Installs are not persistent and /mnt/user/ never unmount

[carlosmarchi]

Hi Everyone!

After having trouble with a Windows Storage Space I decided to virtualize my stuff 'one level up' and migrate to UnRaid. I'm familiar with Xen/XCP-ng and I had a previous contact with Unraid, but I'm still struggling with a few things.

 

This is what I'm having so far:

 

1) My installs to the system are not persistent. I have installed progress, but once I rebooted it was gone. I did install again, rebooted and it was gone again. Same with mergerfs.

 

2) Not sure if it can be related, but I'm never able to 'cleanly' stop the array. I always have to force the umounting of /mnt/user/ and then it only starts again after rebooting.

Edited June 4, 2021 by carlosmarchi

[trurl]

Post Diagnostics 

[itimpi]

24 minutes ago, carlosmarchi said:

1) My installs to the system are not persistent. I have installed progress, but once I rebooted it was gone. I did install again, rebooted and it was gone again. Same with mergerfs.

 

How are you installing these?   If you are doing it via Community Applications (the Apps tab) then it should be persistent.   If you are doing it manually it is probably only being installed into RAM as Unraid runs from RAM after loading there via the boot process.

[carlosmarchi]

Hmm, silly me, this part was quite obvious indeed. I'm installing using the shell, that's why it's not persistent. I don't really need persistance for these, the mergerfs is being pulled again by the rclone script and the progress is just convenient while I'm moving data through the command line.

 

This leaves me just with the /mnt/user not being able to be cleanly unmounted and requiring a reboot everytime I need to stop the array. Which is also not the end of the world, I'm just worried that the problem escalates to something worst in the future.

[itimpi]

7 minutes ago, carlosmarchi said:

This leaves me just with the /mnt/user not being able to be cleanly unmounted and requiring a reboot everytime I need to stop the array. Which is also not the end of the world, I'm just worried that the problem escalates to something worst in the future.

If you are working at the command line are you sure you do not have a terminal session open with the current working directory set to a location on any pool/cache or array drives/.  Either of these will stop the unmounts from completing successfully and the array being stopped cleanly.

[JonathanM]

17 minutes ago, carlosmarchi said:

Hmm, silly me, this part was quite obvious indeed. I'm installing using the shell, that's why it's not persistent. I don't really need persistance for these, the mergerfs is being pulled again by the rclone script and the progress is just convenient while I'm moving data through the command line.

 

This leaves me just with the /mnt/user not being able to be cleanly unmounted and requiring a reboot everytime I need to stop the array. Which is also not the end of the world, I'm just worried that the problem escalates to something worst in the future.

If you are not fully stopping the rclone and mergerfs processes BEFORE trying to stop the array you probably have mounts not under Unraid's control holding the /mnt/user system open.

[trurl]

2 hours ago, carlosmarchi said:

using the shell

I encourage you to not work with Unraid at the command line until you get a better idea of how things work. Unraid is a lean, custom build of slackware linux and in many ways may not always work the way you might expect from other linux distros. It is only intended to be a NAS OS that hosts dockers and VMs, and not a general purpose multiuser linux. Try working with it from the webUI as much as possible and learn what it can do for you like that. If you need a general purpose multiuser linux, install a VM.

 

For example, you didn't understand why things didn't persist when you installed them at the command line. As mentioned, the OS is in RAM and is installed fresh from the archives on flash at each boot. Think of it as firmware except easier to work with. Anything additional that is not included in those archives has to be reinstalled at each boot.

 

Installing things through the Apps page is the way to get things to persist, and is much easier. Take a look at all the plugins and dockers already easily installed from the Apps page. NerdPack plugin from the Apps page will let you install many command line tools that aren't included in Unraid, for example.

 

Don't know what you had in mind for mergerfs, but Unraid User Shares allow you to have folders that span disks.

 

 

[carlosmarchi]

17 hours ago, trurl said:

I encourage you to not work with Unraid at the command line until you get a better idea of how things work. Unraid is a lean, custom build of slackware linux and in many ways may not always work the way you might expect from other linux distros. It is only intended to be a NAS OS that hosts dockers and VMs, and not a general purpose multiuser linux. Try working with it from the webUI as much as possible and learn what it can do for you like that. If you need a general purpose multiuser linux, install a VM.

 

Thank you for the advices and comments. I wasn't trying to use it like a regular linux, I just installed progress to follow up some file/folders moves from external drives to the array and noticed that the mergerfs was being downloaded by a rclone script after every reboot. I'm indeed much more of a GUI guy, I won't be using the command line most of the time except if I really have to.
 

17 hours ago, trurl said:

For example, you didn't understand why things didn't persist when you installed them at the command line. As mentioned, the OS is in RAM and is installed fresh from the archives on flash at each boot. Think of it as firmware except easier to work with. Anything additional that is not included in those archives has to be reinstalled at each boot.

 

Yep, in fact I had learn that the first time I used UnRAID a few years ago and for some reason it just slipped my mind. It's quite clear now. I'll also go over the docs and FAQs once again.

 

17 hours ago, trurl said:

 

Installing things through the Apps page is the way to get things to persist, and is much easier. Take a look at all the plugins and dockers already easily installed from the Apps page. NerdPack plugin from the Apps page will let you install many command line tools that aren't included in Unraid, for example.

 

Don't know what you had in mind for mergerfs, but Unraid User Shares allow you to have folders that span disks.

 

 

I did install a few already (CrushFTP, nginxproxymanager and a Nextcloud) and the NerdPack was the first addition. I already have VMs working, one of them is my previous Windows converted to a vdisk.

 

Regarding the mergerfs, I'm using it with a rClone mount script to mount OneDrive. I was having problems just mounting the rClone stratight to a mounting point and then having some FTP clients trying to write files to it. I receive backup files from Plesk servers and they start writing the files and then stop for a long time before appending more data, rClone was locking the files before the backup was complete. Even adjusting a few vfs/cache parameters manually it wasn't working reliably. Then using BinsonBuzz's script (https://github.com/BinsonBuzz/unraid_rclone_mount), which includes mergerfs, and pointing the ftp to the merged mount, everything is now working smoothly.