to be out of commission for a whole day. If this feature were added I'd do Parity checks much more frequently.
  8. I don't know how much money is a consideration for you. But if you've got the cash, I'd add space to NAS2, build NAS3 as a backup, and just use NAS1 as a workstation. Making tons of assumptions about your hardware here, but the backup server would help somewhat to mitigate the issue of accidental deletions in the future. I am right now on the brink of putting together a backup server, the only thing holding me back is the fact that I'm short on cash right now. If I lost 20TB worth of files, I think I might cry.
  9. One more thing. I was having a hell of a time getting my unraid vm to work on my unraid host. It should have been working, I spent hours a day doing research over the course of several weeks, tried every possible combination of configurations multiple times, but I could never get the damnable thing to boot. Then, like a flash of lightening it struck me to try updating the motherboard bios. Needed to do it anyway because of meltdown and spectre, but had never gotten around to it,so I figured what the hell. Applied the updated bios and miraculously everything started working. Yippie!!
  10. This is not a political forum, and Limetech may choose to delete this post, which I'd be completely fine with. But since the OP went there I'll say it. Donald Trump only speaks for about 35% of the people in the United States. The other 65% think he's a pompous narcissistic demagogue. I'm a patriot and I'm ashamed of how the U.S. is viewed in other countries now because of this man. And I kinda feel that the average unraid user is a more enlightened person that the average person in the general population. But if anyone here cared if you were black or white, I'd be shocked.
  11. +1 Sure why not. When I've needed the functionality that file manager of this type would provide in the past, I've used MC with Screen. That is, when doing mass file moves and I didn't want to "involve" my desktop. But something baked into the webui would be nice.
  12. This should work I think. Get 2 kvm switches, one for each set of keyboard, monitor and mouse. If you have the available slots on your motherboard, get 2 usb cards. I'm with the people who say this is more likely to work well passing through cards, then it is passing through individual usb devices. Make sure the usb cards have at least 2 external ports. Pass one each of the usb cards to each vm. The USB part at that point in this is easy. Just hook up each of the kvm's to one of the ports on the usb cards. Each keyboard and mouse pair should be able to control each of the vm's based upon how the kvm switch is set. The worst thing that might happen is that one of the vm's thinks it has 2 keyboards and 2 mice if both kvm's have that vm selected. But that's not a big deal. The video part should work basically the same way. A bit clunkier though I think. Most video cards nowadays have 2 ports. Just plug one port into each of the kvm switches. You might have to go back and forth between desks a bit to get the monitors set the way you want each time you move desks. But you shouldn't have to unplug any cables. You just might have to play around with the display settings in windows each time I think.
  13. TSM

    Do you use a VPN?

    I've read about people doing something like this before, and it's an intriguing idea, but it's always seemed that I was misunderstanding something crucial about it. One of the main points of vpn is anonymity. The internet "sees" the commercial private company's vpn server, and not your computer. But if you own the server, then what's the point? It's still your computer, but now it's just your computer in the cloud. Am I missing something?
  14. TSM

    Do you use a VPN?

    I've been using ipvanish for years. Works great 99% if the time. My biggest complaint about them is that sometimes it seems like they put out software updates without fully testing them. And don't get me wrong, I fully understand that any software company can put out a bad update every so often, but whenever I install an ipvanish update at this point I'm always apprehensive. But, their tech support is always helpful and knowledgeable. So, that's a plus. And they fix their bad updates in a reasonable amount of time. And when it works, it works really well I think.
  15. This worked!!! It was a very difficult process, because at first whenever I'd passthrough the usb card to the vm, it wouldn't boot. And when I say, "Wouldn't boot", literally it did nothing. Only the initial bios screen would appear, no errors, nothing. Seabios and ovmf were tried, every possible combination of settings was tried, nothing worked. I knew the card itself worked because I could use usb devices attached to it with the bare metal unraid. Then finally, as a "Hail Mary" attempt I updated the bios on my supermicro motherboard. Success! With Seabios, ovmf gave an error that I can't recall, but at least it gave an error, which was progress. Seabios after updating the bare metal bios, worked. Trial version of unraid works fine, and I can leave the usb thumb drive attached, and reboot my server, and the correct thumb drive boots the bare metal. Did it several times, and it worked each time. So that parts good, but now I have a different problem. I've been using a SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8, card in my server for a couple of years. Been very happy with it. When I put my new server together, I had a larger case, so I bought another one for expansion, but never really needed to use it. Now that I'm attempting to create a virtual unraid server, I thought I'd passthrough the 2nd card to the vm, so it could have "bare metal" access to the drives. I'm having a hell of a time getting this to work, I guess cause I've got 2 identical cards. I've been using the xen-pciback.hide command in my syslinux file to no avail. When I get home tonight, I'll post the various specifics if anyone would like to help me
  16. No idea if it will help or not, especially if these are brand new completely blank drives. But I might try using diskpart to delete and then recreate the partition on the flash drive. I have had the experience before with flash drives, where the windows gui format utility will seem to work, but the drive is not actually usable until I recreated the partition.
  17. I'm perfectly aware, my plan may not be the best idea, but it's what I want to do I've been thinking about creating a permanent unraid virtual machine on my unraid server. I've read several postings about it, and I think I know how to do it. Before buying stuff though, I wanted to be sure. Is it 100% always true that, you have to remove and then re-insert the vm's flash drive when you reboot the bare metal unraid server? Otherwise the server doesn't know which one to boot from? I'm thinking that may not be the case if you use an add-on usb card. It's my understanding that it's not possible to boot from an add-on usb card. So therefore, it would seem fine to leave the vm's flash drive connected, if booting from the card it's plugged into is not possible. Right? And I was thinking about installing an add-on card usb controller anyway, cause my motherboard only has one controller, and I wanted to pass a controller through to the vm. But then my problem is, is it possible to use a flash connected to that card for booting with kvm on unraid? I think I have 2 options at that point. Spaceinvader's video on creating an unraid vm for testing describes a process where you copy the unraid boot files to a vhd, boot the vm from the vhd, and then the flash drive is only there for registration purposes. Or, seems I remember seeing in a posting about esxi, where it said you could have the vm boot from plop, and plop would simply pass the rest of the boot process off to the flash drive. That should work with kvm on unraid too right? From what I recall, the plop method seemed better, because you didn't have to install unraid updates manually, you could use the tool built into the webgui. Am I missing anything, is my understanding of all this correct?
  18. Doesn't a Drobo require software to be installed when direct connected to a computer? I don't know, I'm asking? I though it did?
  19. Although I've read it's not supported, and those who have done it I think faced some complexity, you could create multiple unraid vm's on the same hardware as your bare metal unraid install. I guess you'd only be limited by your hardware capacity at that point. Am I wrong?
  20. I have a D8000, and it's a really nice case. When I got it in 2016, there weren't a lot of online stores still selling them, so if you want one, good luck. (Checked with The Googles, and I found this) https://www.pccasegear.com/products/21445/lian-li-pc-d8000-black-full-tower-chassis Pretty sure that's about $100 more than I paid, but the people running that site, know it's a nice case with restricted inventories. So... I went from a case that had 9 5.25 inch bays, in which I had 3 5x3 drive cages in it. For a total of 17 drives, at the time 1 parity and 14 data drives, with 2 cache drives installed in pci slot drive cages. I only have 18 drives in the D8000, 2 cache, 2 parity and 14 data. I had some 2 old 1TB data drives that were 7+ years old I decided to swapout with 10TB drives, shortly after moving the server to the new case. You could easily load 28 3.5inch drives into the D8000 by using 1 5x3 cage on the left, and 1 3x2 cage on the right. Don't understand Lian Li's decision to take up a 5.25 inch bay with the power button and front usb ports, but it is what it is. And that's my only complaint really. Right now I have 2 fan controllers in the other 2 5.25inch bays on the right. There are a lot of possible fan positions in the case too, and I have a fan in each one, so figured what the heck. Cache and unassigned 2.5 inch drives can be mounted with pci slot devices. There are 11 pci slots, so depending on the size of your motherboard, you've got a lot of options there as well.
  21. Personally, I wouldn't want to go through the trouble of creating a 2nd array in my unraid server(if it was an option), or adding drives to an existing array, if I just intended on removing the drives after the backup and storing them in a different physical location. What I would do, would be to buy an external storage array, that could connect to the server via usb or esata. With a lot of them, you could create a traditional raid array internal to the box, that should then present itself to unraid as a single drive you could work with as a large unassigned device. Although, you'd want to do your research, cause I'd bet there are some that unraid would ignore the traditional raid and try to use the disks individually anyway. But if you successfully did this, you could just remove the whole array and put it in your secure physical storage location.
  22. Thank you very much to everyone who tried to assist me with this. But the answer was obvious once I read back through what I had already done. To get the unraid server to pickup an ip address on their system, I let it sit overnight. Not sure how long it actually took to get the address, I just got tired, went to bed and had left everything hooked up. I realized that maybe I had been too impatient when trying to hookup the broadband router. Let the broadband router sit overnight, and success!!! I got an ip address on their system, and everything seems to be working. I've setup a private ip address on the unraid and on my pc, both can communicate with eachother and get to the internet as needed.
  23. The SSID and WPA2 passphrase are very generic. For example, SSID = Apartment_Complex_Resident Passphrase = Apartmentcomplexresident. That's not what they actually are, but you get the idea, It's the userid and password that are unique. The ip address is in the 172 range that should be for private use, but given the subnet mask and gateway, I doubt me and my neighbors are on separate vlans? No? PC IP Info ip address = 172.20.7.112 Unraid IP Info ip address = 172.20.7.141 iphone ip info (connected to wifi) 172.20.7.80 Subnet Mask and Gateway on all 3 are 255.255.0.0 172.20.1.1
  24. I'm wondering if anyone has experience with something like this. I have serious concerns about whether or not my data is safe in my current living space. I apologize for the long post, but I wanted to give some background information before asking the primary question. I just moved into an apartment complex that has free high speed 300 megabits per second internet access. Great huh? It was a selling point for me when I didn't know too much about how it worked. I don't know the exact right terms to describe it, it's not like an internet connection you might get to a house, it seems more like a wifi connection you might get at a hotel, in that you have to login to it, with a userid and password provided by the apartment complex management, via a web page. You only have to login once per device, and then the device seems to stay authenticated. There's a very simple web page you can open up, where it seems like they track device mac addresses, and here you can also manually add a mac address if you have a device that can't open the webpage to authenticate, like a printer or gaming console. You can have 10 mac addresses authenticated, and then if you need something else to connect you gotta get rid of one of the 10. There's the wifi, which is supposedly just for my apartment, and there is also an ethernet port wall outlet, that both work this way and are on the same "network". There is network segregation between apartments but I'm fairly certain it only happens because my neighbors have a different userid and password. I don't know this for a fact, but I'd bet that if I had one of my neighbor's userids and passwords, I could connect up to their apartment's "network". Initially I tried to connect my broadband router to the ethernet wall port, and then connect my computer and unraid to it, but I could never get the router to get an external ip address. Even if I manually added it's mac address to the website list. I called Spectrum (The cable company), and was told that they didn't support devices like this because they cause interference. The guy I spoke to recommended getting an unmanaged switch if I wanted to use multiple devices with the wall port. I just so happened to have one of those little netgear switches, still in the box, that I bought a while back for my wife's shop, but ended up not using. I hooked the switch to the wall outlet, and my pc to it, and everything worked great. The switch is completely passive, almost like it's not there. I'm still very much on their network though. Then I hooked the unraid server to the switch, and initially it was very difficult to get an ip address. I usually use my server headless, and connect to the embedded web page for management, but in this situation, I had to boot to the gui to get anything accomplished. (used to think the gui was a curiosity feature that was only valuable to certain niche type people, now I think it's the best feature ever). Anyway, I could never get Firefox in the gui to bring up the web page for authentication. I'm thinking there is something missing in the unraid build that makes this type of authentication possible. I even added the server's mac address to the cable company's website list. I had had the server with a static ip at my previous home, but set it for dhcp in this instance. Kept getting a 169 ip address. Futzed around with it for well over an hour, but it was late and I went to bed. When I woke up the next day, it had gotten a valid ip address. HOORAY!!!! I could connect to it from my computer as normal, local firefox could browse the internet. Then I stopped and got gravely concerned. This whole time I had just been worried about connectivity. Connectivity was finally working, and as a matter of fact communication between my Windows PC and the Unraid seems to be about 50% faster, which is fascinating. But now, what about security? Is my server secure? Is my pc secure? I simply don't know. In the cable company's documentation, they make claims to the whole setup being secure, and that others can't "see" your devices. But I'm sure the cable company can see what I'm doing. The Unraid server and my pc at this point both individually have a valid ip addresses on a network that the cable company, not me, manage. I'm moderately confident that the firewall software I have on my pc might be protecting it. But what's protecting the Unraid? The baseline security features baked into the OS? I have no way of knowing? And are they doing any kind of analysis of data flowing between devices? Probably not, but they could be? And what if someone did get the userid and password for my slice of the network? What would they see? What might they be able to do? Maybe nothing, maybe something horrible? I really have no way of knowing. Any advice on what do do??? I know that even having a broadband router on a normal internet setup isn't 100% secure, but it sure seems a lot more secure than this.