[SOLVED] Key License issues with second USB plugged in?


Recommended Posts

I am old school and and my way of back up my boot USB is DD,  USB drive to USB drive.  As soon as I plug in my second /  backup usb drive and start my DD command, my license just flips to "invalid key".  What gives? I was planning to have my second USB always plugged in as a warm stand by in case I need to boot from it.  Can't the license mind its own business and stay where it needs to stay ?  🙂  Why the complication? 

 

1747219320_ScreenShot2022-02-06at3_39_47PM.thumb.png.86a01cd9322520749f49410591d87219.png

Edited by johnwhicker
Link to comment
1 hour ago, itimpi said:

You are probably confusing the system by having both drives with the same ‘UNRAID’ label?  

 

Nope, this USB drive I am plugging in is brand new, formatted, no DD, no label, nothing, nada, niet,  Is a VIRGIN :)  Screenshot is taken after I started the DD  command.  But I can take it before just to prove it to you if I must.  Same behavior in both of my unRaid's so it can't be the USB drive. 

Edited by johnwhicker
Link to comment

No problem.  I understand your intent.  While no one likes copy protection (except for the content creators who have 1000s of hours of work invested into their intellectual property), this is a logical way for Limetech to do it.  Otherwise, you could potentially take your second flash and put it in another system and run both.  Or make 100s of them, or post it free on the internet...

 

Good news is quality zip drives last a long time, as long as they aren't abused. 

 

What is abuse?  Too many people use them as a working data drive, which is not really their intended function.  They are really meant for long term storage and data transfer ("Sneaker-net" - copy, walk to the next machine, transfer).  Heat is their enemy, so transferring many GB of data at once is not good, nor is continuous read/write using it as a working drive.

 

What is quality - Buy a name brand drive from a reputable source.  As speed is not needed for this Unraid function, older USB 2 drives are better, as the larger feature size of the memory cells are less prone to heat failure.  (I've worked in semiconductor manufacturing for 20+ years).  Newer USB 3 drives have smaller memory cells - allows them to pack more memory into the same space and run faster.  But less mass to handle the heat.

 

I only use my Unraid boot drive to do just that - boot Unraid.  As Unraid loads what it needs from it at boot, then runs from RAM, it spends most of its life sitting idle.  (See stats in screenshot).  I have stayed old school, and back up my boot drive (with CA Backup/Restore Appdata, done weekly) to a second Samsung FIT flash (will also use that drive to grab files off the server to take with me off network).

 

The screenshot shows all me R/W transfers since the last boot of my server, just shy of 3 months ago.  Compared to the activity of all the other drives, it really has negligible use.

Drive Stats.JPG

Link to comment

Conner?  Conner?  Anybody HOME?  Are you in the right thread 🙂

 

The intent here wasn't to duplicate a USB and steal the license LOL.  Is purely a backup mechanism USB to USB via the unix common DD :)  Besides the DD does not replicate the USB GUID unique identifier so you must rest at peace that no license was stolen nor development hours wasted.. Nobody can boot off from a duplicated DD USB drive LOL 

 

Now back to the original question. Why this behavior? Is my intention to have a second USB plugged in (a DD mirror of the original one) so I can boot off it in case of failure or emergency. I should be able to plug in a second USB drive, DD it and not having to deal with licensing issues as per my initial post, correct?  Unless someone gives me a good explanation of this strange behavior? 

 

Again this is the behavior. I plug in a second USB drive, I run the DD command to mirror it, and my license / key becomes invalid when the DD is done.  WHY?

Link to comment
6 hours ago, itimpi said:

When I tried using the d command it DID replicate the UNRAID label :(

 

Any reason you are not using a simple ‘cp’ or ‘rsync’ command?   That way you can label the backup with a different name, and that is known to work.

 

I am an old school UNIX guy man. To me DD is king particularly when both USB drives are the same model, so the DD block command is very reliable.  Perhaps I should rename the UNRAID label on the spare USB?  Is that even possible?

Link to comment
1 hour ago, johnwhicker said:

 

I am an old school UNIX guy man. To me DD is king particularly when both USB drives are the same model, so the DD block command is very reliable.  Perhaps I should rename the UNRAID label on the spare USB?  Is that even possible?

If you dd the entire device, the drive label occupies one of the very first blocks to be copied. As soon as Unraid sees a second device with UNRAID as a label, it freaks out, for the reasons connervt very politely tried to tell you. I think you owe him an apology.

 

As an exercise to help you understand, please dd your Unraid stick to a file instead of a second stick, then open that file in a competent hex editor, as in one that works well with multi GB files, and search for the string UNRAID. You will find it very close to the beginning of the file.

 

BTW, if you insist on using dd to backup your device, that's fine, but you can't allow the resulting image to be mounted while Unraid is running, for the reasons discussed. Since Unraid attempts to mount any valid media, you must direct your backup to a destination that isn't immediately recognizable as a media device. Dumping to a file will work just fine.

 

Also, keep in mind that because a dd of the device includes the partition table and MBR, it will be inconvenient to use that image on a different boot stick as a recovery, because the new stick will most likely have a different geometry.

 

You could also send the output of the dd to a stick passed through to a VM, that way Unraid shouldn't even see it. You will need to work out how to pipe it across the internal network in the VM though.

 

 

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
29 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

If you dd the entire device, the drive label occupies one of the very first blocks to be copied. As soon as Unraid sees a second device with UNRAID as a label, it freaks out, for the reasons connervt very politely tried to tell you. I think you owe him an apology.

 

As an exercise to help you understand, please dd your Unraid stick to a file instead of a second stick, then open that file in a competent hex editor, as in one that works well with multi GB files, and search for the string UNRAID. You will find it very close to the beginning of the file.

 

BTW, if you insist on using dd to backup your device, that's fine, but you can't allow the resulting image to be mounted while Unraid is running, for the reasons discussed. Since Unraid attempts to mount any valid media, you must direct your backup to a destination that isn't immediately recognizable as a media device. Dumping to a file will work just fine.

 

Also, keep in mind that because a dd of the device includes the partition table and MBR, it will be inconvenient to use that image on a different boot stick as a recovery, because the new stick will most likely have a different geometry.

 

You could also send the output of the dd to a stick passed through to a VM, that way Unraid shouldn't even see it. You will need to work out how to pipe it across the internal network in the VM though.

 

 

 

I think connervt was insinuating that I am trying to copy the USB stick to re-use the same license on different box, comment for which actually I took offense but I said, Thank you if you get my gist 🙂 Unless I misread it and if that's case I will apologize in advance. I am a big boy 🙂

 

As for the new stick geometry they're identical the same brand same model same batch. They should have identical geometry right?  That's the reason I like the DD command when you have same geometry

 

I know my solution and you kind of touch on it. I can continue keeping the second USB plugged in and everytime I reboot I will add a startup script to unmount it.  I only need this second USB in case of emergency when I am not home I can reboot them via IPMI. The unmount should do the trick.

 

Thanks in advance

 

 

Link to comment
  • DivideBy0 changed the title to [SOLVED] Key License issues with second USB plugged in?
On 2/9/2022 at 10:59 AM, johnwhicker said:

I think connervt was insinuating that I am trying to copy the USB stick to re-use the same license on different box, comment for which actually I took offense but I said, Thank you if you get my gist 🙂 Unless I misread it and if that's case I will apologize in advance. I am a big boy 🙂

 

Sorry, but you are incorrect.  In fact, I thought you did not understand Limetech's licensing methodology.  I was saying making copies, mirrored or otherwise, would not work as a functional, bootable backup, as the flash drive GUIDs would not match.

 

I've also read numerous threads where people were extremely nervous about having their OS on a flash drive, as if they are a delicate crystal glass full of nitroglycerin.  I went to explain that going to extreme measures over a simple backup copy isn't warranted, as most flash drive "failures" are usually self inflicted.

Link to comment
2 hours ago, ConnerVT said:

 

Sorry, but you are incorrect.  In fact, I thought you did not understand Limetech's licensing methodology.  I was saying making copies, mirrored or otherwise, would not work as a functional, bootable backup, as the flash drive GUIDs would not match.

 

I've also read numerous threads where people were extremely nervous about having their OS on a flash drive, as if they are a delicate crystal glass full of nitroglycerin.  I went to explain that going to extreme measures over a simple backup copy isn't warranted, as most flash drive "failures" are usually self inflicted.

 

I guess we're on different frequencies here LOL. 

 

Here is my scenario. My primary USB boot drive sits inside my server directly on the motherboard and is the primary and  licensed USB drive.  If that dies and I am remote, I need the means to boot off my unRaid, remotely (via IPMI and secondary boot drive) from a secondary USB drive which is a replica of the first one, except the license.  That secondary USB drive should be plugged in as well in a USB port.  SO if drive1 USB dies, then I boot off the USB drive 2 which is a perfect clone, then I manage to transfer the license to it based on the Limetech process.  This failure scenario is very unlikely, BUT possible so I need steps in place to be able to recover remotely. 

 

And you're absolutely wrong with this statement "making copies, mirrored or otherwise, would not work as a functional, bootable backup, as the flash drive GUIDs would not match" The system will boot just fine from the mirrored drive minus the license and the arrays being off. All you have to do is transfer the license with Limetech process and you are back up and running with the arrays online. 

 

I hope and trust we're on the same frequency in terms of scenario and what we're trying to accomplish here :) At least all this was tested in my end, not just assumptions 

Edited by johnwhicker
Link to comment

It is possible to boot Unraid off a drive with a different label to UNRAID by editing entries in the syslinux/syslinux.cfg file on the flash drive by using entries of the form

append unraidlabel=UNRAID-BACKUP initrd=/bzroot

You need to make this change for each of the boot options in that file.   You then make sure your backup flash drive has this label.    Since it has a different label go your primary flash drive Unraid will not ever get confused about which one you used to boot from.   I use this technique to run Unraid in a VM hosted on Unraid (as both host and VM need their own licenced flash drive) but there is no reason it cannot be used for other purposes.

 

If you set up your backup flash drive in this way and then just copy across the contents of the ‘config’ folder (which contains all the settings for a running Unraid installation) instead of the whole flash drive you could achieve what I think you want

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
7 hours ago, itimpi said:

It is possible to boot Unraid off a drive with a different label to UNRAID by editing entries in the syslinux/syslinux.cfg file on the flash drive by using entries of the form

append unraidlabel=UNRAID-BACKUP initrd=/bzroot

You need to make this change for each of the boot options in that file.   You then make sure your backup flash drive has this label.    Since it has a different label go your primary flash drive Unraid will not ever get confused about which one you used to boot from.   I use this technique to run Unraid in a VM hosted on Unraid (as both host and VM need their own licenced flash drive) but there is no reason it cannot be used for other purposes.

 

If you set up your backup flash drive in this way and then just copy across the contents of the ‘config’ folder (which contains all the settings for a running Unraid installation) instead of the whole flash drive you could achieve what I think you want

 

That's the perfect approach. After the first DD and change the label, I agree copying just the config folder with a cron job will be the way to go.  Good stuff gents and thanks

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.