grumpybutfun

Reserved for future use

Installing XBMC NOTE: If you are passing through a AMD video card and want DTS-HD, TrueHD and LPCM sound use the following guide instead of the one below: XBMC Radeon OSS vdpau from git on openSUSE 1. Open Yast, Select Software, Select Software Repositories and Select Add. 2. Select Specify URL and add the 1st software repository: 3. Select Add, Select Specify URL and add the 2nd software repository. 4. Select Trust and then Ok. 5. In Yast, Select Software Management, search for XBMC and Select the Package. 6. Select Accept and then Continue. 7. openSUSE will download all the packages it needs along with XBMC. 8. Select the openSUSE Start Menu, Goto Applications, Goto Media and Start XBMC. NOTE: Copy and Paste a Link into the Desktop along with the other Icons.

Managing your Server via Webmin and WebYast Webmin Status Screen: MySQL: Samba Windows File Sharing: To install Webmin 1. Goto Terminal 2. Login as Root su 3. Download Webmin RPM wget http://www.webmin.com/download/rpm/webmin-current.rpm 4. Install Webmin rpm -ivh webmin-current.rpm 5. Now you can use any browser and connect with 'http://<name of your computer or IP Address>:10000' to your computer. The default rights of WebYaST are set to root only. So you can login with the root password of that machine. WebYaST Login: Main Page: System Services: Memory: CPUs: To install WebYaST 1. Goto Terminal 2. Login as Root su 3. Add the WebYast Repository zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/YaST:Web/openSUSE_13.1/YaST:Web.repo 4. Refresh openSUSE Package Manager with the newly added WebYaST Repository and enter t (to trust it) zypper refresh 5. Install WebYaST yast --install patterns-openSUSE-webyast 6. It should be Enable WebYast on Next Boot 7. Now you can use any browser and connect with 'http://<name of your computer or IP Address>:4984' to your computer. The default rights of WebYaST are set to root only. So you can login with the root password of that machine.

Installing unRAID in a VM [glow=red,2,300]IT IS STILL NOT SAFE FOR YOU TO PLUG IN YOUR UNRAID DRIVES OR YOUR UNRAID USB FLASH STICK! I WILL TELL WHEN IT IS SAFE TO PLUG THEM IN.[/glow] 1. Open Virt-Manager, Create a New Virtual Machine, Name it unRAID, Select import existing disk. 2. There are two steps that need to be completed. Select Browse and locate the KVM-unRAID-5.0.4.vhd: NOTE: The location of the default storage folder (/var/lib/libvirt/images). When you download the KVM-unRAID.vhd above you need to place it in the /var/lib/libvirt/images folder or change the location of your default folder to point it to where you put the KVM-unRAID.vhd. NOTE: This doesn't apply to our unRAID VM but when installing other VMs be sure to select virtio under bus device type. This is the Paravirtualized Driver for your virtual disk drive and when enabled it will increase the speed of your VM. Select Linux for the OS, select Version, select Other OS and Select Generic 2.6.25 or later kernel with virtio. Before moving forward, make sure it looks like this: 3. Select the amount of Memory and the number of CPUs. NOTE: Since all of your scripts are going to be running on other VMs, your unRAID will use less than 300MB of memory. Giving it a lot of memory of numerous CPUs isn't going to make it copy files faster, do parity checks or transfer Movies / TV Shows to your XBMCs any faster. 4. Installation of the unRAID VM, select Customize configuration before install, select advanced, select i686 and finally Finish. NOTE: The MAC default MAC Address should work. If you want to change it, it MUST always start with 54:52:00. You can customize the rest after that. Also, make sure that your Network Bridge is selected. It should be br0. 5. Select Processor, then Copy host CPU configuration and then Apply. 6. Select NIC, verify it is set to bridge, select virtio (this is KVMs Paravirtualized Network Driver) and then apply. 7. Select the Begin Installation Button. NOTE: Do not Add your PCI Passthrough Devices (video, network, SCSI / SATA controllers, etc.) or passthrough a USB Device. We first need to start unRAID without those. Otherwise, you will get the incorrect PCI IDs assigned to your unRAID VM. 8. If everything is correct, unRAID should have started in console like below. 9. Shutdown the unRAID VM. If it doesn't shutdown, you can force it to shutdown. 10. Edit the unRAID VM and add the PCI Passthrough Devices. Sata Controller USB Device NOTE: If you want, you can try to Passthrough a USB Device instead of the PCI Device (USB Controller). This worked on some motherboards I tested it on but not all. 10. Poweroff your PC via the openSUSE icon. 11. Do you have a screenshot of your working unRAID WebGUI so you have a copy of which drives went where? IMPORTANT NOTE: If you do not have the above, boot back into unRAID and take a screenshot. If you added or plan on adding new drives to your system outside of unRAID, it will reorder your Hard Drives. unRAID should grab the correct drives based on the UUID (which is unique for each drive) but lets be on the safe side. [glow=green,2,300]IT IS FINALLY TIME FOR YOU TO PLUGIN YOUR unRAID USB Flash Drive and unRAID Hard Drives[/glow] NOTE: If you have the vmware-tools plugin enabled, you will need to disable it and reboot the unRAID VM. 11. Power on your PC and if you did everything correct and have hardware that supports PCI Passthrough... You should have unRAID working in a VM.

Configuring openSUSE, KVM, libvirt, etc. [glow=red,2,300]IT IS STILL NOT SAFE FOR YOU TO PLUG IN YOUR UNRAID DRIVES, CACHE DRIVE OR YOUR UNRAID USB FLASH STICK! I WILL TELL WHEN IT IS SAFE TO PLUG THEM IN.[/glow] NOTE: Go through all these steps below. You will reboot the Server at the end. 1. Install openSUSE Updates. 2. Tim to Configure several things in the Server. This is all done using a GUI, called Yast. (When prompted, enter in your password if you did not set up a separate password for root when you installed openSUSE) NOTE: You will use this program again so drag and drop this into the Plasma Window with the other icons. 3. Within Yast, click on System. 4. Click on Services Manager, enable libvirtd and click Ok. NOTE: If you want SSH access, enable sshd too. 5. Click on Network Network Settings and customize to your liking. When finished, click Ok. NOTE: You will want to at least change the name of your Server (see below). 6. Click Hostnames and edit to your liking and click Ok. NOTE: Add your Server Name as an alias for 127.0.0.1. 7. Click Firewall and customize to your liking. When finished, click Finish. (My server sits behind a firewall so I disabled it on mine.) NOTES: 1. For more information on how to secure your Server, please see the following link: openSUSE: Security Guide 2. You need to enable libvirtd. If you want SSH access, enable that too. 8. Click Sudo, click add, give your user Sudo Rights without a password. NOTE: When it prompts you for command, enter: ALL (in capital letters) 9. Select User and Group Administration 10. Add your user to the following groups: libvirt, audio, video and wheel. 11. Click Install Hypervisor and Tools, select KVM and click Ok. 12. We are done with Yast. Now click on the openSUSE icon in the bottom left and open up a Terminal Window. Login as root with the following command: su 13. If you didn't install nano during the openSUSE install, do so now. yast --install nano 14. We need to enable libvirt to talk with KVM. NOTE: libvirt can communicate with KVM via SSH or TCP. You can select one, the other or both. If you have the Firewall enabled, you will need to allow SSH or TCP Port 16509 (which you can customize) through. nano /etc/libvirt/libvirtd.conf For libvirt to communicate via SSH, uncomment the following: unix_sock_group = "libvirt" unix_sock_ro_perms = "0777" unix_sock_rw_perms = "0770" unix_sock_dir = "/var/run/libvirt" auth_unix_ro = "none" auth_unix_rw = "none" For libvirt to communicate via TCP, uncomment the following: listen_tcp = 1 auth_tcp = "none" <---- Change the default from auth_tcp = "sasl" When finished, CTL+X will ask you to save and quit. 15. Assign QEMU with user and group privileges of "root". nano /etc/libvirt/qemu.conf To assign QEMU with "root" user and group privileges uncomment the following: user = "root" group = "root" When finished, CTL+X will ask you to save and quit. 16. Exit out of Terminal. Either close the windows or type the following TWICE in the console. exit 17. You are finished with all the various "tweaks" needed to get a basic Server with KVM up and running. Time to reboot so all these changes take effect. Select the openSUSE start button and then leave. It will give you an option to restart the computer. Many of you will want to do more. Set up Samba & NFS Shares, Add Printers, Online Backup, SQL Server, etc. There are PLENTY of guides out there on the web for how to do all that. Next Step is to install unRAID in a VM...

openSUSE 13.1 (64Bit) Installation Guide [glow=red,2,300]YOU WILL NEED TO UNPLUG THE POWER FROM EVERY DISK DRIVE IN YOUR SYSTEM (unless you are installing openSUSE to a drive which is outside of your unRAID configuration) AND REMOVE YOUR unRAID USB FLASH DRIVE BEFORE INSTALLING.openSUSE by DEFAULT will format one or more of your unRAID drives if they are plugged in! I REPEAT AGAIN, DO NOT HAVE POWER PLUGGED INTO ANY OF YOUR unRAID DRIVES or CACHE DRIVE (if you are going to use one).[/glow] [glow=red,2,300]NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO BE BRAVE, ADVENTUROUS, A REBEL, CUT CORNERS OR BE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF DRUGS OR ALCOHOL. I WILL TELL YOU WHEN IT'S SAFE TO PLUG IN YOUR DRIVES AND USE YOUR UNRAID USB FLASH DRIVE.[/glow] IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are installing openSUSE to USB Drive or a Disk Drive outside of unRAID that is the only drive that should be plugged in and powered up. If you unplug the power from every disk drive in your system and remove your unRAID USB Flashdrive (Except the USB Flash Drive / SEPARATE disk drive you are installing openSUSE too)... You can test out openSUSE, KVM, PCI Passthrough and unRAID in a VM on your current unRAID system without harming it or your data. When you are finished testing, you plug the power back into all of your disk drives, insert your original unRAID USB Flash Drive and boot up just like you always have. Everything will work just like it did before. 1. Boot into the openSUSE 13.1 USB Flash Drive. NOTE: For a more detail explanation of the various steps below, refer to this guide: openSUSE: Start-Up 2. Select Installation on the boot screen and press Enter. This loads the openSUSE installation program and starts the installation in normal mode. 3. Select the language and the keyboard layout to be used during the installation and for the installed system. 4. Select New Installation and proceed with Next. 5. Either use the map or the drop down lists for Region and Time Zone to select the clock and time zone to use in your system. Proceed with Next. 6. Select the desktop system you would like to use. KDE and GNOME, are powerful graphical desktop environments, with KDE being a bit similar to Windows, alternative selections are available when checking Other. Proceed with Next. If you want to see screenshots of what the various Desktops look like, Click Me. NOTE: This Guide is based on KDE. However, if you select another Desktop it should still be easy for you to follow along. 7. Define a partition setup for openSUSE in this step. In most cases a reasonable scheme that can be accepted without change is proposed. Accept the proposal with Next and proceed with the installation. Experienced users can also customize the proposal (Edit Partition Setup) or apply their own partitioning scheme (Create Partition Setup). NOTE: For additional information / help / guidance, please refer to this guide: Advanced Disk Setup Before Partitioning your Drives, please consider the following: 1. You can partition your drive just for the openSUSE install. Afterwards, you can use YAST's Partition Tool to set up your partition scheme for the rest of your drive(s). 2. If you have some Linux skills and experience, I HIGHLY recommend you install openSUSE on a BTRFS partition. Snapshots / Rollbacks makes updating / trying new things on your Server a whole lot easier / safer. Please see the following link to learn more what I am talking about: Snapshots/Rollback with Snapper. 3. I installed openSUSE on a 10GB btrfs Partition (stable unless using btrfs RAID) and a separate 500MB Ext4 Boot Partition (btfs requires a separate boot partition). I dual boot between various Linux Distros that have Xen or KVM (Yes, my unRAID VMs in all of them work and all of my data on those drives. unRAID doesn't know / notice / care when I switch what Hypervisor, Linux Distro or even boot "bare metal"). 4. I use the rest of my disk drive as a LVM for VMs. For all you Linux / Filesystem people, if you do not know about LVM Thin Provisioning (Thin metadata, pools, and LVs) you are MISSING OUT. This topic could be a whole thread by itself. However, I wanted to put the idea in your head as you consider your partitioning scheme / layout. 8. Type your first and last name in the User’s Full Name field, your login name in the Username field, and your password in the Password field. For security reasons, your password should be at least eight characters long and should contain uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. Passwords are case-sensitive. By default, the password you enter here is also used for the system administrator, root. Uncheck Use this password for system administrator if you prefer to specify a different password for root in the next step. With automatic login enabled, the system boots straight to your desktop with no authentication at all. If you store sensitive data on your system, you should not enable this option as long as the computer can also be accessed by others. Proceed with Next. 9. Use the Installation Settings screen to review your choices as well as some automatically proposed settings. 10. Select Software, Detail (located in the bottom left), enable KVM Host Server and add libvirt package. 11. Select Console Tools and install the nano package. 12. Go through the various Software options and add / remove things that you want. Example: I removed Games, MultiMedia (even without this XBMC will still work), Office Software, Graphics and AppArmor. 13. When finished selecting what Software Packages you do / do not want click Accept and then Continue. Next is Configuring openSUSE, KVM, libvirt, etc.

Virtualizing unRAID in KVM on openSUSE 13.1 (64Bit) Why KVM? Kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) technology is the most recent step in the evolution of open source, x86 virtualization technology. KVM turns the Linux kernel into a bare-metal hypervisor using the hardware virtualization support built into Intel and AMD processors. This means that KVM can use Linux to do many of the things that a hypervisor needs to do, like scheduling tasks, managing memory and interacting with hardware devices. KVM creates virtual machines as Linux processes which can then run either Linux or Windows as a guest operating system, and using a modified version of another open source module – QEMU – to provide I/O device emulation inside the virtual machine. KVM is thus able to efficiently and effectively run both Windows and Linux workloads in virtual machines – and also Linux applications natively alongside if required. By leveraging Linux for core functions, KVM is able to avoid reinventing the wheel – taking advantage of the performance, scalability and security already built into Linux, which has been enterprise hardened for over 10 years and is trusted by millions of organizations in the heart of their data center to run their mission critical workloads. This gives KVM a significant "feature velocity" that other virtualization solutions cannot match. KVM has also brought new features to the Linux kernel including kernel page sharing (KSM), transparent large page support, and a new user-mode device driver infrastructure. Based on Linux, KVM is designed to be cost-effective and efficient and avoids vendor "lock in" giving you the virtualization capabilities you need. Do you prefer the Desktop below or flashing cursor on a console screen in ESXi or XenServer? (Note: Your VMs will run as fast as they do in ESXi / XenServer) [glow=red,2,300]BEFORE YOU EVEN BOTHER DOWNLOADING PLEASE TAKE NOTE:[/glow] I suspect most of you will have a motherboard that you either passthrough ALL or none of your onboard sata ports. openSUSE can be installed to a USB Stick. The default install with Linux Desktop is roughly 3.6GB. So if you want to install to a USB Flash Drive, use an 8GB one. If your motherboard is like mine where you aren't forced to passthrough all your onboard sata ports you can install openSUSE to a Hard Drive that sits outside of unRAID. Another solution if you are forced to pass through all your onboard sata ports is to get a cheap ($10 - $15) PCI sata card for your OS / datastore drive (where your VMs and their virtual hard drives reside). My advice... Go with a PCI sata card and get an SSD or use your old cache drive (Sickbeard, Couchpotato, SQL, PFSense, TFTP server are running on other VMs now so why even bother with a cache drive). XenServer (or your Distro with Xen on it) only takes a very small portion of space and the rest can be used as your datestore. Again, this is an option... you could do all of this if you have a large enough flash drive. "Freedom" with KVM... You could install and Linux Distro and enable the KVM Hypervisor on top that. Within your Linux Distro with KVM Hypervisor install CouchPotato, SickBeard, sabNZDb, etc. and only have a VM for Windows or OSX if you want. Me personally, I separated things out into several VMs but just showing you the "freedom" that you now have with KVM. With KVM, you are no longer in a "box" when it comes to hardware or the customizations you can do. You can start with openSUSE get comfortable with KVM and later plug in a usb stick with CentOS (or whatever Linux Distro with KVM Hypervisor on it), boot it, add your unRAID usb drive to the unRAID VM and as far as unRAID (or your data) is concerned... nothing has changed. Below are a few links where you will find MANY answers to the questions you might have. If you ask questions that answered / explained / etc. that are in any of the following links, I will refer you to them. They are very well written and do a much better job than I could do. Sorry, I am can only explain so much "info" into a forum guys. openSUSE: Virtualization with KVM If you want to know if your hardware is compatible or before you purchase any hardware expecting it work, I would look at the 3 links I have provided below: VT-d Enabled Systems List of IOMMU-supporting hardware Supported Intel CPUs For you to be able to use unRAID in KVM you will need to download the following file: unRAID 5.0.4: KVM-unRAID-5.0.4.vhd <--- Download Link [glow=red,2,300]Updated 12/19/2013[/glow] Download the above file and follow the step by step guide in the next post. [glow=red,2,300]BEFORE YOU BEGIN TAKE A SCREENSHOT OF YOUR unRAID SO YOU KNOW WHERE EACH DRIVE IS ASSIGNED JUST IN CASE[/glow]

Added a link for Xen-unRAID-5.0.4 and previous versions.

[glow=red,2,300]For those of you who are going to run Windows in a Xen VM...[/glow] Make sure you load the GPL-PV drivers. This will GREATLY increase your disk and video speeds in Windows and blow a ESXi Windows VM out of the water. On my system in Xen, my Windows Experience Index score only dropped .3 when compared to running bare metal (Windows directly loaded on the machine). Considering I only gave my Windows VM 4 of the 8 processors and only 4GB of the 32GB... very impressive. Installing signed GPLPV drivers in Windows Xen instances Here are the results of a quick test I did using the EXACT same hardware / setup for XenServer 6.2 and ESXi 5.1. (Both were only configured with 1 CPU and 1GB of memory.) I copied a 10GB file from an old (and slow) unRAID machine to a new unRAID (with crappy drives that I used for this test): XenServer 6.2 with Paravirtualized NIC and Drives: ESXi 5.1 with Paravirtualized NIC and Drives: Not the greatest speed in the world but that was due to the machines / drives I copied from and too. The important thing to notice is there is no advantage / disadvantage in using Xen or ESXi as far as speed is concerned. NOTE: I didn't bother mapping the drives via RDM in Xen or ESXi so if any of you want to try that out and post your results... Knock yourself out. Also, I would be curious how the results are with people who are using M1015, LSI, etc. controllers.

I will update it with version 5.0.4 shortly.

Setting up a ISO Storage Repository in XenServer using your unRAID VM NOTE: I am assuming you know how to enabling NFS Sharing in unRAID, setting up a share and sharing that folder using NFS. If you do not know how... There are plenty of guides, documentation and posts on these forums on how to do that. You are going to be installing other VMs where you will install Windows, Linux, OSX, etc. so let's use XenServer and your unRAID VM to make your life easier. That way, you don't have to find a DVD / flash drive, burn the iso, etc. 1. Setup your ISOs share (or whatever you want to call it) on in unRAID, share it via NFS and copy all the various OS iso files you plan on using / installing. 2. In XenCenter, click on your XenServer, select the Storage Tab in the Center Console and click New SR (SR = Storage Repository) 3. Select NFS ISO under the ISO Library Section Note: You can add SR (Storage Repositories) for whatever you need and connect to your VMs or other PCs / Servers on your network in a variety of different ways (iSCSI, Fiber Channel, Fiber Channel over Ethernet, SANS, etc.) 4. Name your NFS ISO Storage Repository 5. Enter the location of where the NFS share is (the IP address of your unRAID), the path where the share is located and click finished. Note: This is the standard naming convention that linux uses for NFS shares. If you want to see a list of available NFS shares and the path... From a linux machine on your network type: showmount -e THE IP ADDRESS OF YOUR unRAID VM (or another NFS Server on the Network) Below is an example of what a full path looks like: 6. Let's verify it sees your ISOs. Select NFS ISO Library (or whatever you called it) in the left hand column and select the storage tab in the center console. 7. When you go to create a VM, you can select any of the ISOs you have copied into your ISO share on your unRAID VM. You can boot straight into a Windows 8, Ubuntu, OSX, etc. install dvd and not have to deal with burning DVDs or preparing Flash Drives.

PCI passthrough for on-board sata, sata controllers, Video, USB, Sound, etc. in XenServer 6.2 Note: You can do the following on the XenServer itself, the XenServer Console in XenManage or SSH into your XenServer. 1. On your XenServer host get the device ID of the device(s) you want to passthrough: lspci | more For your unRAID, you will only need to passthrough your SATA ports but for the sake of the guide I am going to show you how to passthrough sata, sound, video and USB (Which you will want to do if you are also hooking your XenServer up to a TV / Reciever and using Windows / Linux VM and XBMC). On my motherboard below are the device ID's for Video, Sound, on-board Sata Controller and USB: 2. Next edit /boot/extlinux.conf and add pciback.hide=(deviceID) to the options and run extlinux -i /boot then reboot the XenServer host. nano /boot/extlinux.conf You want to edit the label XenServer and add your Device ID of the device(s). Make sure you edit the "/boot/vmlinuz-2.6-xen" section (the one in the middle) not the /boot/xen.gz (the beginning) or the "/boot/initrd-2.6-xen.img" section (the end). Make sure you get the formatting correct for the Device IDs. It's 00:00.0 The first 2 digits are seperated by a a colon and the last two by a period. IMPORTANT NOTE: When you edit this file using nano or other editors it will linewrap the boot line around on you. Make sure you get it all back on one line the way it should. You can use the one of the other boot loaders in the extlinux.conf file. Use the "Fallover" section as a guide to get it correct with the correct spacing. 3. Once you have your extlinux.conf set correctly, let's update your XenServer boot up: extlinux -i /boot 4. Time to reboot with our changes: reboot NOTE: If for some reason you messed up and your XenServer no longer boots. Do Not Panic!!!!! Reset the machine and when the boot: prompt is on your screen. Simply type... fallback Go back to Step 2 and double check you have the formatting, spacing and update the "/boot/vmlinuz-2.6-xen" section of the /boot/extlinux.conf file. When you have fixed it, go back and do steps 3 and 4 above again. 5. Let's make sure the correct Device IDs can now be passed on to the various VMs of your choosing: xl pci-list-assignable-devices Note: Some people have reported that their Device IDs did not show up when running the command above and they were able to passthrough devices without an issue. 6. We need to get the uuid(s) for the VMs we want to passthrough devices too. Either get the first few numbers / letters from the General tab in XenManage under each VM or enter the following command: xe vm-list 7. Time to passthrough our devices. Enter the following command: xe vm-param-set other-config:pci=0/0000:XX:XX.X uuid=YOUR UUID FOR YOUR VM HERE (If you enter the first few characters for your VM UUID and hit tab, it will fill in the rest for you.) Make sure that where there are X's above you enter your correct Device ID. If entering multiple device id's use the following command instead: xe vm-param-set other-config:pci=0/0000:XX:XX.X,0/0000:XX:XX.X,0/0000:XX:XX.X uuid=YOUR UUID FOR YOUR VM HERE 8. You are ready to test to see if your VM now is getting the PCI device passedthrough. Power up your unRAID machine and see if you can now add Disk Drives through the unRAID GUI. After you get unRAID up and running, passthrough configured, your drives added and finished "tweaking" unRAID to your liking let's put it to good use by...

Installing unRAID in XenServer 6.2 in 10 Easy Steps [glow=red,2,300]VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:[/glow] Unless you have a motherboard that supports USB passthrough... Your unRAID VM will not be able to read the Plus / Pro unRAID key. XenServer does not share the unique UUID of your unRAID's USB Stick (which is what your Plus / Pro key is based on). I have reported this issue to the Linux Foundation (People who oversee Xen) and will update this thread when there is an update. Even if you use unRAID Basic with 4 TB Hard Drives... That's a total of 8 TB (with parity). Since you have a virtual environment... You do not need a cache drive because other VMs will run the apps you once did on your unRAID. Before you can begin, you need an stock unRAID USB Stick, download the 100mb unRAID VHD file above and install the XenCenter Windows Management Console. You can get this by either entering the IP address of your new XenServer in your Internet Browser or by downloading it here: XenCenter Windows Management Console 1. Click on Import 2. Select the 100mb unRAID VHD file that you downloaded from above 3. Name your unRAID VM and select the number of CPUs and memory (Note: If you are moving your apps / plugins from your unRAID to other VMs... unRAID doesn't need much. Mine runs like a champ with 1 CPU and 1 GB of memory and barely uses it) 4. Select the XenServer this VM is assigned too (Unless you are running multiple XenServers the default is your XenServer) 5. Select where / which Storage Repository / Drive you want the unRAID VM to be stored on. 6. Select the Network Card you want to assign to this VM (You have more than one Network Card you can separate traffic between VMs) 7. I made your life easy and you do not need to run the Operating System Fixup. 8. Configure the network. 9. Review your changes and click Finished. It will import the file (takes a minute or two) and your new unRAID VM will show up on the left. NOTE: If you have an unRAID Plus / Pro Key proceed to the Passthrough Section below and passthrough the USB Controller where the unRAID USB Stick is going to be plugged in. This is required for your unRAID VM to correctly read your unRAID Plus / Pro key. If you are NOT using an unRAID Plus / Pro Key, there is one final step below. 10. Click on your new unRAID VM in the left panel and then select the Storage tab in the center panel and attach your unRAID USB Flash Drive to your unRAID VM. (Note: If your unRAID USB Flash Drive isn't showing up... Try it on different USB ports on your motherboard) Everything is set and you are ready to go! Start your new unRAID VM and click on Console in the Center Section to see it boot up

Why you should consider Xen? Xen is a fully mature robust Type 1 Hypervisor that runs on Linux and has always been open sourced. All that XenServer is... A CentOS (open source Red Hat Linux) machine with Xen running on it, plus Citrix custom Xen Management tools. Where as ESXi boots up in a linux kernel (also based on Red Hat) and then into it's own custom non-linux kernel called vmkernel. ESXi does / has adapted a lot of their drivers from linux too. The average person doesn't know that XenServer is just a little cousin of Xen but with Citrix releasing XenServer 6.2 and their custom Xen Management tools to the open sourced crowed in late July of 2013... That will be a game changer for the casual unRAID, Flexraid, FreeNAS, etc. crowd. With Xen, you can easily virtualize your storage, xbmcs, Windows, OSX, etc. into one machine and not have to worry / wait for VMware or Microsoft to release an update or patch to support your hardware. For example, USB passthrough on ESXi 5.1 is still messed up and how long have people been waiting? Can ESXi passthrough Nvidia or Intel (on-board even) Video? No. With Xen, you have a lot more options when it comes to hardware and passthrough with ethernet, video, usb, sound, etc. In the Xen world, Xen is built into the kernel itself and you have 100,000+ or more people around the world who are submitting new features, code, patches, fixes, tweaks, hardware and software support to the Linux Foundation and the Linux kernel people because we have access to the source code. Think of Xen vs VMware like you would XBMC (also open-sourced) vs Microsoft Windows Media Center. Look how much further along XBMC is, how much more customizable, polished, cutting edge, etc. and the support behind it. You can run XBMC on Linux, OSX, Windows, Andriod, ARM, iOS, etc. and do a million different things with it. The same is true of Xen and like XBMC most distros already have the compiled binary packages for you. For Example, Debian, OpenSUSE, Unbuntu, Arch Linux, Mint, CentOS, Fedora, FreeBSD, Slackware (the Linux Distro that unRAID uses), etc. I could go on forever with listing all the Linux Distros that you can easily run Xen Hypervisor on. With XAPI (The Citrix Management tools that "makes" XenServer so good) being open-sourced now the casual home can install a minimum Ubuntu and type "sudo apt-get install xen-hypervisor xcp-xapi" and essentially be running "XenServer" with all the bells and whistles. Simply put, with all the hardware Xen supports, the better / easier (if you ask me) all in one management tool and it being open sourced... It's a game changer. I have been running unRAID in Xen for almost a year with not a single problem to date. Performance wise, a default XenServer 6.2 vs a ESXi 5.1 installed with Paravirtual drivers loaded on each... there was no difference (Xen was 2 seconds faster). With a "tweaked" Xen and ESXi setup... still not that much of a difference (Xen was a few seconds faster). In Xen, my Windows Experience Index score only dropped .3 when compared to running bare metal (Windows directly loaded on the machine). Considering I only gave my Windows VM 4 of the 8 processors and only 4GB out of the 32GB it had when bare metal... Very impressive. My Current System: Case: Fractal Design Define R4 Black Pearl w/ USB 3.0 ATX Mid Tower Silent PC Computer Case Motherboard: ASRock 970 EXTREME4 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX CPU: AMD FX-8350 Vishera 4.0GHz RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 CPU Water Cooler: NZXT Kraken X40 SSD: SanDisk Ultra Plus 64GB [glow=red,2,300]Xen or ESX Passthrough Heaven:[/glow] With the above motherboard, you can passthrough sata ports 1 - 4 and leave port 5 for a datastore drive. Onboard NIC works in both too. This motherboard can also handle 64GB of memory and you don't have to install memory in pairs. Unlike ESXi, Xen or XenServer doesn't have a 32GB memory restriction since it's open-sourced. Optional but recommended: The AMD 8350 runs HOT and if you choose to stick with the stock fan... It sounds like a 747 taking off. Even if your server is in another room... You will hear it. The most highly recommended silent air coolers if you plan on overclocking or not are: Noctua NH-U12P SE2 or Noctua NH-D14 SE2011. Both of these are GREAT air coolers, very run quiet and highly rated on NewEgg but they are HUGE! With certain motherboard and cases, this either will not fit or prevent you from using memory sticks. Here is a shot of what those coolers look on a ATX motherboard: Click Me I wanted silent and since the price was about the same or cheaper, I went the water cooler route. I have used the Corsairs in the past and they are great (You will see they get awesome reviews on NewEgg). However, I got a deal on a NZXT Kraken X40 and used that one for this machine. [glow=red,2,30]BEFORE YOU EVEN BOTHER DOWNLOADING XEN PLEASE TAKE NOTE:[/glow] I suspect most of you will have a motherboard that you either passthrough ALL or none of your onboard sata ports. By default XenServer cannot be installed to a USB Stick. Either get a motherboard like mine where you aren't forced to passthrough all your onboard sata ports or get a cheap ($10 - $15) PCI sata card for a datastore drive (where your VMs and their virtual hard drives reside). Why? You can install XenServer onto a USB Stick (guides on how to do this are on the web) or your favorite Distro with Xen onto on a USB Stick. However, you will either run your VMs from other USB drives or the unRAID server VM. Your drives won't ever sleep unless using a cache drive (Which would take up a precious sata port anyway). My advice... Go with a PCI sata card and get an SSD or use your old cache drive (Sickbeard, Couchpotato, SQL, PFSense, TFTP server are running on other VMs now so why even bother with a cache drive). XenServer (or your Distro with Xen on it) only takes a very small portion of space and the rest can be used as your datestore. You can do this with a large enough flash drive but I don't recommend it. Below is what you need to get started: For most of you, I highly recommend XenServer which you can get here: www.xenserver.org Note: That site and the Citrix website will provide you with a TON of information, guides, how tos, etc. but there are also a lot of things you can get of the web or the site I list below. For those you of you have basic Linux Skills and are adventurous... I am currently running Xen on Debian but I have also run it on Arch, Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, openSUSE, etc.) with no problems whatsoever. In fact, Xen 4.3 was just released and compiled it from source (they have great step by step guides) on 4 different Distros. I didn't even bother unplugging my unRAID drives since I pass all those through anyway. Get Xen up and running, import my unRAID VM and I was off to the races. unRaid had no clue or idea anything happened or changed. The information you will need is here: xenproject.org. Note: The Wiki and forums are very good on that site but your favorite linux distro is also going to have wikis and forums dedicated solely to Xen (It's VERY popular / mainstream in the linux world). Example: Here is a GREAT Step by Step Guide of installing Xen with Passthrough Video on Linux Mint: HOW-TO make dual-boot obsolete using XEN VGA passthrough Another Example: Comprehensive Xen Debian Wheezy PCI Passthrough Tutorial Another Example: Installing Xen in Arch Linux "Freedom" with Xen... You could install Ubuntu and then put the Xen Hypervisor on top that. Within your Ubuntu Xen Hypervisor install CouchPotato, SickBeard, sabNZDb, etc. and only have a VM for Windows or OSX if you want. Me personally, I separated things out into several VMs but just showing you the "freedom" that you now have with Xen. Or... If you wanted to go the whole ZFS route... You could run Solaris (with Xen on it), Ubuntu (pick a distro) with Xen, ZFS for Linux (ZFS for Linux is running the latest ZFS pool version), FreeBSD, NAS4Free with a secondary unRAID VM... You could easily do that too. With Xen, you are no longer in a "box" when it comes to hardware or the customizations you can do. You can start with XenServer get comfortable with Xen and later plug in a usb stick with openSUSE (or whatever Distro with Xen Hypervisor on it), boot it, add your unRAID usb drive to the unRAID VM and as far as unRAID (or your data) is concerned... nothing has changed. If you want to know if your hardware is compatible or before you purchase any hardware expecting it work, I would look at the 3 links I have provided below: VT-d Enabled Systems List of IOMMU-supporting hardware Supported Intel CPUs For you to be able to use unRAID in XenServer you will need to download the following file: unRAID 5.0.4: 100mb unRAID-5.0.4.vhd <--- Download Link [glow=red,2,300]Updated 12/10/2013[/glow] unRAID 5.0.3: 100mb unRAID-5.0.3.vhd <--- Download Link [glow=red,2,300]Updated 11/27/2013[/glow] Version 5.0: 100mb unRAID-5.0.vhd <--- Download Link [glow=red,2,300]Updated 8/29/2013[/glow] Download the above file and follow the step by step guide in the next post. Now onto installing XenServer 6.2 and unRAID...

Since you have a GPT partition goto gdisk: gdisk /dev/sdc Change the type of sdc5: t Select Partition 5 5 Change the type too: 8300 Format the partition: mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdc5 Update your fstab so it points your home folder to the correct UUID: blkid Cut and Paste the UUID for /dev/sdc5 into fstab where you have home listed. nano /etc/fstab

I would add all the above drivers into your kernel. Slackware needs to have at least the disk drivers and file system drivers to access the disk drive where it can load the rest as modules. When you go into make menuconfig: / You can now search for what you want and see what other dependencies are needed to enable the driver. In your case, I would search for the following and enable them all: ahci, i2c_i801, sata_sil24, e1000e. You want to make sure they are a * and not a M. Also make sure the file system you used to install Slackware is enabled as well. In my case both my boot and root partitions where EXT4. When you enabled the drivers and the filesystem: make -j4 <--- Replace 4 with the number of cores you have. This will speed up the compile. make -j4 modules <--- Replace 4 with the number of cores you have. This will speed up the compile. make modules_install

Your kernel does not include the driver for your root filesystem, or a driver for your SATA bus, or other stuff that is only built as modules, your kernel will panic if it boots and can not access the necessary disks, partitions and/or files. You have two options. Option A Run the following command: /usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh It will suggest what command you need to run to make a initrd or “Initial Ram Disk” (basically what bzroot is in unRAID). Once you have done that you need to update your bootloader. if you are running grub... grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg If you are running lilo add / update an entry: nano /etc/lilo.conf It should look something like this (customize for your system) image = /boot/vmlinuz-custom-2.6.37.6 root = /dev/sda1 initrd = /boot/initrd-custom-2.6.37.6.gz label = newkernel read-only # Non-UMSDOS filesystems should be mounted read-only for checking Update Lilo lilo Option B Attach a copy of the following command: lspci -k Then I can tell you which drivers you need to compile into the kernel to boot up.

Yes. It should be up later today or tomorrow at the latest.

Glad I was able to help. In the future, checkout the Arch Linux Forums. They are the best. If you search for things about linux in google, Arch Linux Forums usually are the ones that pop up at the top. That happens for a reason. I ran into your exact same problem and I had to find the solution in the installation forum. It's second or third posting at the moment. It should not be doing that. Let's do the following and give you a fancy console while we are at it (normal user is in blue and when logged in as root it is red plus other goodies). 1. Get the old bash.bashrc out of the way but keep a backup. mv /etc/bash.bashrc /etc/bash.bashrc-backup 2. Create a new bash.bashrc and copy and paste the following below. nano /etc/bash.bashrc # /etc/bash.bashrc # # https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Color_Bash_Prompt # # This file is sourced by all *interactive* bash shells on startup, # including some apparently interactive shells such as scp and rcp # that can't tolerate any output. So make sure this doesn't display # anything or bad things will happen ! # Test for an interactive shell. There is no need to set anything # past this point for scp and rcp, and it's important to refrain from # outputting anything in those cases. # If not running interactively, don't do anything! [[ $- != *i* ]] && return # Bash won't get SIGWINCH if another process is in the foreground. # Enable checkwinsize so that bash will check the terminal size when # it regains control. # http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/bash/FAQ (E11) shopt -s checkwinsize # Enable history appending instead of overwriting. shopt -s histappend case ${TERM} in xterm*|rxvt*|Eterm|aterm|kterm|gnome*) PROMPT_COMMAND=${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND; }'printf "\033]0;%s@%s:%s\007" "${USER}" "${HOSTNAME%%.*}" "${PWD/#$HOME/~}"' ;; screen) PROMPT_COMMAND=${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND; }'printf "\033_%s@%s:%s\033\\" "${USER}" "${HOSTNAME%%.*}" "${PWD/#$HOME/~}"' ;; esac # fortune is a simple program that displays a pseudorandom message # from a database of quotations at logon and/or logout. # If you wish to use it, please install "fortune-mod" from the # official repositories, then uncomment the following line: # [[ "$PS1" ]] && /usr/bin/fortune # Set colorful PS1 only on colorful terminals. # dircolors --print-database uses its own built-in database # instead of using /etc/DIR_COLORS. Try to use the external file # first to take advantage of user additions. Use internal bash # globbing instead of external grep binary. # sanitize TERM: safe_term=${TERM//[^[:alnum:]]/?} match_lhs="" [[ -f ~/.dir_colors ]] && match_lhs="${match_lhs}$(<~/.dir_colors)" [[ -f /etc/DIR_COLORS ]] && match_lhs="${match_lhs}$(</etc/DIR_COLORS)" [[ -z ${match_lhs} ]] \ && type -P dircolors >/dev/null \ && match_lhs=$(dircolors --print-database) if [[ $'\n'${match_lhs} == *$'\n'"TERM "${safe_term}* ]] ; then # we have colors :-) # Enable colors for ls, etc. Prefer ~/.dir_colors if type -P dircolors >/dev/null ; then if [[ -f ~/.dir_colors ]] ; then eval $(dircolors -b ~/.dir_colors) elif [[ -f /etc/DIR_COLORS ]] ; then eval $(dircolors -b /etc/DIR_COLORS) fi fi PS1="$(if [[ ${EUID} == 0 ]]; then echo '\[\033[01;31m\]\h'; else echo '\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h'; fi)\[\033[01;34m\] \w \$([[ \$? != 0 ]] && echo \"\[\033[01;31m\]\[\033[01;34m\] \")\\$\[\033[00m\] " # Use this other PS1 string if you want \W for root and \w for all other users: # PS1="$(if [[ ${EUID} == 0 ]]; then echo '\[\033[01;31m\]\h\[\033[01;34m\] \W'; else echo '\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] \w'; fi) \$([[ \$? != 0 ]] && echo \"\[\033[01;31m\]\[\033[01;34m\] \")\\$\[\033[00m\] " alias ls="ls --color=auto" alias dir="dir --color=auto" alias grep="grep --color=auto" alias dmesg='dmesg --color' # Uncomment the "Color" line in /etc/pacman.conf instead of uncommenting the following line...! # alias pacman="pacman --color=auto" else # show root@ when we do not have colors PS1="\u@\h \w \$([[ \$? != 0 ]] && echo \" \")\$ " # Use this other PS1 string if you want \W for root and \w for all other users: # PS1="\u@\h $(if [[ ${EUID} == 0 ]]; then echo '\W'; else echo '\w'; fi) \$([[ \$? != 0 ]] && echo \" \")\$ " fi PS2="> " PS3="> " PS4="+ " # Try to keep environment pollution down, EPA loves us. unset safe_term match_lhs # Try to enable the auto-completion (type: "pacman -S bash-completion" to install it). [ -r /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ] && . /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion # Try to enable the "Command not found" hook ("pacman -S pkgfile" to install it). # See also: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bash#The_.22command_not_found.22_hook [ -r /usr/share/doc/pkgfile/command-not-found.bash ] && . /usr/share/doc/pkgfile/command-not-found.bash export EDITOR=nano 3. Let's create /etc/DIR_COLORS and copy and paste the following: nano /etc/DIR_COLORS # Configuration file for the color ls utility # This file goes in the /etc directory, and must be world readable. # You can copy this file to .dir_colors in your $HOME directory to override # the system defaults. # COLOR needs one of these arguments: 'tty' colorizes output to ttys, but not # pipes. 'all' adds color characters to all output. 'none' shuts colorization # off. COLOR all # Extra command line options for ls go here. # Basically these ones are: # -F = show '/' for dirs, '*' for executables, etc. # -T 0 = don't trust tab spacing when formatting ls output. OPTIONS -F -T 0 # Below, there should be one TERM entry for each termtype that is colorizable TERM linux TERM console TERM con132x25 TERM con132x30 TERM con132x43 TERM con132x60 TERM con80x25 TERM con80x28 TERM con80x30 TERM con80x43 TERM con80x50 TERM con80x60 TERM xterm TERM xterm-color TERM vt100 TERM rxvt TERM rxvt-256color TERM rxvt-cygwin TERM rxvt-cygwin-native TERM rxvt-unicode TERM rxvt-unicode-256color TERM rxvt-unicode256 TERM screen # EIGHTBIT, followed by '1' for on, '0' for off. (8-bit output) EIGHTBIT 1 # Below are the color init strings for the basic file types. A color init # string consists of one or more of the following numeric codes: # Attribute codes: # 00=none 01=bold 04=underscore 05=blink 07=reverse 08=concealed # Text color codes: # 30=black 31=red 32=green 33=yellow 34=blue 35=magenta 36=cyan 37=white # Background color codes: # 40=black 41=red 42=green 43=yellow 44=blue 45=magenta 46=cyan 47=white NORMAL 00 # global default, although everything should be something. FILE 00 # normal file DIR 01;34 # directory LINK 01;36 # symbolic link FIFO 40;33 # pipe SOCK 01;35 # socket BLK 40;33;01 # block device driver CHR 40;33;01 # character device driver # This is for files with execute permission: EXEC 01;32 # List any file extensions like '.gz' or '.tar' that you would like ls # to colorize below. Put the extension, a space, and the color init string. # (and any comments you want to add after a '#') .cmd 01;32 # executables (bright green) .exe 01;32 .com 01;32 .btm 01;32 .bat 01;32 .tar 01;31 # archives or compressed (bright red) .tgz 01;31 .arj 01;31 .taz 01;31 .lzh 01;31 .zip 01;31 .z 01;31 .Z 01;31 .gz 01;31 .jpg 01;35 # image formats .gif 01;35 .bmp 01;35 .xbm 01;35 .xpm 01;35 .tif 01;35 4. Log out and back in to see your changes. If you already created users, delete the .bashrc in the their home directories. LVM is the BOMB once you understand it and all the features it offers. No you do not need a separate disk. If I were you, I would install Arch into a 10GB partition and leave the rest of the drive(s) blank. This way you can play around with and experiment with LVM without having to reinstall Arch. A brief overview of what LVM is / can do: An LVM can use a partition, several partitions, mirrored partitions or drives, whole disk, multiple disks, run on top of a RAID array, etc. First thing you want to do is define the "pool". In your case it will be a partition. After you use fdisk and create the remaining space into a 2nd partition and make it a LVM type: Create the Physical Volume ("pool"). In your case, 1 partition: pvcreate /dev/sda2 Create a Volume Group within that "pool" vgcreate Test-VG /dev/sda2 Now you can create your Logical Volumes (Your VM hard drives) within the Test-VG (Volume Group) lvcreate -L5G -nUbuntu Test-VG That creates a 5Gb partition named Ubuntu on the Test-VG (Volume Group). You could create another one... lvcreate -L30G -nWindows Test-VG That creates a 30Gb partition named Windows on the Test-VG (Volume Group). You would then fire up a Xen VM and boot into an ISO and include the LV (Logical Volume) as the drive. You would format the drive (LV) from within Windows, Linux, etc. installer. LVM is kinda of like unRAID but has many more cool features. You can increase and decrease the size of your "pool" no problems. You can add drives of any shape or size and expand your "pool" no problem. You can move VGs and LVs no problem. It keeps track of where it is, what drive its on, etc. You can mirror partition or drives no problem. You take snapshots (basically like what Apple does with Time Machine) and revert back changes you made. You can do Thin Provisioning which the LV only takes up as much room as it currently needs and expands when needed. You can run LVM on top of RAID (1,4,5,6,10) and make it do even more. Personally, I run Arch on in it's on PV, VG and LV. I assign my "data" (the rest of the parition) it's on PV, VG and LVs. I do this so I take a snapshots of my Arch (takes one command) before I do updates / upgrades or try need software that I may or may not want. It takes one command to revert back to my "snapshot" if I screw up something. I can also make those changes permanent. Go ahead and create and delete a couple of Test LVs, VG and PV several times. I think you will get what it is your doing and the light bulb will come on. Then check out the Gentoo Wiki on LVMs (I think its better than Arch at explaining it and providing examples) and it progresses you through simple LVM all the way to the advanced. If you want to make your life easier... 1. Install Webmin: pacman -S webmin 2. Edit the following file and allow remote access: nano /etc/webmin/miniserv.conf Add your network (example: 192.168.1.0) or 0.0.0.0 to the following line: allow=127.0.0.1 3. Start the Webmin Service systemctl start webmin.service 4. Goto your brower and enter your IP address then port 10000 (Example: 192.168.1.100:10000) You will need to enter the root password of the server running Webmin to use the Webmin interface and administer the server. 5. If all goes well and you find this program useful, make it start at boot. systemctl enable webmin.service Below is a list of the standard modules where you configure / mange the following from one WebGUI: (Note: They have tons of 3rd Party Modules and skins too) adsl-client apache dnsadmin bind8 ipfw backup-config bacula-backup bandwidth init burner pserver change-user passwd cluster-passwd cluster-copy cluster-cron cluster-shell cluster-software cluster-usermin cluster-useradmin cluster-webmin shell cfengine custom dhcpd quota mount dovecot fetchmail file fsdump filter frox grub tunnel heartbeat ipfilter ipsec inittab jabber krb5 ldap-client ldap-server ldap-useradmin lilo firewall raid logrotate lvm mailcap mon majordomo mysql sgiexports exports-nfs4 bsdexports exports hpuxexports dfsadmin nis net xinetd inetd openslp pam phpini pap ppp-client pptp-client pptp-server format bsdfdisk fdisk cpan postfix postgresql lpadmin proftpd procmail htaccess-htpasswd qmailadmin rbac mailboxes proc smart-status telnet sshd stunnel samba at cron webmincron sentry sendmail smf shorewall shorewall6 package-updates software zones spam squid sarg man syslog syslog-ng system-status time status tcpwrappers ajaxterm updown usermin useradmin vgetty wuftpd webalizer webminlog webmin servers acl iscsi-client iscsi-server iscsi-target idmapd

I will get those to him later today.

You can accomplish this and run something other than Slackware. Ubuntu, Arch, openSUSE, etc. also load most everything in a ramdisk. Like what unRAID does, you could put everything in it. Sure. You pick and choose what you want. If you want mysql running on the unRAID server instead of a VM, install it. If you want XBMC, install it. If you want a mail server, install it. If you do not want a Desktop, do not install it. I will share what I have with Tom. My advice would be to enable 9P with VIRTIO as well. We are only talking in MBs here. Therefore, you would use your same unRAID USB Flash Drive or if you want... install it to a drive on the system. You would manage the array the same as you always did via the unRAID WebGUI. I am including webmin to manage everything else. You can manage MYSQL, Printers, LVMs, Users, SSH, Telnet, Apache, Cron Jobs, FTP, Package Management (install and removal), etc. all in location. That's 100% dependent on Tom.

I would love to work with you. I'm donating my Linux and Virtualization Experience / Knowledge to assist you in making unRAID even better. It will put you at an advantage over NAS4Free, FreeNAS, etc. What I would have you do: 1. The udev version you are currently using is ancient. Eventually you will need to change the way emhttp is using it and looking at the serial number and the vendor and product ID of the USB stick. Once you are past udev version 172, usb_id is built into udevadm and no longer a separate program. Even Slackware 14.0 (which is ancient) is past udev 172. You could change emhttp to use a udevadm command itself instead of it's "sister" usb_id one. It would still be backward compatible with older unRAID versions and accomplish what you need. 2. Turn on KVM (as a Host and Guest) - Has no effect on people running "bare metal". 3. Turn on Xen (as a Host and Guest) - Has no effect on people running "bare metal". 4. Turn on the KVM and Xen Paravirtualized Drivers, consoles, etc. - As Modules 5. Turn on 9P Network File System. It's let's VMs connect to the Host (unRAID) at blazing speed (better than NFS and Samba). 6. You need to plan / prepare how plugins work once you convert to 64 bit. You are going to make life hell for everyone when you have 32 bit / 64 bit apps / plugins floating. It can / will crash systems if you try / install a 64 bit plugin in a 32 bit unRAID and vice versa (unless you have multilibs and settings turn on it in the kernel for 32 bit apps to run on 64 bit kernel). Due to number 6 above... I would leave the plugins as they are in 32 Bit world and move to a new one when 64 bit comes out. My advice is... 7. I would consider a switch over to a more user friendly (for you, plugin writers, customers) Linux Distro like Debian or CentOS (both are ROCK SOLID stability wise and they are VERY conservative on what packages they run). 8. You have unRAID access your unRAID "repo" for updates / upgrades and the packages that plugins need / use. It makes life so much easier for you, plugin maintainers and the end users. For example, mySQL 5.6.15 comes out and tested by the various Plugin Maintainers. The file only has to be updated in one place, the unRAID "repo". Users would all pull from and run the same version (which doesn't happen today and causes major havoc).

The solution to your grub problem: nano /etc/default/grub Add the following to the bottom: GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=y Update Grub: grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg What are your questions about LVM? XenServer is a whole lot easier. However, since you got all the way through an Arch Linux install but ran into a bug... That says a lot about your computer skills. I think if you were to get Arch working and spend a little time learning how LVMs work... You will be quite happy with running Xen on a Linux Distro.

I do not think many of you understand. 1. They will bring business too Tom, not away. They are using his licensing. Therefore if someone wants more than basic, they have to PAY TOM FOR IT. 2. unRAID is LINUX. It happens to run on Slackware. 3. Tom's version of Linux (and the packages installed) are not custom written or maintained by him. 4. unRAID isn't updated or patched with security fixes to the Kernel or the packages. In fact, many of the packages are older than what even Red Hat runs. unRAID 5.0 is Slackware 13.1 (3+ years old). Enterprises would not install his software in data centers due to the security flaws / risks. If you are concerned about security, unRAID is not a good choice. Red Hat, Debian, etc. apply patches and bug fixes. unRAID does not. 5. The code for unRAID is open sourced and GNU licensed. If you look at your unRAID box in the /usr/src/ folder you will see it. if you take a look, Tom modified existing raid code in the Linux kernel and added a few tweaks. He has not changed the code in a long time. What he has been doing is updating packages or turning on features in the kernel. 6. If fortune 1,000 companies can run 100+ Mission Critical / High Availability VMs on a single machine RAID, ZFS, EMC, etc... Your Server can easily handle running a few hard drives and whatever else you want with no problems. 7. Tom didn't write the Linux Kernel, Samba, NFS, mysql, etc. the open source community did and he is not doing any quality control. The open source / business community is. Could you install a newer version of PHP, Mysql, GCC, Python? Yes. Does it bomb out or delete data on a raid? NO. Why? Because those packages go through extensiving alpha, beta, release candidates and testing before released. 8. unRAID isn't any more stable that ZFS, raid (1-10), btrfs, etc. Updating the Linux Kernel or packages or using the power of your CPU / Linux Kernel isn't going to hurt your data or make the Linux Kernel destroy unRAID. 9. nas4free, FreeNAS, Provox SE, etc. run BSD or Linux with updates. Both the kernels and the packages. Do you see people fleeing those or Fortune 1000 companies not using NFS4, PHP 5.4.4, etc. (standard, well used and tested 1,000,000,000 times over)? What about your Enterprise Servers at work which do storage, email, etc. with a desktop fine and never crash? 10. How is it that everyone can run unRAID in a VM on ESXi or Xen (Both Linux), pass through video cards, tuners, NICs, run windows, OSX, BSD, Linux, etc. and that is okay / considered stable but enabling Xen / KVM in the Linux kernel on an unRAID server is bad? I dunno... I think there are a lot of people here who don't understand what / how unRAID works and think Tom wrote the entire Linux code and all the various software it runs. My latest consulting gig, wr consolidated 1,200 servers and ran 100s of VM in all various forms of storage. They also ran apps, desktops, monitoring software, etc. on top of all that. lf its good enough for Fortune 100 companies and BILLIONS of other servers running Linux... its good enough for me. Also, there is a wiki on this site about running unRAID in a full Slackware Distro (64 bit too). People need to chill out and quit assuming the worst. Compile unRAID code in Linux Kernel, install Linux, copy emhttp over (webgui and how / where Tom validates the key)... Boom it works in Slackware or any Linux Distro. Its GNU licensed so it should be this way. You people realize that Ubuntu, Red Hat, Slackware, etc. all get their software from the same place, right? Like the rest of GNU software, unRAID is not Distro specfic.