awediohead

Title pretty much says it all. I have 1 x 4TB HD parity, 4 x 4TB HDs, 2 x 500GB SSDs, one of which is currently unused, one is the cache drive for most shares, and 1 x 8TB unassigned device drive, and the flash drive of course. Sometimes things seem to be operating as I'd expect with the cache and maybe one of the array drives having a green light on the Web UI, because someone in the house is streaming from Plex, the others being grey to indicate they're spun down. However, for no reason I can fathom, five minutes later, when I check the Web UI main page all the drives are lit up green when nothing else (I'm aware of) has changed. Why the unassigned device should spin up, even when some other automatic process is spinning up the array, is weird. In the disk settings I have them set to spin down after 15 minutes, but they don't spin down. I've tried resetting this (the changing the setting to 30 min, applying and then changing it back again trick I read about on these forums) and the server was rebooted yesterday. Is there a setting I'm missing? Maybe even something I need to change in the UEFI BIOS? Generally very keen to learn about anything I can do to reduce power consumption and running costs. Thanks

I can't say I've "solved" this by a long stroke, but I thought I'd post back here to say I found this thread useful https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=318242 specifically this: Though this mentions Nemo, I'd actually wiped Mint in favour of Pop OS by the time I found this, but the same applies to Files which is the Pop OS version of Nautilus So what worked for me was to go to +Other Locations and totally ignore the supposedly handy direct Network links to my unraid server and other devices on the network. At the bottom of the Files window there's a field with "Enter server address" into which I put smb://nameofmyunraidserver.local/nameofshare I find it very odd that these things don't just work OTB between two machines running Linux (NFS didn't work either) and all the tutorials I could find target setting up Samba to share a folder on the machine you're on, rather than to connect to a share on unraid. If I've just missed a straightforward quality tutorial despite hours of searching please post a link! This one from Matt Hartley was the best I've found so far: https://glovesoff.substack.com/p/samba-on-linux-the-easy-way

So I'm getting this red warning on 6.12.0 stable do I just delete the line in /boot/config/vfio-pci.cfg ? The line is: BIND=0000:06:00.0|10de:1d01 0000:06:00.1|10de:0fb8 I think it might be because I removed a GPU a while back but as I'm not currently running any VMs and this only shows on reboot . . . The file is otherwise blank apart from this single line - just need a little reassurance before I delete something I shouldn't!

I've just installed Linux Mint on a laptop we helped a completely non-techy friend buy. She's a close friend who cares for my disabled wife and the idea was that she would occasionally use our unraid server to back up various files when she visits. I have done a lot of searching online to try to resolve this before posting here but I've found nothing that makes any sense as to why this shouldn't 'just work' especially since it's a fresh install of Linux Mint. So on MacOS Finder I can easily (as I have for years) just enter the user share name and password when I get the 'connect as' prompt in the Finder. It immediately connects to my unraid NAS shares and lists the available folders. When I try to enter the same credentials in Linux Mint's file browser under Network -> NameofmyNAS (File Sharing) I get "Unable to mount location - Failed to retrieve share list from server: invalid argument" In the past I've quite easily managed to access my unraid shares via my own Linux Desktop install which is a Fedora spin - and the searching I've done provides "solutions" that are so very far beyond my understanding and refer to a bug in gvfs not Samba on Ubuntu or talk about editing various conf files in the terminal - none of which should be necessary for something I'd have thought was pretty straightforward? I suspect that once again something really fundamental in my understanding of how Linux works is the failing here - but for something to work flawlwssly on MacOS and not another Linux distro that's supposed to be super beginner friendly seems weird. cheers

Thanks Conner. Yes I should have said that I'd already set the BIOS to "Typical Idle Current" when I updated the UEFI BIOS - I agree it does seem to be THE critical factor since I'd never got around to changing the RAM speed from default when I was having multiple problems. As I said before, when I ran Memtest86, it defaulted to running it at 3200 MHz and my thinking was that if it passed with no errors at a higher clock then it should be fine at 2133 MHz for unraid. TBH the leap from a 4C/4T Haswell era CPU to Ryzen 3rd gen with double the RAM I had before is so enormous I'm not bothered about 2133 vs 3200 so long as everything works at least as well as it did before. Thanks for the clarification on JEDEC vs XMP vs anything in between.

Maybe someone can clarify what the linked post means by "overclocking" RAM exactly ? - is it saying that any XMP/DOCP profile should be totally avoided or is it saying that RAM speeds should be limited according to the tabulated numbers for each generation / memory rank? I'm confused because my RAM's basic clock is 2133 MHz but was bought as 3200 MHz RAM (2 x 16) and the 7 hour Memtest86 test I ran also defaulted to testing it at 3200 MHz with no errors. For example on my desktop PC running a 3700x on B450 I have 3773MHz RAM (2 x8) so if I were to use that with unRAID I'd understand it would make sense to underclock it to 3200 MHz in line with the settings listed in the tables. I'll be sticking with 2133 MHz for a while because I can finally get a reliable connection over LAN - the new Connect version of Myservers seems to have solved some problems I was having!

Thanks Hoopster, you posted the same link about RAM on Ryzen that I'd already linked to - first line of second paragraph of my post For sure it mentions some other things but I'd meant to make it clear I was looking for any info further to what was mentioned in that post, especially since that info was current 3 years and many BIOS / AGESA revisions ago. Happily memtest completed with 0 errors at 3200, so from that can one assume that there will be no errors at the basic 2133 MHz? Or is that a false assumption? I've been having all kinds of hassle with the My Servers plugin reporting my server to be online when I know for a fact it's switched off. So it's perhaps not that surprising that when I try to use the "Local Access" link it fails to connect even when I know it is switched on. That's meant I'm juggling graphics cards trying to get access to the GUI directly to make changes before trying it via my LAN again - rinse and repeat. I ended up going down a fairly lengthy rabbit hole on account of Firefox and Brave both auto-correcting my unraid IP from http:// to https:// everytime I try to login - that might have been resolved by deleting the cache and site data (everything) from the privacy / history preferences in Firefox, but it's 1 am and I'm done for today. cheers

So I've just switched from my old haswell based z97 motherboard to a Ryzen x570 + 3600 + 32GB 3200 MHz RAM with a GTX 1050 for transcoder duties . . . . and things haven't gone well so far. I definitely hadn't factored in the downsides of not having an iGPU when you can't login over a network - I think this is now solved and was because I'd set up my router (asuswrt-merlin) to bind the assigned IP to the MAC address of the old motherboard NIC. I've read the info here about not overclocking RAM on Ryzen, and I'm currently running memtest86 via a Ventoy flash drive. We'll see what happens! The hardware was previously multi booting as a hackintosh with windows and Fedora without issue, but the RAM is a new variable. Any other Ryzen x570 + 3600 tips and tweaks I should be aware of? - such as specific BIOS settings? CSM enabled or disabled for e.g.? Switch off all the secure boot stuff and select "Other OS" ? Can I assume that selecting all the virtualisation options (SVG, IOMMU etc) are unlikely to cause problems for unraid, while more "gaming" settings like re-sizable bar should be disabled because they're not used? Or are they? I hadn't previously updated the BIOS/UEFI when I was having problems last night, so I'm hoping that solves a few issues - I can now at least set it to consider usb flash drives as drives, which wasn't an option with the earlier BIOS. I have two GPU's available: the Nvidia 1050 mentioned earlier for transcoding plex etc., and I also have an itx version of an rx570 4GB which I'd planned to passthrough to a MacOS VM (now I have a few more threads to play with) - however in this testing and troubleshooting phase would I be better off just using the rx570 and removing the 1050? That question assumes Linux generally plays nicer with AMD over Nvidia . . . . Or could that cause problems because the unraid config is expecting to find a 1050 that wouldn't be there? Any other pointers gratefully accepted. Cheers

Hi - as you can see there's been no informative responses to this thread so I kind of gathered the idea was an non-starter. That said I also shelved it because I realised that with my current pretty old hardware asking it to be a media server and run a VM meant it would do neither very well, while it is a perfectly adequate media server. I'm planning on upgrading my hardware to a more modern CPU and motherboard and may revisit the idea then, but to be honest I've had such good results running MacOS bare metal on hackintosh builds, which also easily multi boots other OS's, it would probably take a dedicated "Make your own DAW on MacOS VM" video walk through from Ed of the SpaceInvader YT channel to reassure me that my efforts wouldn't be a collossal waste of time. I have heard good things about using Proxmox to this end for video editing with FCPX, which would seem more demanding that just audio pass through. If you have a desktop type PC and can add a dedicated PCIe USB card to pass through for both audio and the MIDI controller I'm pretty sure it's doable with whatever hypervisor you use. HTH

I tried to upgrade to 6.11.0 a while back and had a lot of problems so reverted back to 6.10.3 - which had been stable for months previous to the upgrade attempt and has been since I reverted. At the time I assumed this was probably because my hardware is so old (z-97k i54690k 16GB RAM DDR3 1600MHz) - so I'm just wondering if any "older hardware" bugs have been identified and sorted since 6.11.0 that should give me more confidence to try to upgrade to 6.11.5?

thank you both very much - again! MAM59 - I have a very current Memtest USB flash drive I will definitely do some tests with. Excellent advice! I have a couple of kits of DDR4 RAM to test - one 2 x 16 at 3200MHz and one 4 x 8 at 3733 MHz so it'll be interesting to figure out what works best. Frank1940 - I have some VMs installed but 99% of it's current usage is as a media server with dockers - with just the 4 cores and no multithreading it's just not pokey enough to do media server duty and run a VM well at the same time. Given that I only ever installed the VMs to play around with and once they seemed to be working OK, haven't used them since, I'm happy to just delete them. I can always reinstall them if needed. Cheers

Thanks MAM59 and Frank1940 Murphy's law, computer tech and I are long time acquaintances - so I appreciate the heads up on settings. TBH I've been putting this off for months because things do tend to go pear shaped on me, but forewarned is forearmed. With regard to not overclocking RAM - I assume 'overclocking' includes any kind of "XMP" (I forget what AMD calls ii) type "overclock" - so to just run it at the default JDEC speed? I'll have a dig in the BIOS UEFI settings for C-states too of course, and I assume the EFI MAM59 mentioned is basically about figuring out whether or not its currently UEFI or Legacy booting because it will be UEFI booting on the newer hardware? Bottom line is there's a lot of people here who would either have a very solid plan in place before upgrading hardware, or are already so knowledgeable they wouldn't be very phased if things went wrong. I can only try to do the former, so I really appreciate the guidance. That's especially true because my wife's disabled and very reliant on the server for entertainment and distraction from chronic pain. It's a coin toss between leaving it well alone, on an "if it ain't broke . . . " basis, and accepting that 9 year old hardware won't last for ever. Cheers

Really just looking for any tips and advice to help the upgrade process go as smoothly as possible: For example, since I'll be changing from an old Asus z-97k i5 4690k 16GB RAM DDR3 Intel based set up - to an AMD x570 + Ryzen 3700 with 32GB DDR4 - is there anything I should be watching out for, or anything I should "instruct" the system to do as it restarts to make it recognise the new hardware? Or should this all just happen " automagically" ? Things "just working" has generally been my experience with using various Linux DE distros between different PCs, at least after a couple of restarts and updates, but I wanted to double check. I'm not planning on making any initial changes to the array and cache drive ( 5 x 4TB drives on the array) and 2 x 500GB SSD cache drives, but should I be trying to copy over what order of SATA ports/connections each drive is connected to? Or are the drives recognised and ordered by their UUIDs? In other words when I start up the new build will UNRAID identify the drives in the array from what's stored on the UNRAID USB boot flash drive? Anything else I should think about? Prepare for?

If you're saying that you had four drives on your array, presumably one of them your parity, and the fifth drive was an unassigned device then you should be OK. You might choose not to even connect the unassigned device until you're sure your array is functioning properly. I'm pretty sure (though no sort of expert!) that you would not want to attempt to make up your "array" by mixing SATA connected and USB connected drives. I'm just in the process of figuring out what I should do to prepare my unraid set up to upgrade the hardware from a fairly ancient Haswell era board and CPU with DDR3 to a much more modern x570+3700 set up - which is similar enough to your question for me to be watching out for better informed answers than mine!

Thanks for the input, however I've actually been running unRAID on my Haswell era hardware for quite a few years now. As I said in my OP, it works very well as purely a media server, combined with a GTX1050 it also manages encodes, decodes and transcodes probably because I only have a small family where it's unusual for it to have to handle more than two streams simultaneously. I think the way forward for me is to just carry on with things as they are for now, (if it ain't broke . . . ) and use my x570 +3600 for experimenting and learning stuff, which could an unraid trial license, but also Proxmox, reverting it to "gaming PC" on the rare occasions it's needed. At some point in the future I might be able to snap up a 3900x or similar secondhand, as well as more DDR4 RAM, at which point I'll revisit the whole idea of combining media server and VMs into a single box.

H all I posted this in the lounge cos I thought it was more of a chatty or general kind of topic rather than my either having a hardware problem or needing advice about what hardware to buy. If a mod thinks it belongs elsewhere, no problem. I'm OK with my unraid box just being a media server using an old CPU, not least because it's something that old hardware does perfectly well and I'm not sure what else I'd do with it, other than sell it for peanuts. On the other hand if a more modern CPU can do the same job better and do other things (run VMs) my old hardware simply can't do well, AND lower my electricity bill, then that's something I really need to think about. Cheers

Thanks for the info : diagnostics when on 6.11 attached. Everything still seems solid on 6.10.3 a few hours of media server duties later. Thanks singthesis-nas-diagnostics-20220926-1649.zip

As title says, I tried to update to 6.11 but ended up back with 6.10.3 after a fairly frantic couple of hours: A problem was that I couldn't locally access any GUI as various web browsers just wouldn't connect, so I couldn't troubleshoot. Maybe something to do with http vs https, with it defaulting to the latter but only connecting via http, or https with a security exception. Eventually I hooked up a monitor over VGA and managed to powerdown and restart where it was stable for long enough to revert to 6.10.3. I did type "diagnostics" in the CLI but have no idea where to find the file it then generated to share here, so as to try to figure out what went wrong with 6.11 - I doubt running diagnostics again now it's back on 6.10.3 and seems stable would show anything helpful? Also wondering if unraid is set to automatically start a parity check with an OS upgrade or whether that was triggered by the hard shut down I had to do? For future reference if I get in this mess again and can't access the GUI does it make any difference whether I connect a monitor directly over HDMI or VGA? HDMI didn't seem to work for me, while VGA did, but that might be just my ancient hardware.

My current set up (see sig) is pretty old and I'm wondering about whether to switch the motherboard and CPU to much newer x570 and 3600 hardware from a gaming PC that gets very little use. I really don't know what to expect in terms of performance, efficiency and practical usage, and would love to hear from those actually running unRAID on something like this hardware: I mean in the same ball park. Also any thoughts on Intel vs AMD with unRAID? For example, in terms of using 12 threads and six cores, for modest gaming with an RX580 passed through would it manage to play some not very taxing games AND handle light Plex media server duties simultaneously? Maybe with pinning 2 cores to Plex and 4 to a Windows VM? I'd plan on using the GTX 1050 for transcoding with Plex and have the RX580 just for gaming. Is it realistic to think that 2 cores and 4 threads on a 3600 would be roughly equivalent or perhaps better than 4 cores / 4 threads of Haswell era CPU? Obviously it's a lot newer, but I'm struggling to get an idea of what to expect, and I'd like a better understanding before I take the plunge. Do you think that would be more or less efficient than running the Haswell as purely a media server 24/7 and just booting up the Ryzen PC on the odd occasions we want to play some games? Would the more modern hardware be "smarter" at powering down when not in use? TIA

Thank you so much - all done and working as it should be. I don't really understand though why such an important part of the template has to be added. I notice it's not there on the official plex version either. Thanks again

Going around in circles here, mostly I think because I'm working with out of date info. Firstly I realised my Nvidia GPU (just a 1050) was being seen under IOMMU as recognised but the fields for the UUID were blank on the Nvidia plugin page. Solved this by removing and reinstalling the plugin and several server reboots. At the time I was trying to reinstall Unmanic which was misbehaving, presumably because something had messed up with the nvidia plugin. Unmanic is now working as expected and shows up on the dashboard as being used for encoding under the GPU monitor. But when I try to use it within Plex for transcoding nothing happens - well the CPU pins at 99% on all cores (only 4) but nothing happens with the GPU. Yes I have Plex pass. I went to edit the linuxserver Plex docker I've been using for years and realised there's no longer a section where I can input the UUID of the GPU which I'm pretty sure used to be under the "show more settings" section in advanced view - along with adding --runtime=nvidia under extra parameters. I'm pretty sure it was there and there are still You Tube tutorial videos showing how to set up plex that even mention it. What am I missing? Should I be using a different version of the Plex docker such as the binhex plexpass version? Normally I'd experiment but my wife's currently housebound and very reliant on Plex to distract from severe pain so I can't risk borking her access by tinkering until I know what I need to do.

There's a good Spaceinvader One you tube video from a few years ago that I found excellent in walking me through grabbing the essential apps and plugins - though the video is old the vast majority of those recommendations (I actually can't think of an exception) are still good. IOW don't be put off my the age of those videos This is part one - with 2 and 3 also worth watching

Agreed I had no intention of hijacking this thread, however it had already been suggested to the OP that he pick more specific issues to get help with one at a time. I think that's reasonable, however my experience as a new unraid user was definitely to feel completely swamped in detail and Ed's channel helped me get a "big picture" or high level overview on what was practically feasible with my hardware and level of understanding. As the saying goes, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." But it's a bugger if the first few steps you take are in completely the wrong direction!

That "buddy" for me has been the Space Invader One You Tube channel. Ed isn't just extremely knowledgeable but generally has a solid grasp of how little his typical viewers understand, whereas I find a great many other channels that will talk about Docker related projects, (not specific to unRAID) typically assume FAR more knowledge than I have. Another channel is Ibracorp which is also good, but again I've found in trying to follow along he's missed out critical steps. I don't mind putting the hours in to painstakingly follow a tutorial, but it's pretty disheartening if things don't work as they should, and then you have to undo everything just to get back where you started. To be blunt, without the Space Invader One tutorials I would have given up on unRAID during the initial trial period. HTH

As I said: Combined with Apple's cloud storage of photos, the problem for me is NOT effective back ups (at no point did I suggest ONLY storing photos on unraid) but fairly massive duplication where I have so many copies of the same photos on multiple different computers, some fairly modern, some positively ancient, then each of those multiple computers has external drive back ups, I wouldn't be surprised to eventually discover that I have at least tens of GB's of duplicates, triplicates, quadruples of photos! So what I want is a single central point where all these overlapping photo libraries can be organised and ALL I know about that is that I want it to be a FOSS based solution - if it can be done with a docker on unraid, so much the better. I've been an Apple user for nearly 30 years, building hackintoshes for the last 10 years. Happily for me Apple Silicon has arrived at roughly the same time as increasingly robust Linux DE solutions, of which Fedora 36 stands out for me as having been super reliable, and I'm hoping to finally break the Apple shackles - not just for myself but for my much less tech savvy family.