unRAID Server Release 5.0-beta6 Available


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Tom,

 

I think a beta release such as this should have the download page you link;

 

http://lime-technology.com/download/doc_details/21-unraid-server-version-50-beta6-aio

 

But maybe it should not be listed here at all;

 

http://lime-technology.com/download/cat_view/49-unraid-server

 

In other words, a beta release should not be so easily accessed by the general public. They should have to come here and find the link in this thread. In this manner, they will also have the opportunity to read this thread and decide if they truely do want to use the release. Alternatively, put a big bold warning "This software is test software. It might cause you to lose all your data" on the above download page. I'm also not sure it's very appropriate to call it "Hot" and "New" either.

 

To me, much new software (very typical of free software) is continually released as beta, even though the releases are really production releases of the software. This is causing too many people to not know what a beta release even means anymore

 

Peter

 

 

There is a warning at the top of the release notes that specifically says this is beta and to use at your own risk.

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I'm glad it seems you're on your way to recover from this situation.

 

Short of not running beta versions on production arrays, no.

 

I looked through your syslog and your activities seem very straight forward. Upon booting you went to re-adding the drives in to your array one by one. At the last step of starting the re-assigned array some of your drives were not detected to having existing unRAID MBR on them so a new MBR was written (at Sector 64).

 

I have not combed through your syslog yet to find any correlation between the drives hit and those not hit.

 

 

 

All complete and now running Parity check...one 30 or so hours it will be done...  ;D

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Ya, if the person choses to read the release notes. It's also not a very bold warning in my opinion. It also should just plain say "You might lose data if you try this release". "Disks may be formatted or overwritten". or other such statements. Don't beat around the bush with any warnings.

 

Peter

 

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Yes, mover is now running, as intended, every two hours.  I suspect that the trigger was the clicking on 'Apply'.  So now I just need to see whether it will start running again after a reboot.

 

... and it still runs, without any intervention, after a reboot.

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Tom, how about a command line option for emhttp, to not start the array.  Particularly when testing betas, I would like to be able to start emhttp, and see the status of all the drives before starting the array.

 

Perhaps, you could even add something to the config for the last version used, so that whenever a version change is detected, emhttp does not autostart the array and instead gives the user a message explaining possible issues.

 

I'll look into this.

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Tom,

 

I think a beta release such as this should have the download page you link;

 

http://lime-technology.com/download/doc_details/21-unraid-server-version-50-beta6-aio

 

But maybe it should not be listed here at all;

 

http://lime-technology.com/download/cat_view/49-unraid-server

 

In other words, a beta release should not be so easily accessed by the general public. They should have to come here and find the link in this thread. In this manner, they will also have the opportunity to read this thread and decide if they truely do want to use the release. Alternatively, put a big bold warning "This software is test software. It might cause you to lose all your data" on the above download page. I'm also not sure it's very appropriate to call it "Hot" and "New" either.

 

To me, much new software (very typical of free software) is continually released as beta, even though the releases are really production releases of the software. This is causing too many people to not know what a beta release even means anymore

 

Peter

 

 

I'm probably going to move to a closed beta, and only make -rc's public.

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Yes, mover is now running, as intended, every two hours.  I suspect that the trigger was the clicking on 'Apply'.  So now I just need to see whether it will start running again after a reboot.

 

... and it still runs, without any intervention, after a reboot.

 

So this is "not a bug" correct?  If so, please modify original post.

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For those of you who are seeing "missing disks", "wrong disks", "unformatted" etc, I need a couple volunteers that I can work with via email to figure out what's happening.  [email protected]

 

What I need to do is have you type specific commands in a telnet session and then email the output.

 

For those who have "unformatted" disks  - this is due to the Master Boot Record (sector 0) of the disk not being recognized for some reason (hence the need for volunteers).  As long as you don't click Format, your data is completely intact, and when the MBR gets restored properly you don't need to run reiserfsck.

 

 

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I'm probably going to move to a closed beta, and only make -rc's public.

 

Would be sad if you have to do that.  Couldn't you just add "(TEST ARRAYS ONLY)" to the announcement thread and next to the hyperlinks.

 

Anyone that installs a one day old beta on a production array should have their head examined.

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Tom - was just on the main site to download version 5 beta 6 and clicked on the link for realease notes. Started to read and I noticed, there was nothing about the super.dat file I had previously seen. Looked up - the link is to the old version 5 beta 5 release notes. You need to update the the link in the main Download area. I manually changed the url and worked fine.

 

Shawn

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Hello,

 

Would we confuse every one if we added Alpha releases to the mix?

 

New releases with feature rich changes and bug fixes called Alpha for the 'first week'.

 

Alphas having a link in the downloads section as only for being use on non production arrays.

 

When you click the Alpha link it takes you to another page with warnings listed in big red letters re-stating this is a "bleeding edge release - not for production arrays - testing only"

 

Then after few complaints with testing on a wider range of non production hardware, moving to beta?  then rc and final?

 

Then people can jump in at the stage they are comfortable and report either the good or bad news with a sort list of hardware involved (eg motherboard, ram, processor, drive controller cards) or syslog if there is trouble?

 

Bobby

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Tom - was just on the main site to download version 5 beta 6 and clicked on the link for realease notes. Started to read and I noticed, there was nothing about the super.dat file I had previously seen. Looked up - the link is to the old version 5 beta 5 release notes. You need to update the the link in the main Download area. I manually changed the url and worked fine.

 

Shawn

 

Fixed, thank you for pointing that out.

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Ever since 5.0Beta 5/5a/6 my cache no longer spins down automatically.

 

I experienced that too ... but after a manual 'spin down' it's been working fine ever since - even after a reboot.  This seems a little bit like the problem I had with mover (see above).  It seems that 5.0b5/6 is failing to honour some of the existing configuration settings until it is prompted by manual intervention! :S

 

I've just checked, and all my drives are spun down except for the one which is supplying video data to one of my media servers.

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Hello,

 

Would we confuse every one if we added Alpha releases to the mix?

 

New releases with feature rich changes and bug fixes called Alpha for the 'first week'.

 

Alphas having a link in the downloads section as only for being use on non production arrays.

 

When you click the Alpha link it takes you to another page with warnings listed in big red letters re-stating this is a "bleeding edge release - not for production arrays - testing only"

 

Then after few complaints with testing on a wider range of non production hardware, moving to beta?  then rc and final?

 

Then people can jump in at the stage they are comfortable and report either the good or bad news with a sort list of hardware involved (eg motherboard, ram, processor, drive controller cards) or syslog if there is trouble?

 

Bobby

 

Traditionally alphas are in-house only.  So LimeTech would create alphas for testing on their own test servers.  Once those tests pass, they are released as betas to the community.  Once betas pass community scrutiny, they become rc's (release candidates).  Once proven as rc's they become stable releases.

 

Personally I think closed betas are the way to go.  Let people with test servers volunteer to be on LimeTech's beta squad, and only they will have access to the latest beta releases.  Once properly tested, the betas can be renamed as rc's and released to the rest of the community for more wide-spread testing.

 

I think it was actually a bit of a bad thing that 5.0 beta 2 was so stable, because a lot of people started using it on their production servers.  I expect many of those people are the ones who upgraded to the later betas and ran into problems.

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I'm against closed betas. I'm for educated users.

 

If there are closed betas, then users should be allowed to sign themselves up only after a big in your face disclaimer about what betas are for.

 

I agree.  a closed beta might never have uncovered this issue.  It would then have then just showed itself when people were not expecting it, when it because a release-candidate

 

An educated user is best.  Beta releases are for those with expendable TEST arrays, at least in the initial week or so after release.

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Ever since 5.0Beta 5/5a/6 my cache no longer spins down automatically.

 

I experienced that too ... but after a manual 'spin down' it's been working fine ever since - even after a reboot.  This seems a little bit like the problem I had with mover (see above).  It seems that 5.0b5/6 is failing to honour some of the existing configuration settings until it is prompted by manual intervention! :S

 

I've just checked, and all my drives are spun down except for the one which is supplying video data to one of my media servers.

 

[slaps palm to face] My apologies, yes there was a change that accounts for what you have seen - the name of the config variables for the cache default spin down setting, as well as all the cache security settings in the disk.cfg file was changed.  In all release prior to and including -beta4 these had the form "diskXXX.21", where XXX is SpindownDelay, Export, Security, etc. (you can look in disk.cfg in an older release and see them in there).  However, this presents a problem when I want to expand the size of the array beyond 21 drives (I want to take it up to 24 soon).  So since you have to reassign all your drives anyway, I took this opportunity to rename all those config vars, giving them a "cache" prefix instead of "disk", but apparently I forgot to make an entry for this change in the release history.  I have updated the release notes to include these lines of instructions:

 

- Reboot your server.  All disks should mount and parity should be valid (except for Cache).

- If you previously had a Cache disk assigned, you will need to re-assign it manually and re-apply any unique configuration settings for it.

 

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3TB support? Any Idea when? Just purchased 16 Hitachi Drives and I am itching to try out with unraid.

 

16 3T drives? Nice. It is planned for the 5.0 release so it will get in there in the near future. Still, you have to remember these are beta releases and it may take a few months to say a year for a non-beta release. There is a lot of new code being written to produce the 5.0 series.

 

Peter

 

 

 

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