Marshalleq

In my experience you can no longer use Unraid's sharing menu to share files via SMB that are stored on ZFS. Instead use the /boot/config/smb-extra.conf that @jortan mentions below. Unraid has added other automation to their sharing system including the automation of actually creating the folder - which does not fit well with an already created folder. Of course this functionality is likely to change when they finally add ZFS support into unraid natively. We are all waiting for that day for various reasons! Oh and you do have to stop and restart the array (or reboot) for these shares to become active. So it pays to plan them out in advance.

Thanks, looks like it might be OK then - will just have to try it. That thread if I recall, was multiple people with issues, not just me. And mine 'went away' for lack of a better explanation, but one person's didn't, so it was quite inconclusive really. They recently posted back on ZFS that it's still an issue for them too. Anyway, thanks for info - I'll hold my breath until I upgrade!

Now that you mention it, I think I recall someone using ZFS 2.0 that was also having this problem and that's what was confusing me. But 'Oh Crap' because if this is still a problem, that means I can't run native ZFS any more which is a major problem preventing me from upgrading. I don't even have any disks for unraid array's other than a USB stick being used for a dummy array - and I definitely don't want to run docker from that. If I recall even running docker in a folder rather than an image presented the same issue. So here goes a revival of the bug thread I guess. The solution might be to shift to TrueNAS Scale - and as awesome as that is, there are a few challenges to overcome with it - e.g I'm on the fence about shifting to Kubernetes - that's the major one to be honest.

Can I just say that I don't have this issue and I do store docker.img on a ZFS drive. I have no idea why - I did have the issue for a while, but one of the updates fixed it. I don't even run an unraid cache drive or array (I'm entirely ZFS) so couldn't anyway. So it may not apply to everyone.

'most reliable' but not reliable is how I would describe it. Scan these forums and there are countless examples of failed raid 1 btrfs. Good call on the priorities and let's hope they bring ZFS number 1! Thanks for posting.

Done and voted for ZFS. I hope unraid come to the party. I'm tired of the consumer end a little and stalking TrueNAS Scale because I miss native functionality such as backups, DOMAINS, ACLS and such like. Not trying to be negative about a great product because they do listen to their customers well - but lets face it, the target market of unraid probably doesn't fully appreciate what they're missing. Sometimes a bit of tech experience does help. ZFS is one thing, but there are a few basics that are making me look elsewhere - quite reluctantly I might add. Good thing for prod and dev boxes. I was surprised to see this poll, really I thought this was a foregone conclusion - I guess they're still on the BTRFS is awesome bandwagon - but while that may have moved on and be true now (not convinced), it wasn't before and we haven't forgotten! ZFS for the win!

@theonewithinUnraid doesn't work like FreeNAS because ZFS isn't supported (yet). I assume that you're trying to connect to datasets. Personally I've only used image files on ZFS on unraid, which work extremely well. If you want to try a dataset because that's how all of yours are, I suspect you will have to look into the whole disk-by-id or something like that. Otherwise it is possible to convert them to an image using qemu convert.

I’m pretty sure I was able to run about 30 dockers in less than 5G of space - but I’d have to check that. What you can do is just stop the docker service, rename the image file / directory and restart the service. If configured as you say the image file / directory should be much smaller. I have seen some docker images not playing nice with the appdata by default so with this you can see which folder is growing amd investigate from there. if one folder is growing you will likely find you’ll have to increase your image file size or allow more space for the folder Indefinitely.

One of your dockers almost certainly has a cache / temporary / cancelled files or similar contained within in. My guess would be qbittorrent vpn. Since you have it in a folder, you should be able to figure that out with du -sh /folderpath. Also, I do believe that you would save space - because the difference between the 20GB image file and the actual docker space (in your case 3GB difference) is still a difference. The main exception to this is when you have compression on the filesystem hosting the image such as ZFS - it will recognise the image files blank space and compress it effectively to zero.

Kernel build is more flexible and you can compile things in as you know. Plug-in is less flexible In that regard and simpler when kernels change. Yeah each has its pros and cons. But yes as far as zfs goes I think there is no difference other than occasional version mismatches which are usually inconsequential.

Ah yeah, that annoying app data folder that sometimes insists on creating itself in a location not set in the defaults!

That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense does it. I assume you know about zpool upgrade and that shouldn't be impacting this. Assuming you're using the plugin, perhaps just uninstall and reinstall the zfs plugin and reboot. Also make sure this is the latest unraid version as recent versions were problematic. Also, if your docker is in a folder rather than in an image I would suggest trying it as an image. Docker folders on ZFS seem to be hit and miss depending on your luck. Can't think of anything else to try right now.

Just came across this today on our local auction site. https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/tl-d800s Basically an 8 bay device connected with an SFF-8088 (or SFF-8644) cable. They have a USB option too, but obviously this is the winner. Supports linux.

I get that you want to make the best of your disks, it is in my experience generally recommended to give ZFS whole disks due to the way it works. That said I think you can give it partitions. What I'm not sure about is if you could give unraid partitions. This configuration is probably going to be terrible performance though. I'd suggest replace the 10TB disks with what you buy, then create a ZFS mirror with the 10TB disks (assuming you want the bigger ones in unraid. You can still use both disks to store things, you can't get around losing two disks for parity though unless you go all ZFS or all unraid array.

Good answer, this question gets asked so often, I wish someone would just include it in dev tools or something. Clearly there's demand.

It didn’t work for me either but haven’t tried lately. While I prefer folders it seems risky if there’s no confirmation that something has been fixed, changed it added. It might break at next upgrade. So will stick to images for now.

Thought I'd have a squiz at this, but am getting page does not exist - in case anyone wants to fix that.

Gotcha. I wish I had developer mates around so I could learn from watching - I reckon there would be a ton of basic dev stuff I'd be good at. I'd be a bit scared of losing my life to IT though - it's bad enough already!

It's pretty hard to beat ZFS when it had over a billion dollars spent on it and has been around for 30 years. Compare that to BTRFS being open source and a little over 10 years. But it's the denial of any issue on BTRFS that concerns me, you're never going to get a good file system if the project is going to deny there's anything wrong all the time or worse ask why you would even want these things fixed! Oh and thanks for the podcast @ConnectivIT good to have actual examples explained for everyone. It's been a year since then, so hopefully one of the devs heard it and did something about it. Personally I'd like to see BTRFS removed from Unraid and replaced with ZFS. Or at least the option!

So no redundancy for your dockers then?

I heard a rumour, last time I tried it didn't work because Unraid needed some kind of ZFS drive compiled into docker or something - I'm not really sure why everything has started working - so I'm nervous to change more. Perhaps Unraid guys included basic ZFS libraries in the new version of unraid or something.

Nice Podcast! Signed up - they seem like good fun.

All you gotta do is search these forums and you shall be rewarded with many examples

I'll never use BTRFS again unless it comes out that they've admitted and fixed whatever it is that keeps making it fail.

@ich777@steini84@Joly0 Both my systems seem to still be running well on latest unraid and latest ZFS. Both docker.img set as xfs and residing on ZFS SSD Mirror. I am nervous as to why or what changed and wondering what's different between mine and Joly0 - nevertheless it seems like we have a couple of different scenarios we should be able to work it out from.