Rajahal

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    Greenleaf Technology

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  1. https://www.newegg.com/red-wd100efax-10tb/p/N82E16822231546 + $40 off w/ promo code 93XPK57, limited offer Normally $269, comes out to $230 after promo code Limit 2 per customer/account If you don't mind shucking external drives, and don't care about the slightly slower speed, this one is an even better deal: https://www.newegg.com/black-wd-elements-10tb/p/N82E16822234350 10 TB for $190 The best deal that I'm finding today (in terms of price per GB) is the 8 TB version of that external drive: https://www.newegg.com/black-wd-elements-8tb/p/N82E16822234349 8 TB for $140
  2. Edit: Follow the below with caution, I've asked Spaceinvader One to review this to make sure it is correct. I'll update this if he does. Grateful for this thread, as I had the same issue. After watching the Spaceinvader One video linked above, it seemed like switching to the official Plex container was the best and easiest option (that part of the video starts at 13:19, and you don't need to watch the rest). Here's the tricky part for me, which caused much frustration, so I'll spell it out and hope that it helps someone else. On Spaceinvader One's server, he has all of his movies and tv inside a single user share, like this: media > movies media > tv So that's a user shared named 'media', and inside that are folders named 'movies' and 'tv'. Plex sees that as this path: /mnt/user/media/ (so that's the path of a user share in unRAID named 'media', as viewed from Plex's perspective) My shares are organized differently, I have separate user shares for movies and tv, like this: Movies > subfolders containing movies TV > subfolders containing TV shows So Plex sees the path like this: /mnt/user/Movies & /mnt/user/TV Therein lies the problem, I have multiple paths to map to Plex, not just a single 'media' user share. The key to get this to work is in the 'Host Path 3' settings on the new Plex container (not the old LimeTech one). I've attached a screenshot of my settings, I believe this points Plex to all of your user shares, so that in Plex you can then specify Movies vs TV vs whatever for each library. What is also confusing is that Plex will display a file's path as starting with /data, even if you don't have any user shares named 'data'. I thought this was an error, but it seems like that is just how Plex works - you specify what path to point to /data (with the Host Path 3 settings), then internally in Plex it will refer to this path as /data going forward. So for example, my Movies library in Plex shows the path /data/Movies, which looks wrong but is actually correct. You can think of this like a shortcut inside of Plex, anytime Plex writes /data it is actually using the full path that you specified, which in my case is /mnt/user. To effectively, /data/Movies is the same thing as /mnt/user/Movies. Confused yet? Adding to that, if you do end up having to manually remap each of your Plex libraries to the correct folder, as I did, then in Plex you'll look inside the 'data' folder, and find your user shares there. So I think I've got this working. Unfortunately, since I did it wrong the first time (following Spaceinvader One's settings verbatim), Plex added my library full of broken links, so everything was visible but I couldn't play anything. Now that I've fixed it, I'm running a library scan, which should fix all of the broken links. I'm finding some stuff will play and others are broken, but once the scan finishes I believe everything will be back to normal. Annoying, but still better than losing the whole library and starting over.
  3. Newegg: WD Elements 8TB USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive WDBWLG0080HBK-NESN Black $10 off promo code (requires you to sign up for newsletter): EMCFUVTV2 Similar deal, but the Seagate brand instead: B&H: Seagate 8TB Expansion Desktop USB 3.0 External Hard Drive no promo code needed
  4. Looks nice! How's the noise? The poweredge servers I've worked with have all been pretty loud.
  5. beautiful work! I too am impressed with the Kindle/iPad hack. Have you found that the iPad consumes much more power? I've always wanted to use an e-Ink screen for this type of always on display because it seems like it would be incredibly efficient (and no backlight to add light pollution to a room). I've been thinking about this in relation to a smart mirror type project.
  6. The best 8 TB drive deal got even better: Seagate Expansion 8TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0 (STEB8000100) Currently $142.49. I ordered one yesterday, it arrived today, and I just shucked it to reveal an 8 TB Seagate Barracuda Compute ST8000DM004, identical to this one selling for $210. I have one of these already as my parity drive, purchased and shucked a few months ago. Same model as above. The major downside is of course voiding the 1 year warranty by shucking the drive, so there's a gamble there. A more sagacious person would probably run burn in testing on the drive before shucking it, but I'm much too impatient for all that
  7. If you want to add a cloud backup component to a few shares on your server (the family photos and truly important stuff), here's a killer deal that makes that an easy process: https://deals.androidauthority.com/sales/zoolz-cloud-storage-lifetime-subscription-2tb expires in 4 days It is a pretty no-frills backup service, but it does support backing up network drives and external hard drives, and doesn't require them to be connected on any sort of schedule (which is a huge limitation of several other cloud backup services). Also supports end to end encryption. Their backbone is Amazon AWS. You will need a Windows or MacOS install as an intermediary between Zoolz cloud and your unRAID share. Presumably you could set that up as a VM on your server, but I'm just using a Windows desktop I have running anyway. A few notes I've found from setting this up myself - the deal includes up to 2 users and 2 computers. While it isn't explicitly stated, it is limited to 1 computer per user. So if you want to backup 2 computers, you just have to create 2 users for yourself (so you'll need a second email address). No big deal, just an annoyance. Also, I'm not sure if the full 2 TB can be used to backup your server. It is split into 1 TB of cold storage (which does work for network shares) and 1 TB of instant (hot) storage. I think the instant storage is for direct uploads through HTTP, which won't really work for this (well, it would as a one time upload, but it would take forever and be rather annoying). Not 100% sure on this point yet. I'll see what happens once I fill my 1 TB of cold storage.
  8. Ah, I see, the NUC is a separate box, I didn't catch that before. So the Roku doesn't support surround sound? That might be a deal breaker for me.
  9. Great, thanks for catching me up! I've used Roku before and liked them, I'm definitely happy with that option. I have a Chromecast already that works well for streaming stuff (Youtube, Netflix, etc), but I figured it wouldn't work as well for this since it is WIFI only, and I didn't want to bog down my network with server traffic. Roku uses Ethernet, so that looks like a better option, as I can contain all of my video traffic within a hardwired section of my LAN. The i3 540 in my test system has a passmark score of 2694, so it sounds like that's the one I should be working with. And according to Biostar the H55A+ motherboard supports up to 16 GB of RAM, so I'm happy to throw more RAM in there. I only plan to stream to a single TV. With your setup, is PMP (which I assume stands for Plex Media Player?) running in Docker or on a VM? I might just try to copy your setup for now, and play with it as I learn more.
  10. Thanks very much! That gives me somewhere to start. I'll see if I can get IOMMU enabled on one of the systems.
  11. Ah, UCD, the old digs. I'm back to tinkering with servers after a long absence. If you're curious where I've been, I told my life story over in the Lounge. While I used to be very involved here, now my knowledge base is at least 5 years obsolete, so I'm hoping y'all can help point me in the right direction and save me hours of research. I've currently got 3 separate computers/servers that I'm looking to combine into one. I'm happy to scavenge parts and mix and match from each, though I don't think any of the core CPU/RAM/MOBO components are interchangeable. Here's the hardware I've got handy: Test system: M/B: Biostar H55A+ CPU: Intel i3 540 @ 3.07 GHz HVM: Enabled IOMMU: Disabled Cache: 128 kB, 512 kB, 4096 kB Memory: 4 GB (max. installable capacity 4 GB) Network: bond0: fault-tolerance (active-backup), mtu 1500 eth0: 1000 Mb/s, full duplex, mtu 1500 Existing unRAID server: M/B: Intel Corporation - DH67CF CPU: Intel® Celeron® CPU G440 @ 1.60GHz HVM: Enabled IOMMU: Disabled Cache: 32 kB, 256 kB, 1024 kB Memory: 4 GB (max. installable capacity 16 GB) Network: bond0: fault-tolerance (active-backup), mtu 1500 eth0: 1000 Mb/s, full duplex, mtu 1500 Existing HTPC: M/B: Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H CPU: AMD Athlon 7750 Dual-Core Processor @ 2.700 GHz HVM: Disabled IOMMU: Disabled Cache: 128 kB, 512 kB Memory: 4 GB (max. installable capacity 4 GB) Network: bond0: fault-tolerance (active-backup), mtu 1500 eth0: 1000 Mb/s, full duplex, mtu 1500 GPU: ATI Radeon HD 4600 SSD: Kingston SNVP325S264GB (64 GB) I'm not sure that the 'max installable memory capacity' as reported by unRAID is correct, I'm pretty sure most of these motherboards can handle more than 4 GB of RAM. I've also got various hard drives, two 500 GB, one 640 GB, and the rest ranging from 2 TB to 4 TB. The small capacity ones and the SSD I'm happy to dedicate to certain apps, as cache drives, boot drives, whatever is needed. The large ones I want to keep as unRAID parity and data drives. My goal is to build a system with 3 primary functions: unRAID for mass storage and drive failure tolerance, front-end HTPC software such as XBMC or Plex for a nice TV interface, and a torrent seedbox, which I would probably prefer to manage remotely. So much has changed with unRAID OS I'm not sure where to begin. There's a GUI now! That's pretty sweet. And all the work done with Docker and VMs is incredible too. A few questions to start: Can unRAID GUI be used as a regular linux desktop to run other apps, such as torrent software? Will Docker cover my needs, or should I be looking at VMs? If I need to go the VM route, will my above hardware suffice? What HTPC and torrent software do you recommend? Will it run in Docker or does it need a VM?
  12. Howdy everyone! It has been years since I've been actively involved in the unRAID community. My life has finally brought me back to a place where I have the time and motivation to start tinkering with servers again, so here I am. I'm glad to see some familiar folks here, and plenty of new people as well. For those of you who may remember me from the old days (circa 2010-2012), here's a brief history of where my life has taken me: I started Greenleaf Technology, a custom server building business, with Kyle (prostuff1) whom I met through these forums. Kyle and I never met in person, but worked together for years over email, chat, and the occasional phone call. For 6 months I worked on building the business in the evenings and on weekends while working my full time job during the day. Seeing the business steadily grow and needing a change in my life, I moved from my small city (Reno, NV) to the big city (Oakland, CA) to chase the tech entrepreneur's dream. I'm happy to say that Greenleaf supported my life in Oakland for nearly a year, which is no small feat if you know anything about the cost of living in the bay area! Then hit the 2011 Thailand floods, which thrashed the hard drive market and ultimately gutted our business (and many others, I'm sure). An amazing lesson about the butterfly effect that I still carry with me today! As Greenleaf slowed down, I decided to hand over the reins to Kyle and pursue other interests. Around this time I started a small IT business, which has provided me with steady income for over 6 years, and helped start a coworking space in Oakland as well. This is when I really entered the bay area rat race - juggling my second tech startup at all hours while also working as the tech expert in another fledgling startup by day. While the IT work stabilized my income, I got to learn a whole new industry (property development, commercial real estate, and coworking space infrastructure) while the coworking space grew. During my two years with them, I helped them grow from one building to five, and helped grow the community from one member to nearly 200. I learned a ton and had a lot of fun in that industry, as we took on quirky and ambitious projects such as building a slide from the 3rd floor to the 2nd floor inside one of our buildings! I was fully immersed in the bay area startup culture, hosting quad-copter duels in the office, drinking beer at 4 pm on Fridays (and other days that end in 'y'), organizing building-wide Nerf battles after dark...its hard to remember if we ever got any actual work done in those days. But as the staff and membership grew, layers of bureaucracy were put in place that started to suck the fun out of it. I found myself troubleshooting printers and WIFI all day long, got bored, got a little sick of startup and coworking culture in general, and decided to move on. After I left the coworking space, I floated around a bit, falling back on IT work that was sometimes consistent, sometimes not, and ultimately burning through much of my savings. Eventually I landed a 'big' tech job, working for a large company as a tech support rep for their product. While the company paid far more than I had ever made before, it came at the disadvantage of a cubicle-bound lifestyle, which doesn't suit me. Just as I was about to quit, the company was acquired by some other company, the offices were all closed, and everyone went remote. This was perfect for me, as now I was getting paid to hang out at home all day playing board games and having sex while waiting for tech support requests to come in, which was generally something like 2 - 3 calls per day. Unfortunately it didn't last as the new overlords laid most of us off after the acquisition was completed, but I got a nice severance package and had saved up a lot from my previous paychecks. In 7 months I had earned about as much, maybe more, than I had in the previous 4 or 5 years... As a parallel storyline alongside my professional endeavors, my move to the bay area also lead to my embracing of the polyamorous lifestyle. During my time in the bay I dated a lot of people, some just briefly, others for a year or more. This added pleasure, pain, and complexity to my already hectic life as in moments of frenzy I would be dating three or four people, some who got along with each other and some who didn't, while also juggling my various businesses, jobs, and side hustles. While my bar area adventure started with me living in a shared attic (accessible only by ladder) in a run-down neighborhood, it ended with me living in a penthouse apartment with panoramic views of Oakland, San Francisco, and the surrounding area. I would regularly throw bacchanalian soirées rife with activities that I probably shouldn't mention online... My WIFI network name was Gatsby, as a reflection of how my life felt. As I was being laid off from the 'big' tech job, two of my serious relationships were coming to a breaking point - my two partners did not get along, our triad was unhealthy and unstable, and something had to give. The three of us broke up from one another, and I found myself with a minimum of entanglements - no job, no serious girlfriends, and a swank apartment that I couldn't really afford anymore...it was time to go. I booked a one-way ticket to Thailand. A month later one of my partners and I rekindled our relationship, so she decided to join me for the trip. We'll call her T, and she's been the cornerstone of my life since that time. T and I formed a home base in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and traveled around southeast asia for about a year. In that time we visited Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Indonesia (Bali), and many regions of Thailand. On our return trip we lived in a campervan in New Zealand for 5 weeks, and visited Hawaii for a bit as well. We continued our poly adventures overseas, and ended up teaching a series of workshops on consensual non-monogamy and helped kick-start the nascent poly scene in Chiang Mai. During this year abroad I enjoyed phase two of the entrepreneur's dream: running your business from a beach in a far off place. It had taken over 5 years to build up my IT business to the point where I had other trained folks I could count on to get the job done and clients who trusted me to delegate the work, and finally I was able to relax and enjoy the fruits of my labor. I was able to take time to focus on my artistic pursuits, photography and film-making, and let my business mostly run itself. While I wasn't earning a lot at that point, usually just $200-300 per month, earning San Francisco dollars and spending Thai baht goes a long way. With this small amount of passive income, we were able to stretch my savings, and in the end we spent about $10k on the entire year abroad. Once returning to the US, T and I lived out of my car and friends' houses while we traveled around California, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Colorado catching up with friends and family and seeing some of the incredible national parks and landscapes the western US has to offer. After about a year and a half of nomadic living, we found ourselves again with the urge to settle down, and with good reason: we were engaged to be married and pregnant. We settled in rural Oregon, bought a house (with immense help from my family, as the lifestyle I described above does not lend itself to large savings accounts or good credit), and now here I sit, writing this all out to share with you. For the first time in many years I have a house to store my servers in, space to tinker, and some time on my hands (at least until the baby is born). Thus is the story of my magnificent return to unRAID!
  13. Alright, everything is gone! This thread can be closed/deleted.
  14. Hey folks, so I've got a bunch of 2 TB drives, asking $60 each for them (plus shipping, USPS flat rate is $5). Happy to offer discounts if you buy a bunch of them (make me an offer, I'll probably say yes!). They are mostly Hitachi and Seagate LP, with a single WD EARS. Only 1 week left until everything that doesn't sell gets donated or sent to e-waste!