nasforthemass

PLEX (linuxserver's Repository) I recently went through the OS upgrade of 6.9.2 -> 6.10.3. Everything smooth except PLEX, again. All libraries showed up but playback was not working on almost every file. I noticed that it seemed to be because of the transcoding progress. "Plex UI" would sometimes say " Could not Transcode". Docker Log contained multiple errors after attempting to play items, but there was an error that displayed in the log just when starting the docker "Critical: libusb_init failed". Looking at the log errors that happened when attempting to play media: Plex was having issues accessing certain media folders AND could only play certain files with different experiences between devices. Quick solution for MY Plex errors: I used "binhex-krusader" to look at the plex folders and saw that the "Transcode" folder (edit docker to find path) was R-x (read only). NOTE: the villain was the transcode folder that was inside the transcode path folder i created in plex. I edited the docker container and gave the "Transcode" field a new path / custom folder. When I launched Plex again and tried playing transcoded content, it worked! And in my new "Transcode folder path", there was now a folder just called "Transcode" that plex created with R-W-x permissions!

I didn't have time to find my spreadsheet, but creating something like this will help you with your homework of "create a build plan".

Well, I'm glad some of that info helped you out. And yes, there are many options and tricks to learn...but really, it's more important to understand your individual needs and how to execute them. There is a FANTASTIC youtube channel you need to follow/watch to expand your knowledge! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZDfnUn74N0WeAPvMqTOrtA/videos (this guy is a legend!!!!!) Regarding building your own setup: There is a builds section in this forum and there are specific forum areas just for hardware https://forums.unraid.net/forum/9-hardware/ https://forums.unraid.net/forum/15-motherboards-and-cpus/ https://forums.unraid.net/forum/33-storage-devices-and-controllers/ ^^this last one, "storage devices and controllers, will be pretty helpful for you regarding the HDD connections. If you would like a little info from a different source, I used this website/group a TON, because they are more interested in used datacenter and small office server parts vs new and off the shelf consumer parts. I know you have a decent starting budget, but the reason this is helpful, is because server parts are usually built to last longer, have more customizations and built for large scale setups. https://forums.serverbuilds.net/c/builds/18 https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/guide-anniversary-2-0-starter-kit/1075/8 (lots of helpful info like this) Example: My motherboard can handle 14x Sata/Drive connections directly from the motherboard, no HBA/LSI card required. Here's your homework before buying your components: -Watch a ton of SpaceInvaders videos, especially the ones that sound a little more basic. you will learn many things even if its repetitive. -Have a "build plan". Watch the video below, 320TB video editing server. This is a real world scenario with a game plan. -Focus on your personal needs: how much space do you have, how many drives will you need to fit in the case, do you need to be energy efficient, do you need it to be super quiet, is heat an issue??? All of this will change the components you will use. -Will your UnRaid box be for storage only, or will you try and use the VMS and Docker functions? big difference in components. -RESEARCH your Motherboard/cpu combo!!!!!! this will be the limiting factor to your set-up scale/potential. Example: My current motherboard has 2x 10GB ethernet built-in, 14x sata connections, LOTS of ram upgradeability, Lots of PCIE lanes, etc.. (I wanted 10GB ethernet on-board, I wanted to avoid an LSI card so that I had more PCIE slots for GPUs and PCIE storage AND I wanted to be able to have lots of CPU options) PS: I think you will be fine with a 10GB ethernet connection. It doesn't sound like your use case will need more than that and 10GB = LESS HEAT than 40GB. (if you are doing big transfers from drives that already have info on them, you can add/mount those drives inside the server as a separate "unassigned device" and copy that data internally) i did this when i first setup my raid and needed to copy 4x 4TB HDDs into the UnRaid volume, vs connecting them from my computer and transferring them via 10G ethernet/SMB file share.

You got answers from 2 pretty experienced members. nice! maybe you'd like to hear some feedback from someone that was in your position not too long ago... Before i do, I would like to make sure your understanding and expectation of data read/write speed is on the same page of different raid set-ups and how your storage is connected/managed. I only say this because I run LARGE 80TB+ storages in both of the following setups. DAS is "direct attached storage". NAS is "network attached storage". It seams like you are trying to create a NAS that works as a DAS. BOTH a DAS and NAS can run a traditional raid set-up, but I am only aware of a NAS being able to run other methods of raids. The basic "storage" foundation of UnRaid (this OS) is as follows: you can have multiple HDDs of mixed capacity and speeds all work in unison, while still having 1 or 2 drives as Parity you can add more drives and substitute drives at any time, with minimal work a file is written entirely to one drive only, meaning that drive can be read individually without needing the other drives from your system you can create a faster drive pool/cache for higher speed volumes Let's pretend you only have 10x 18TB Seagate Exos in your UnRaid system and you choose 1x of those drives as parity. (we'll save the SSD's and cache for later) Your Raw storage is 180TB, but your Volume/Usable storage would be 162TB. (-1x 18TB drive used for parity) Imagine you had a folder called "Movies" with 999 files/folders in them, each one around 65GB. Although you would see the "Movies" Folder and everything in it like a traditional single HDD/SDD, the folder would actually be physically across all the drives without "splitting" the individual files; an easy hypothetical would be: 999 movie files split between 9 drives (because the parity doesn't store the useable date)... meaning each drive would have around 111 movies stored on it. Cool? Have we understood the basics of it? Let's say you want to transfer/read/copy one of those movies files: The main limiting speed will be the drive that it is stored on. Yes, a Seagate Exos can do upto 260MB/s, but that is only a portion of the HDD that can read/write that fast. In the real world, some parts of that same Seagate Exos will only get around 50-80MB/s. Different areas of a HDD have different read/write speeds (depending on how full it is). A good SSD on the other hand, can read/write almost the same speed on any part of the drive. Good practice for users new to UnRaid: Not all storage needs to be wicked fast! But even if you do want higher speed storage, UnRaid has other tricks up it's sleeve, like cache pools, being able to mix in SSDs, creating folders that only use the faster storage array and other folders being stored only on the "slower" HDD setup. Example from my setup: (Notice how there are 3 levels of speed/importance) I have 8x 8TB of HDDs. I store pictures, videos and back-ups on there. Especially older files that i don't need regularly. (ski vacation pictures from 8 years ago) I have an 4TB SSD that only has 1 folder in it and the data in that folder doesn't get split to the HDDs. This is where I keep recent pictures that i don't need on my laptop. I have a 800GB PCIE/NVME storage that is used as a write cache. If i transfer 50GB of new pictures and drone footage to my Unraid, this storage is the fastest at receiving it, and then transfers it to the SSD or HDD (depending what folder I choose) at a pace that suits it. If I were to transfer the 50GB of new files directly to the HDD volume, my transfer speed would be limited by the write speeds of my drives. (They're around 88% full, so its around 100MB/s UnRaid is awesome, but understanding it's core functions are pretty important when it comes to your expectations and usage. BUT you're right. there is a learning curve to being a confident user. there are lots of functions, settings and best-practices that will improve or make your server work best for you! If you build your own system, you will learn more about system bottlenecks (when one component is slowing everything else down) and solving this. PS, I built both my systems from used server parts one bay (from reliable vendors). the first system was great, i learned a lot. but i then built a second system because i saw the bottlenecks/limits of my first system and was more informed on how to build a more up to date one.

WOW!!! I clicked on this out of curiosity, but this little piece of info regarding HDMI dummy plugs is going to make my remote-VM life so much better! was so tired of constantly readjusting the resolution of my OSX VM. thank you!!! here's an updated link of the product, perhaps @techsperion could update his link! https://www.amazon.com/Display-Emulator-Headless-Display（Fit-Headless-1920x1080-3840x2160/dp/B074NNZYW4

a little more info would be helpful, like what brand rx 580, which OS version and what unraid. but, maybe this helps: in unraid, shut down your VM's, go to settings, VM manager and look at the "PCIe ACS override" menu.... my unraid was running fine with gpu till i updated to 6.7, then no graphics card working. I had to change that function to "both" for it to work again and display in "about my mac" menu

I just upgraded to Unraid 6.7. Everything ran smooth until I checked my VM's: Win works fine. OSX dead. 😭 Help. This was my 4th successful install via "spaceinvader one" tutorials and was running mojave, no issues, for a couple months. 🙏 Maybe its a simple fix 🙏, but i haven't encountered this error yet... feel free to ask me for any info i didn't already attach. (i removed the osx SMC privacy haiku) main error in log is: Domain id=3 is tainted: high-privileges Domain id=3 is tainted: custom-argv *<---- RED system error* Domain id=3 is tainted: host-cpu ANY HELP IS HIGHLY APPRECIATED. if not, guess ill just be reinstalling a new VM from scratch. haha osx vm xml.rtf

I did not enjoy VNC through a browser when setting up my VM. All my issues were solved once I used a VNC software on a separate computer on the local network! for me, i ran "VNC Viewer" and TurboVNC Viewer" from my main mac.

I started using unraid shortly before OS 6.6 became stable. since then, there have been a lot of stable releases, which is good! otherwise, i would say its around 3 months... would be longer if it weren't for those great (and now convenient) updates!!!

Nope, I keep all my drives spinning all the time x2

upgrade from 6.6.6 to 6.6.7 successful and smooth. thank you. no docker/vm/network issues.

@speedyonthehill... good job spotting the the power inverter fan facing the wrong way. BUT, you really shouldn't have to worry about the cpu being a large heatsink, as long as the fan on it is blowing the right direction! To the REAR of the case. before you breakdown your case and hardware/flare: 1- make sure your cpu heatsink fan is blowing the right direction. normally there's an arrow on the fan itself, but doesn't hurt to check during step 3. 2- can you share a screenshot of overall system temps, aka, motherboard. (we know your drives are hot, but is the rest of the system hot?) 3- looking at your pics, you have a 3 layered front part. top is icydock, middle is empty with single fan all the way at front, bottom is icydock. When your system is on and running/during usage, can you open your windowed-sidewall for a few second and just place your hand behind the icydocks. just make sure that you feel those two fans actually working by blowing air FROM the drives into/towards the motherboard area. while you are at it, just make sure you can feel where the other internal fans are blowing to. then close your windowed-sidewall again.

Certain big e-bay user accounts sell windows keys for $4 or $5.. mostly UK ebay accounts. just look for ones with huge stars/reviews in recent months. they normally say in description: get your key in message/email in 1-3 mins. I got mine in 1 minute. mostly its computer recycling companies that rip the keys off of recycled computers. for personal use/gaming, there is zero issue with it. I've had mine running for about 1 yr so far, no problems.

Just curious, have you tried the web-vnc on a different browser? I am also MacOS based and when i connect to my windows VM, i have to adjust the vnc connection on the browser (a small configuration setup i have to adjust) but i have noticed that different browsers work differently on MacOS

@jovdk this video is pretty helpful when first learning about unraid. bear in mind, its a bit older and his tutorials now are much better! there are ways to make very high performance read/write folders or systems, but that's more hardware and workflow based. hope this video helps!

I'm currently at 40 (excluding parity, unassigned and cache...) but I am only using 6 of the 15 case slots. if only i won a very small lotto ticket, it would be full! UPDATE 07/2022: 78TB (excluding parity, unassigned and cache...) using 10 of the 15 case slots. Finally got to the stage of mixing drive sizes!

@Squid I just saw the fix common problems message pop up today.. and yes, it was scary!!!! I dont think i setup anything wrong, but a little sleepy typing could lead to sleepless nights... so i deleted it. haha

I 100% agree. Even in big cities with rare power issues, there is often a testing period with on and offs. I also just wait till i am home before restarting the system.

brian, thank you for your persistence through that loss and following through with the detective work! it helped me relax after reading the title of your thread. and possibly help prevent me from making a similar mistake. ps: i still dont have personal data on my unraid as i am still learning the ins and outs of the os... but threads like this help me error proof my setup!

@Squid After seeing it in your signature, I read through the first two pages of this thread, got all excited... then i found this: perhaps you could edit your signature to Others: Ransomware Protection (for older unraid very) or (deprecated) or (no new installs) or (legacy app) p.s. Not trying to bash on you, just trying to save others from the allure of the oasis in the desert. hahaha 😉

just wanted to say that i am loving the NEW CA!!!! i'm running unraid 6.6.6 and it is performing SSOOOOO much faster and responsive! the info is cleaner, the categories are easier to toggle around between! 👏 👏 👏

YUSUFLIMZ - OP, thanks for the fantastic write-up! definitely an interesting way to beat around the bush. just depends on which backup service you use. I'm assuming you did this because of the higher back blaze $ price tag for a server/nas box, right?...

Since I was reading this thread, I thought I might add my own numbers for other peoples curiosities: Last checked on Tue 12 Feb 2019 06:56:05 PM PST (yesterday), finding 0 errors. Duration: 16 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds. Average speed: 131.3 MB/sec I currently have 6x 8TB drives in the array: 1 parity, 5 data storage (40TB) VMs and Dockers on Cache, but I leave everything running, including 2 VMs using around 88% of RAM, one being a very data transfer intensive VM to the disk array.

Thank you for your videos, I remember watching this video a couple of times before diving into unraid os and during the trial period. thank you!

+1 . YES PLEASE!!! +1 . custom = cool