jakev

Thank you, I'm not sure what the issue was... but restarting the unraid box seems to have fixed it. When I restarted it, the old share was gone, and when I re-added it, it allowed me to actually make changes to the settings! I didn't try that before due to being in the middle of a parity check, and of course didn't want to throw hours away restarting that.

Hello... I had tried messing with user shares a while back, and had the same issue. Since it was for my home, I didn't care (nobody else accesses files). Well, now I'm setting up a different box on a network with multiple people (domain) and am wondering if I'm crazy, or if something isn't working right. When I added my first share, "backup", it went fine... or so it seemed. The Backup share is visible to my server... but the allocation method changed from what I assigned it (I had put "most free") to the default "high water". I can't seem to make any changes... no matter what they are. I tried to add/change valid users, allocation method, comments... hit the apply button, and it's back to where it started. So I think... hey, I'll just delete it and start again. Nope... can't see any way to remove/delete the share in order to try again. Using 4.4.2, Accessing from Win2k8 server (but that shouldn't matter...everything seems to be working fine other than share page). Should I be seeing this behavior, or is something wrong here?

Well, I've managed to temporarily get my hands on a 2k8 trial on a machine that supports hyper-v. So far, I've not managed to have much success with any of the linux OSes I've tried... haven't even tried unraid since it appears we'd be limited to the trial/demo version (since no USB drive access). I've tried to create a CentOS/cpanel/WHM setup to no avai (can install the OS, can't get Cpanel/WHM to install/udate)l... I've tried to get FreeBSD up and running without any success(can't install properly)... I have managed to get SOME version of linux runing (don't recall which one) as a desktop machine, but I think my lack of linux experience is really holding me back. So I think I'm going to abandon this idea... man, I had my hopes up! Thanks for all the input, everyone!

I'll take a look at it sometime this week. Off the top of my head, I'd say that you can't actually setup permissions, because unraid does not use NTFS. BUT... you might be able to setup shares on the windows server that point to the unraid shares... you could set filesharing permissions (but not security) this way, if that would work. I think you'd want to only have the crossover cable connected directly to the win2k8 machine, otherwise anyone could get into the unraid tower and just bypass the win2k8 system by connecting in to the other NIC. For some reason I actually THOUGHT that unraid had shares that were based on users... but I never actually tried to use that, so I could be way off.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101451&eml=050508&email=050508&ref_id=5262&ref_t=Z&originid=95241420 Doesn't include free shipping, tho.

If you don't mind paying... Vice Versa Pro is what I use. Mainly because of its ability to automate, and its ease of use. I backup many GB of photographs, and it will check both the source and destination to see which files have actually changed. So I don't spend all day backing up everything, when only 2% of the photos have been modified.

Well... my plans are at least on hold for now. I guess you have to have 2k8 server (64 bit) AND have specific hardware that supports this (from what I gather, all Xeon processors work). While I do have two servers with the proper hardware (and one already running 64 bit 2k3), I don't want to experiment with this in a live environment. So, until I have something a little nicer to experiment on... I'm sittin this one out for now. ::edit:: Looking into the VMware option now... although with 4 drives I don't think it will be all that useful.

I am going to give this a shot soon... I have two locations that have both win2k3 and unraid, so it is a worthwhile investment of time to setup a test server to see if this can be accomplished. One location is already in the process of upgrading to 2k8, and I'm considering it for the other (my personal home business). MS is generous enough to allow a long testing period without buying a license for 2k8, so I'm downloading the ISO and going to test it out soon. If anyone has any experience and wants to give me any suggestions... I'm all ears! I have never used any form of virtual machine/server previously, so this will be a fun experiment. Thanks, -Jake

Ideally I'd use one of our builtin NIC's solely for unraid... but what I was hoping for was the ability to bypass the network transferring to/from the server to unraid (since they're both in the same machine). But I'm not sure that is possible. Also, the biggest issue I see is something you bring up... can unraid see all the drives (and have access to them) as a virtual server or not? But if this would work... I sure do have a lot of fun ideas to try! I would LOVE to not bottleneck things with gigabit network connection (the main thing unraid used for is backup of data). It would also be nice to bundle everything away in one box, rather than two (or more). Also, I would consider this as an option for a streaming media server for our website (unraid within 2k8).

I have been looking over win2k8 server and noticed that by default it can run Sever Virtualization (virtual machines/servers). Is there any reason to think it would (or wouldn't) be possible to have unraid running as a virtual server on 2k8? More info here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/test-drives.aspx

Now they are $112.99, limit of 20 (still no free shipping).

And as usual... actually asking someone else/posting on forum/attempting to contact support leads to (a possible) solution. I managed to get the devices back to how they were on my original post... by plugging in the second power supply. I can't quite figure out how having both PSU's plugged in would change the device ID's... unless somehow the cages for the removable HD trays make the system change how it behaves (even without any drives in them). I actually have about 3 hours of a parity sync that needs done, and then I can THINK ABOUT trying to confirm this issue/problem by restarting with only one PSU. As of now, this is my theory... FWIW. Also, I think I may have stumbled upon a solution to another possible "issue" with the prebuilt unraid servers... These have no power switch, as that is removed to make room for the 12 HD trays. Soooo... in order to turn on the system, you have to unplug both PSU's then plug them back in, so that the system thinks you "lost" power... then it will start up when it "regains" power. Well, that's all fine and dandy until you do like I (think I) did, several weeks ago and tweaked the settings in the BIOS. I am fairly certain I managed to change the "on power loss" setting in the BIOS to "last state". Which I did because hey... I was going to be out of town for a while and I didn't want the system to power itself on if it REALLY lost power... Well, my oh so smooth self powered down the system (see where this is going?) to leave for a few days... and when I get back, unplugging/plugging in the PSU's caused them to start up for half a second, then go dead in a blaze of glory. Ahhhh... After cutting up the pretty wireties holding all the molex cables in place... I found the new PSU does (almost) the same thing. So I decided to drag an empty case over next to the unraid case, and use the power switch cable to connect it to the mobo, and viola, we have a system running again. This is also a theory, as I'm not going to go back thru the hassle of putting the original PSU back in place, plus I actually like having a real power switch, so I won't be doing the old fashioned "unplug/plugin" dance to power on the unraid server. If anyone else would like to test this theory out... make sure you have a power switch you can plug into the mobo before you try it! Don't say I didn't warn you. Man... what a hassle. hopefully SOMEBODY can learn from my mistake(s).

Well... I seem to be back at it again... After a week of the system being down (PSU problem?)... which I'm still working out the solution, ugh. I went to startup the system after the outtage, and now my devices have changed... again. Before I go and make any changes or try to set things up, I wanted to list my old "devices" page settings, and then I'll start to post the new settings. I have no idea why this changes back and forth. Actually, I noticed that my previous post has the settings I was using... so now, with only the parity drive installed, I have as my only option: /dev/scsi/sdh5-5c0i0l0 (sdb1) SATA:ST3320620AS/(ser#) So, essentially, everything stayed the same, except the "9's" turned into "5"s"... pretty much making everything screwed up. I have yet to figure out why it seems to change... or how to make it stop changing. Does anyone have any idea what the problem is, and how I can get it to stop?

On one of our unraid servers, we hae 6 WD 120JB drives... of which 3 of them don't want to display temp settings. ::shrug:: Every other drive (that works) I've put in both of our servers shows the temps... I just blame WD. Combined with the fact that we had a rash of failing WD drives around the 120-200GB era, I have just written off WD, and wouldn't buy another one.

Thanks for the idea on serial numbers. I hope this is something that can't happen once the array is defined and a parity check has happened... as it has only happened before this point. (knock on wood) The next time I power down, I will check to make sure the cards are seated correctly... but I'm not pressing my luck till I HAVE to restart. After that last time of wiggling the cables inernally, everything seemed to go fine, except I found out one more drive was essentially dead... during the parity check I stopped it after around 50 or 60K errors... changed slots and tried again, with the same results. But I'm glad to see the errors right away, rather than after data is being shuffled around. Whew.