February 23, 201115 yr A lot of people run headless, and having to keep a telnet session open for several days for a long scan can be problematic. Would it be possible to add a simple preclear UI to the web interface? I understand the desire to keep unraid as simple and lean as possible, but this is a utility that everybody uses (or should use), so I think it makes sense to make it easier to use.
February 23, 201115 yr I agree that would be immensely useful, but as it stands now preclear is a community add-on, not part of stock unraid and therefore not supported by limetech. If limetech added preclear to the web interface then they would have to support it as well. Take a look at all the time Joe L puts into the preclear results thread and you'll see what a daunting undertaking that would be. Perhaps the new plugin structure in unraid 5.0 will open the doors for a nicer preclear interface. In the meantime you can use screen to run preclear on a headless server without leaving your main pc on the whole time. Instructions on installing screen are in the configuration tutorial (link in my sig). Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk
February 24, 201115 yr Author Fair enough. I've got a spare monitor hooked up to the server for now while I'm setting it up and migrating files, but once it 's done, it gets tucked headlessly into the closet. I'll just use that addon you suggested until a better solution comes around.
February 24, 201115 yr I am with candre23 Yes Joe's preclear script is awesome and yes it requires amazing amounts of skill and understanding to code and support it. But preclear ticks a missing box in unRAID. Joe simple got their first which shouldnt negate Limetech taking it on. I mean Joe is one guy. What if he goes away for reallife reasons... we would be left with a hole in functionality. Yes it could be an addon but again I would argue that preclear ticks a box that unRAID should be ticking itself. It might be semantics but unRAID proper should take on preclear, make Joe a dev and should he go away it would therefore still be supported. If Joe doesnt go away then its win/win for Limetech
February 24, 201115 yr Preclearing a disk should be in unRAID, but it needs to be disconnectable (not need a terminal session), so you can start it from the UI, close the browser, and it continues to run in the background. When you go back to it later, it provides updated status on progress. That wouldn't be hard to do -- preclear could keep a unified log with each update in status from the start of preclear to the finish and parse it (could get kind of big though... update every 30 seconds would end up with 3000 lines for a 24 hour long preclear) or keep a log of completed steps, and then a separate status log for the currently executing step. To give the user an update, you parse/print out the log of completed steps and last line in the status log. If preclear kept such logs, it would be easy to have some php code to parse them and put the results in the UI.
February 24, 201115 yr Author could get kind of big though... update every 30 seconds would end up with 3000 lines for a 24 hour long preclear You wouldn't need to log every update, only the latest update. The script writes the first update to a file. Every 10 sec, it overwrites that file with the latest update. The web UI reads the file every 10 sec and always gets the latest. You could log errors/anomalies/final results to another file so as to keep all of them and not overwrite anything you'd want to keep.
February 24, 201115 yr Not easy to do with the dd output.... particularly from within a script launched by a web server. You won't be able to use the trick Joe does to get it to print a report of current data.
February 27, 201115 yr Get a mobo with integrated IPMI and run preclear from there. You could do even several disks at once in each virtual console and re-connecting any time you wish. Also, you wouldn't need a monitor for dust collecting.. Even without IPMI you could install screen and reconnect to its session later.. So, no need to keep a terminal window open even without IPMI.
February 28, 201115 yr What about integrating this idea in unmenu? Neil unMenu waits for a "reply" back before it displays anything. trying to clear a disk through unMenu would cause it to "hang" for the entire time of the preclear. There would have to be a lot of reworking done to preclear to get it to work properly from within unMenu.
March 18, 201115 yr Get a mobo with integrated IPMI and run preclear from there. You could do even several disks at once in each virtual console and re-connecting any time you wish. Also, you wouldn't need a monitor for dust collecting.. Even without IPMI you could install screen and reconnect to its session later.. So, no need to keep a terminal window open even without IPMI. +1 to screen, even though my machines have IPMI, I've been using it to preclear my disks as it's more convinient and the attach/detach feature makes it perfect for that task.
March 26, 201115 yr I would have to agree with candre23 that having Pre-Clear on the web interface is something that should be placed on the road map as it is an integral unraid function that needs to be done to install disks without having your array offline. Joe
March 29, 201115 yr I would have to agree with candre23 that having Pre-Clear on the web interface is something that should be placed on the road map as it is an integral unraid function that needs to be done to install disks without having your array offline. Joe Useful, yes. Integral, no. unRAID works just as well without it. Personally I would like to see a basic Preclear function on the web interface. It would give more casual users a feeling that it was integrated, and at the same time it would remove the need for very many of the support questions that are generated.
March 29, 201115 yr I just use telnet. My MacBook Pro never crashes. My laptop never crashes either, but it is a peace of mind to use screen. I've had the telnet session disconnect before, or when I need to take my laptop with me while running preclear, screen is the best. If I run preclear on my wife's laptop...well, let's just say I hear "why do you have to run this crap on my computer?" :-D Agree with Joe about integration. It would be nice to see preclear run from a command in unMENU...even if it is a running a (hidden) background screen, then reporting results.
March 29, 201115 yr I don't mean to hijack, but could someone point me to screen instructions. I've installed the screen package from unmenu, but I have been unsuccessful in getting it to work.
March 29, 201115 yr I don't mean to hijack, but could someone point me to screen instructions. I've installed the screen package from unmenu, but I have been unsuccessful in getting it to work. In section 6.1 here: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration_Tutorial
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