Filesystem wiped (almost) clean ??!!

[tourist]

This week I installed Unraid onto a flash drive (on 30-day trial), and proceeded to configure and customize, to work with my drives and GPUs.

I was iterating on changes to Main->Flash->Syslinux to get two NVidia RTX 2080 SUPERs and a cheapie GeForce GT 710 working properly, in anticipation of passthru to VMs. This morning I rebooted 3-4 times to test the changes.

 

After one of the reboots, I ssh'd in and discovered that customizations I'd made and files downloaded under /root were just ... gone!

Likewise, files created under a new user's home directory were missing.

But, the changes I'd made to syslinux.cfg via the web gui were intact. Also intact were the array definition and CA plugins I'd installed.

I am fairly certain that this outcome isn't connected to the things I've touched so far. I'm a software and devops engineer, been admining Linux and Unix-like systems for more than 25 years now, so I'm aware of pitfalls, and watch carefully for potential consequences of my actions.

 

Is this a known issue, or an expected behavior? I've seen a few other posts with similar titles. Does Unraid go and nuke things it doesn't know about?

 

For the record, I had made a flash backup, about 48 hours ago. But, I would have expected to use it only in case of hardware catastrophe.

For this experimental outing with Unraid, I've allocated high-quality, high-speed equipment. The flash device is a brand-new Sandisk Extreme, 300 MB/sec, erased and tested overnight before installing Unraid on it.

 

Any and all insights appreciated.

[tourist]

This week I installed Unraid onto a USB flash drive (for 30-day trial), and proceeded to configure and customize it to work with my drives and GPUs.

 

I was iterating on changes to Main->Flash->Syslinux to get two NVidia RTX 2080 SUPERs and a cheapie GeForce GT 710 working properly, in anticipation of passthru to VMs. This morning I rebooted 3-4 times to test the changes.

After one of the reboots, I ssh'd in and discovered that customizations I'd made and files downloaded under /root were just ... gone! Likewise, files created under a new user's home directory were missing.

 

But, the changes I'd made to syslinux.cfg via the web gui were intact. Also intact were the array definition and CA plugins I'd installed. I am fairly certain that this outcome isn't connected to the things I've touched so far. I'm a software and devops engineer, been admining Linux and Unix-like systems for more than 25 years now, so I'm aware of pitfalls, and watch carefully for potential consequences of my actions.

Is this a known issue, or an expected behavior? I've seen a few other posts with similar titles. Does Unraid go and nuke things it doesn't know about?

For the record, I had made a flash backup, about 48 hours ago. But, I would have expected to use it only in case of hardware catastrophe. For this experimental outing with Unraid, I've allocated high-quality, high-speed equipment. The flash device is a brand-new Sandisk Extreme, 300 MB/sec, erased and tested overnight before installing Unraid on it.

Any and all insights appreciated.

[saarg]

Unraid loads into RAM at boot and everything you do in the file system, except for the array disks, cache disk and under /boot is lost on a reboot.

So what you are seeing is expected behaviour.

 

This is not the correct subforum to post this in either, and posting multiple threads about the same issues isn't a good thing to do.

Edited January 17, 2021 by saarg

[Hoopster]

42 minutes ago, tourist said:

After one of the reboots, I ssh'd in and discovered that customizations I'd made and files downloaded under /root were just ... gone!

Likewise, files created under a new user's home directory were missing.

UnRAID loads into and runs from RAM on every reboot.  Any changes you made to the filesystem (outside of /mnt which is the array and /boot which is the flash disk) will be lost on reboot as those changes only existed im RAM.

 

Installation of plugins, system configuration and modifications to syslinux write to the flash drive so those changes persist.

 

If you want the creation of certain folders in the file system to be persistent, do so through a startup script or modifications to the "go" file on the flash drive.

Edited January 17, 2021 by Hoopster

[JonathanM]

35 minutes ago, tourist said:

Likewise, files created under a new user's home directory were missing.

Unraid doesn't support linux users in the traditional sense. It's a NAS with additional features, and the only linux user currently supported is root, and only for management.

 

The users section in the GUI is for NAS network access, root is denied login for SMB, and users defined in the GUI are not allowed console or management access.

[tourist]

28 minutes ago, saarg said:

Unraid loads into RAM at boot and everything you do in the file system, except for the array disks, cache disk and under /boot is lost on a reboot.

So what you are seeing is expected behaviour.

Okay

 

Quote

This is not the correct subforum to post this in either, and posting multiple threads about the same issues isn't a good thing to do.

I noticed my first post was [unexpectedly] under the subforum of the last post I'd read, and deleted it.

 

What would be the correct subforum?

[trurl]

14 minutes ago, tourist said:

What would be the correct subforum?

I don't know where you posted it originally but it was moved here where it belongs.