jaybee

Interesting, as I was looking to use Raspbmc. Have you tried it and it failed then?

So any news on the next RC and/or Final release Tom/Limetech?

So...update? Tom? Can we have one before Xmas?

So you won't try it? Tom seems quite reasonable if you have a USB thumb drive fail and you ask for a new key from posts I've seen (I'll go looking for those posts if you want). Do you have personal experience or know someone that was denied a refund? I'm saying there is no response on these forums nor to my email I have sent them already.

What's to say my request for a refund would be met with any kind of response given the evidence so far?

You're speaking for me now? If it's unacceptable to you then you should go find a better alternative. This is unrealistic. If you pay for a product you expect it to function and/or some level of support. Why should I go to find an alternative because the business will not communicate with me? Would you go to find an alternative for all your products you buy just because you could simply not get any communication from the seller? No, you would pursue it and make attempts to find out information etc. Unraid is not just about the cost of the licence - as others in this thread have already mentioned. A lot of commitment from us as buyers has gone into the product. A lot of time, effort, contribution and cost in specifically choosing hardware to suit unraid has gone on. To say we should all go away if we do not like it, I think is very unfair. We all want it to succeed of course, but some of us are very frustrated with the lack of information. We are stuck in a difficult position not knowing what to do. All of this can be solved from one simple update from Tom, then at least we can make a decision on what we want to do. The silence in this case is the damage.

Stable for me the last time I used it. Stable for me no problems encountered could just rename RC4 as final for me. Haven't tried any of the later RC's yet. Each time yourself or someone reports that they did not encounter (known) problems is like ignoring that there are any. As an analogy, that is like saying that your Toyota car that was recalled for brake problems (but you continued using it without getting it fixed) has never had a problem when you have used it. So what? It still has potential to cause damage so it must be fixed.

What else will v5 final give you that you don't already have? Peace of mind? I suggest that if you aren't happy with unRAID, move on to something else. We all understand the situation. We all understand we are powerless to change it. Lets focus on what we can do. A lot of people in this thread have said that people should stop complaining on the forums and email him direct. So I did. I was just saying that I have not had a response. I was very polite and simple asked if they had an idea of the future as to when 4.7 would be patched as promised to 4.7.1, or a stable final version 5 would come out. Since people seem not to want to read this thread and/or are unaware of the actual complaints in this thread and on the forums, let me spell it out again for about the 100th time: 4.7 is not stable and has bugs 5.X is not stable and has bugs Which part of the above is not understandable? People have paid for a working product. They do not want to be installing a product that they have to patch/hack and have blind faith in the fact it will work and protect their data. That is why we PAY for unraid. The support and reliability and functionality. This has evaporated. It is irrelevant that person X has been running beta version Y for Z years. This means nothing. Futher more: Tom has stated that he would patch 4.7 to 4.7.1 to fix the major bugs that can cause data loss (in a product that aims to prevent data loss) 1.5 years ago. Nothing has come of it due to efforts to produce a version 5 final to replace it. This is still outstanding. People have a fair reason to want a version 5 right now, i.e. it would be the only working stable release of unraid. No version is currently bug free. The lack of comms is unacceptable to his customers.

I've emailed Limetech and had no response on what is happening at all. It's really sad to see this happening to what was a thriving product.

4.7 is not a working stable release and has 3 major bugs. We have not got what we paid for until 4.7 is patched, (as Tom said he would do to 4.7.1) or replaced by a stable version 5. Neither has happened.

Or course not, everyone should waste their time posting large rants about lack of updates which will never get acknowledged by the company.... Some people never listen. Everyone has been told that like it or not, that's the way it has always been. I can't figure out how one user thinkz they are so important that their rants about lack of updates will make the company change how it operates. If anything, the rants do nothing but piss off the company and make updates even less likely. I think there could be more information provided. In the big picture though, I care little either way. My server continues to operate 100% reliably as it has for the past 4 or so years since I built it. I really don't have anything I can complain about. So, I worry about bigger things. Here, I'm presently trying to help 2 different users recover from bad situations which is way more important than this "noise". It's rather funny to read some of the stuff posted here though. I am somewhat confused on what's so horribly wrong with 8a though that it should not have even been a release candidate. I installed it and some plug-ins and my servers been up for a month without an issue since. I even went though a bunch of hot-swapping and rebuilding drives to install 3 new 3T drives without once rebooting. Change the record. Nobody cares how long you have been running a buggy beta build, nor how stable you perceive it to be.

Why is it a ridiculous thread? Because the truth might hurt poor Tom and his loyal fanboys like yourself? The blind defending of Tom is embarassing to read. Calling for it to be locked is a cowards way and ignores the issues at hand.

The thing is, we have no idea what is going on in his life. It could very well be that there are other priorities and life events that are occupying his mind right now. He is, AFAIK, a one man company. Running a business like this myself, I know how difficult it can be balance "life" with work. In short; Cut the guy a little slack. You have twisted what I have said. I was pointing out that the first comment he makes on this forum in over a month is in reply to some random post, as opposed to answering the vast amount of questions and doubts people have in him and the product right now. How much longer would it have taken to write a short update? Seconds. He refused. We all have busy lives these days. He is reading the forum (appearing as last active) regularly on here, but not posting. I don't think it would be too much to ask for an update of some sort. Since you brought up life priorities generally though, regardless of how busy someone can be in their life, I would put updating my customers fairly high on the list of priorities given that a vast amount of time has passed now. We are talking a couple of minutes out of your day to provide an update. Since he is still appearing as active (and now this is backed up by an actual post) the lack of comms now is ridiculous. If there is nothing to say with no updates. Then post this so we know.

After such a long silence and lack of information, this is the first post you, Limetech/Tom, make as a first statement. No update, further info or apology to your customers. How do you think this comes across in terms of professionalism? I think you need to get your priorities right.

This has been talked about before and seems to be ignored. In fact, in order to try to facilitate at least some level of keeping things logical and tidy, Limetech added a new sub forum didn't he, named "Unraid OS 5.0-RC". All this did, was give people a place to post issues with any RC version (there have been many already), which caused a completely cluttered forum and things got lost very quickly. It's a minefield in there. What we need is something like the Mantis bug tracking system implemented. This is designed exactly for things like this. An online version of a bug tracking system. Other forums use this to good effect. The author of Flexraid I think uses this as well. Unfortunately the above involves work and effort from Limetech and it feels at the moment like we are not getting any commitment from him at all. We have to assume this as we see no communications on the forums. If he is working hard on something, then he should post to give us an update. No communication is bad communication and every day that goes by with nothing, unraid and the community is rotting away. unfortunately though there is one sub forum for all of the RC's. It would have been a lot more useful if there was a separate subforum for each RC.... it would have remained more useful without input from limetech.... right now its a total mess with a lot of posts from people saying I'm still using the beta but..... He did say that he was focused on working out a current hardware solution for unraid to sell. That's about as good as communication from limetech gets and I would not be surprised if that is were is focus is. kind of rubs salt in the wound? Yeah I agree that forums is messy that's what I was trying to say. And yes, it does rub salt in the wound. That and the fact that Limetech respond to new licence requests kind of stinks of £££ priorities. I don't mind paying for a product or a businessman doing well for the record, but in this situation it feels almost as if existing customers are being laughed at stood in a corner, whilst Limetech's pockets get deeper and deeper.

This has been talked about before and seems to be ignored. In fact, in order to try to facilitate at least some level of keeping things logical and tidy, Limetech added a new sub forum didn't he, named "Unraid OS 5.0-RC". All this did, was give people a place to post issues with any RC version (there have been many already), which caused a completely cluttered forum and things got lost very quickly. It's a minefield in there. What we need is something like the Mantis bug tracking system implemented. This is designed exactly for things like this. An online version of a bug tracking system. Other forums use this to good effect. The author of Flexraid I think uses this as well. Unfortunately the above involves work and effort from Limetech and it feels at the moment like we are not getting any commitment from him at all. We have to assume this as we see no communications on the forums. If he is working hard on something, then he should post to give us an update. No communication is bad communication and every day that goes by with nothing, unraid and the community is rotting away.

Flexraid. Flexraid is a software layer that bolts onto existing operating systems including both Windows and Unix. This is the current main unraid competitor. Flexraid used to be free, but early this year, the Author made a decision to start charging for the software for reasons he has thoroughly explained on his own forum and website. It is still very reasonably priced and similar in costings to unraid. Licencing is not bound to a single USB drive. Flexraid when I looked at it a year or two ago, was in its infancy and was unstable and not polished. The author has changed all this now and a full product is released which looks to be very nice. His forum is buzzing and he constantly replies and updates people from what I can see. He also has a wiki. I haven't looked into it enough recently to know how it compares to unraid, but it is based on the same concept and parity ideas. The Author of flexraid is now looking towards the future and is trying to bring NZFS (Not ZFS) to "compliment" his existing Flexraid products, using some of the exciting features and ideas you may be fimiliar with from ZFS, but in a different way. I probably explained that quite badly and people who know more on Flexraid can please amend any of the above. This is just me trying to give an idea of it. it basically does a similar job to unraid but is not it's own bundled OS....yet....apparently I have read that this may happen.

LIMETECH SAID: "In addition, I will be updating the 4.7 series (to 4.7.1) with the same parity sync bug fix. Please do not use this thread to request any other changes in 4.7.1 - the decision is already made that the only change from 4.7 to 4.7.1 will be this driver bug fix." on: 07 July 2011, 23:51:06

To my knowledge there are atleast 3 major issues with version 4.7. JoeL summarised them earlier in this thread (sections copied below). The above linked user modified version of 4.7 fixes only issue (1) of the below, plus it's a user modified/created version. As much as I appreciate this users efforts, it is not the advertised official stable/finished 4.7 product that I and other customers paid for. If it is such a good build, why does Tom/Limetech not sticky the thread? Why does he not make an official version like this with these fixes or or or...? There is again, no commitment from him towards fixing these issues. "...4.7 has three known bugs that will corrupt data fixed in the 5.0-rc8a release... 1. The bug where a "write" to a disk could be lost during a re-construction or parity calc... 2. The bug where an MBR on existing disks will be overwritten and result in it pointing to the WRONG sector. (this occurs when the super.dat file on the flash drive is rebuilt.... as when a flash drive dies and is replaced)... 3. The bug where a temporary file created on a disk, when renamed to the original name in a user-share other than the original physical disk does not unlink the original file, resulting in a duplicate file error AND the original contents NOT being re-written, leading to potential data loss. No work-around, the use of temporary files is common on many file transfer/copy programs. This bug exists on all but the very most recent 5. releases. Joe L."

A product that is designed to provide redundancy and reliable storage of data, which exactly fails at this point due to major (unfixed) bugs, is a failure. If this were to be addressed within a reasonable time frame, this would be fine. 1.5 years is not reasonable. A lack of communication generally to customers that have paid for the product, is unreasonable.

A lot of people keep saying the same thing, that version 5 was not what was paid for etc. I agree. I am not disputing this. I paid for a 4.7 licence and want a finished 4.7 product. 4.7 has major bugs and is therefore not deemed fit for purpose. Tom said he would fix this nearly 1.5 years ago with a 4.7.1 release. This has not been done because he has focused on finishing version 5, which in turn would eradicate the need for version 4.7.1. It is not our fault that he has chosen to go this route. Therefore, finishing version 5 is a justifiable argument for delivering a product that even works properly. None of the version 5 BETA builds have yet been bug free and even if they were, they are still just that, BETA builds. They are not final. I am quite happy to ask for a refund and will be persuing this at a point where I literally have given up all hope of Tom fixing this mess. That time is fast approaching for me personally and I feel as a customer I have been patient. My posts on these forums do not abuse Tom, they are my feelings as to the situation and the way he has let down customers. I would be saying this to his face and any of my personal friends too if it were them in this position. The very fact I do it via a forum does not change the way I would say it. Tom, you have and are letting paying customers down and you need to fix things very quickly as time is running out.

Just thought I would pop in here to express my disgust at the extended time in which Tom has failed to respond to customers yet again. I've nothing else to say. And yes, I can post it here and any thread I want to thanks.

really ?!! is that necessary ? I don't know, is it? A lot of people there believed the next communication would be 2013. Tom has been AWOL many times and shown us often an unacceptable level of commitment towards delivering a stable product customers have paid for. He could always come on to these very forums and defend himself. umm no, you PAID for the 4.x vesion NOT the 5.x version. Also if you have been around long enough this isn't the first time this has happened and probably won't be the last. If I were him everytime I see a comment like that I would just put off communication even longer. I'm sure he wants to get version 5 out as fast as he can but somethings just don't always work out the way you want. Which is broken/has major bugs. how have these bugs affected you? please post so we can understand the real world impact of them and not just the theoretical understanding that they exist. thanks They've affected me in that I bought version 4.7 without it being advertised properly (broke) and hence I am not using it with my "live" data/media files. You can dress it up however you like, the fact of the matter is that 4.7 has major bugs and is not to be trusted. It is not a production release and Tom promised to fix it with version 4.7.1 and has not done so for well over a year, mainly due to the focus on version 5. Many people seem to think the answer to my comments is to post on these forums how long they have been using version XYZ for with no issues. That's nice. It also means nothing. It's like saying you have been driving to work in your car with 3 wheels for a month with no issues. Ok that's great, but we don't all want to take that risk.

really ?!! is that necessary ? I don't know, is it? A lot of people there believed the next communication would be 2013. Tom has been AWOL many times and shown us often an unacceptable level of commitment towards delivering a stable product customers have paid for. He could always come on to these very forums and defend himself. umm no, you PAID for the 4.x vesion NOT the 5.x version. Also if you have been around long enough this isn't the first time this has happened and probably won't be the last. If I were him everytime I see a comment like that I would just put off communication even longer. I'm sure he wants to get version 5 out as fast as he can but somethings just don't always work out the way you want. Which is broken/has major bugs.

really ?!! is that necessary ? I don't know, is it? A lot of people there believed the next communication would be 2013. Tom has been AWOL many times and shown us often an unacceptable level of commitment towards delivering a stable product customers have paid for. He could always come on to these very forums and defend himself.