VirtioFS Support Page

[mackid1993]

15 hours ago, _cr8tor_ said:

Any chance there is a setup guide for an idiot to make this work?

I've read so much and i have no idea how to make this work.

On Windows:

 

[_cr8tor_]

That looks pretty on spot. I will check it out.

Thank you for taking the time to share.

[mackid1993]

Just now, _cr8tor_ said:

That looks pretty on spot. I will check it out.

Thank you for taking the time to share.

I tried to make it as straightforward as possible.

[_cr8tor_]

15 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

I tried to make it as straightforward as possible.

In looking over it for the moment (will deal with this later) it looks like exactly what i need.

 

Question. It says "virtiofs will use the first available drive letter starting with Z: and downward. Use the "-m" command line parameter to explicitly select a drive letter."

How do i use the -m parameter? Do i use it in the line above when installing the service or?

Edit: actually how do i use this once installed? For multiple shares to mount?

 

And side note, you have an image not working on that page. The image under the line "Download and run the latest stable version of the WinFsp installer:"

The link still works though.

[mackid1993]

11 minutes ago, _cr8tor_ said:

In looking over it for the moment (will deal with this later) it looks like exactly what i need.

 

Question. It says "virtiofs will use the first available drive letter starting with Z: and downward. Use the "-m" command line parameter to explicitly select a drive letter."

How do i use the -m parameter? Do i use it in the line above when installing the service or?

Edit: actually how do i use this once installed? For multiple shares to mount?

 

And side note, you have an image not working on that page. The image under the line "Download and run the latest stable version of the WinFsp installer:"

The link still works though.

If you follow my guide Virtiofs won't mount with Z. You'd be disabling the Virtiofs service and mounting through WinFSP which will allow you to mount each share as its own drive letter instead of /mnt/user as Z: which is more natural for Windows. It's really just running a batch file with Task Scheduler after the initial setup.

[_cr8tor_]

Is there a guide for doing this? Batch file example maybe?

 

Confused as to whether i should follow your guide now or not?

 

End goal, see multiple shares in windows vm.

[mackid1993]

29 minutes ago, _cr8tor_ said:

Is there a guide for doing this? Batch file example maybe?

 

Confused as to whether i should follow your guide now or not?

 

End goal, see multiple shares in windows vm.

I literally shared the guide with you, please take the time to read it lol.

[_cr8tor_]

I did.

It says nothing about how to mount multiple drives.

It has no example batch file.

I can create a service. Great. How do i then use that service?

At first i thought your page was broke it just seems to end with here is your service. 

No info on how to use it though.

Im sure that is apprent to you, but its not to me.

 

And since you didnt hear me, well i will have to move on.

[mackid1993]

11 minutes ago, _cr8tor_ said:

I did.

It says nothing about how to mount multiple drives.

It has no example batch file.

I can create a service. Great. How do i then use that service?

At first i thought your page was broke it just seems to end with here is your service. 

No info on how to use it though.

Im sure that is apprent to you, but its not to me.

 

And since you didnt hear me, well i will have to move on.

 

Configuration script:

 

Another link to my instructions that I already shared:

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/129352-virtiofs-support-page/page/5/#comment-1301832

 

[_cr8tor_]

So when you shared that initially, i clicked on the link in the middle of the post and went right to here: https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/howto-windows.html

 

So i missed all the info in the post. Hence my confusion.

Thanks for taking yet more time to help figure this out.

I will tackle this soon.

[mackid1993]

8 minutes ago, _cr8tor_ said:

So when you shared that initially, i clicked on the link in the middle of the post and went right to here: https://virtio-fs.gitlab.io/howto-windows.html

 

So i missed all the info in the post. Hence my confusion.

Thanks for taking yet more time to help figure this out.

I will tackle this soon.

I'm not sure where you saw that, the only links in my post are to the source documentation: https://github.com/virtio-win/kvm-guest-drivers-windows/wiki/Virtiofs:-Shared-file-system#multiple-virtiofs-instances and the WinFSP website: https://winfsp.dev/rel/.

 

I'm not sure where the confusion came from but hopefully you can get this set up now. Just to set expectations some have had issues on AMD systems, although there hasn't been a lot of testing done in the community that has been reported. Performance will saturate the Unraid array but nvme to nvme transfers are faster over SMB. In certain situations SMB would perform better. I would suggest creating a shortcut that points to \\yourserver\ to easily access your shares over SMB and pin that to quick access. Also you cannot run executables off of a Virtofs share.

 

it is fantastic for Backblaze Computer backup though... that is an excellent use case.

 

Edited Saturday at 07:28 PM by mackid1993

[_cr8tor_]

2 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

In certain situations SMB would perform better. I would suggest creating a shortcut that points to \\yourserver\ to easily access your shares over SMB and pin that to quick access.

 

So my goal is to set this up with a backblaze client to perform backups.

Would smb would be a better option then? Like a mapped drive situation? I figured the network overhead would work out to slower transfers than directly connected. (what do i know, all assumptions)

I thought that would be the worst option which is why i was trying to get this working. 

 

Guidance is appreciated if you have any further. You got a buy me a coffee site or anything?

[mackid1993]

6 minutes ago, _cr8tor_ said:

So my goal is to set this up with a backblaze client to perform backups.

Would smb would be a better option then? Like a mapped drive situation? I figured the network overhead would work out to slower transfers than directly connected. (what do i know, all assumptions)

I thought that would be the worst option which is why i was trying to get this working. 

 

Guidance is appreciated if you have any further. You got a buy me a coffee site or anything?

Backblaze doesn't work with mapped drives.

[_cr8tor_]

Edit 1: WAIT, THINK I FIGURED THIS OUT. WILL UPDATE AGAIN

Edit 2: Yes, i figured this out, i had forgotten to set all my "Unraid share mode" passthroughs.

 

First, installed winfsp-2.0.23075.msi

Rebooted.

Ran batch file 1 as seen below:

sc stop VirtioFsSvc
ping 127.0.0.1
sc config VirtioFsSvc start=demand
ping 127.0.0.1
cmd /c ""C:\Program Files (x86)\WinFsp\bin\fsreg.bat" virtiofs "C:\Program Files\Virtio-Win\VioFS\virtiofs.exe" "-t %%1 -m %%2""
echo Confirm data was properly entered into HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\WinFsp\Services\virtiofs
pause

 

Configured below batch file and ran as admin: 

@echo off
:: Check for admin privileges
net session >nul 2>&1
if %errorlevel% == 0 (
    echo Running with admin privileges
) else (
    echo Running without admin privileges
    echo Attempting to elevate process...
    PowerShell -Command "Start-Process -Verb RunAs -FilePath '%comspec%' -ArgumentList '/c %~f0'"
    exit /b
)
:: Rest of your batch file starts here
REM Modify the Drive Letters such as viofsJ J: as well as the tag (tag1) to match the tags (case senstive) set in Unraid.

"C:\Program Files (x86)\WinFsp\bin\launchctl-x64.exe" start virtiofs viofsJ public J:

 

public case is accurate to the array share.

First time it runs, nothing happens.

Second time i run it, KO launcher: Error 183

 

Would appreciate advice on what i messed up.

Thanks.

Default windows 10 install (fully updated) btw. Nothing else installed. OS is activated.

 

Edit 1: WAIT, THINK I FIGURED THIS OUT. WILL UPDATE AGAIN

Edit 2: Yes, i figured this out, i had forgotten to set all my "Unraid share mode" passthroughs.

Edited Monday at 11:40 PM by _cr8tor_
noted in post

[_cr8tor_]

Got this all working.

Running into a problem that i think ill just be stuck with but hoping...

 

Part of what im backing up are audio files, not music but other short recordings.

3 folders deep, i have the top folder say "data" then in that are about 1000 folders and each of those have about 30 folders and then each of those have anywhere from 3k to 6k short audio files. In short, there are almost 9 million files.

When its scanning this share/drive, its dying. It looses the connection to the drive and i have to restart the VM to get it back up. Unmounting and remounting does not bring it back.

 

I know there are issues with the underlying software/drivers just not being primetime yet.

Is this anything anyone has a suggestion for?

 

Thanks!

Edited Tuesday at 03:19 PM by _cr8tor_
clarification

[mackid1993]

6 minutes ago, _cr8tor_ said:

Got this all working.

Running into a problem that i think ill just be stuck with but hoping...

 

Part of what im backing up are audio files, not music but other short recordings.

3 folders deep, i have the top folder say "data" then in that are about 1000 folders and each of those have about 30 folders and then each of those have anywhere from 3k to 6k short audio files. In short, there are almost 9 million files.

When its scanning this share/drive, its dying. It looses the connection to the drive and i have to restart the VM to get it back up. Unmounting and remounting does not bring it back.

 

I know there are issues with the underlying software/drivers just not being primetime yet.

Is this anything anyone has a suggestion for?

 

Thanks!

Windows has a maximum path limit of 260 characters. Linux doesn't have this issue. Paths that go over this will cause the drive to unmount. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1880321/why-does-the-260-character-path-length-limit-exist-in-windows

[_cr8tor_]

2 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

Windows has a maximum path limit of 260 characters. Linux doesn't have this issue. Paths that go over this will cause the drive to unmount. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1880321/why-does-the-260-character-path-length-limit-exist-in-windows

hhhmmm

These are originally created on a windows machine in the documents folder. 

In manually checking path lengths i can find many are hitting 175 to 200 characters long.

However when created on the windows box, they are in the "user" folder and are then copied to the unraid share.

Original path: c:\users\user_name\original_folder\data\date\group\file.wav

Unraid path: /mnt/user/share/data/date/group/file.wav

Mounted as: c:\data\date\group\file.wav

So the path the backblaze client would be looking at is smaller than the path in the windows cm in which it was created.

 

 

That being said, i dont see this character limit being the problem.

The drive is definialey being unmounted. And i can only assume something like maybe a file count limit is causing this? Which i hoped might be adjustable. Watching resources on both VM and unraid all seems good in those areas.

Thoughts?

[mackid1993]

10 minutes ago, _cr8tor_ said:

hhhmmm

These are originally created on a windows machine in the documents folder. 

In manually checking path lengths i can find many are hitting 175 to 200 characters long.

However when created on the windows box, they are in the "user" folder and are then copied to the unraid share.

Original path: c:\users\user_name\original_folder\data\date\group\file.wav

Unraid path: /mnt/user/share/data/date/group/file.wav

Mounted as: c:\data\date\group\file.wav

So the path the backblaze client would be looking at is smaller than the path in the windows cm in which it was created.

 

 

That being said, i dont see this character limit being the problem.

The drive is definialey being unmounted. And i can only assume something like maybe a file count limit is causing this? Which i hoped might be adjustable. Watching resources on both VM and unraid all seems good in those areas.

Thoughts?

I have no idea sorry. 

[_cr8tor_]

Just now, mackid1993 said:

I have no idea sorry. 

Cool, thanks for your help though.

 

This is really a bummer, i cant find a way to back up these files. Going to have to leave unraid over this. ugh

[mackid1993]

2 minutes ago, _cr8tor_ said:

Cool, thanks for your help though.

 

This is really a bummer, i cant find a way to back up these files. Going to have to leave unraid over this. ugh

I mean you could try troubleshooting it instead of leaving Unraid. I have 11 TB backed up no problem. There also is a kind of wonky Backblaze docker. Maybe ask on the virtio-win GitHub. 

[_cr8tor_]

I have been working on finding a backup solution for unraid for weeks.

I dont know if its the number of files or what, but nothing works.

The wonky docker is just that, wonky, and doesnt work.

Out of the box the template is(was?) misconfigured bad enough to not even work, i figured it out and notified the author, who fixed it, but that means it was there months if not years, just not working. I cant trust that for backups. It will break sooner rather than later and then it may or may not get fixed someday.

 

Anyway, I wonder if this might be a backblaze app problem/setting so am looking at that route now. 

 

I a not paying for NAS type backup at $6+ per TB, its just to expensive. Fuck at that price i can just buy another machine and put it at a relatives. 

 

And its pretty discouraging that unraid doesnt have an integrated backup solution for plebs like me. Seems you gotta be a script kiddie or cmd line guru to use unraid for realsies. 🙂

[mackid1993]

I mean I use Arq backup to cloud storage to critical things and Backblaze is just for my media which I can stand to lose. You may want to play around to see why it's unmounting. @SimonF also made some changes in Unraid 7 beta which may help. Just so you know there is a bug in beta 3 that requires you to run a command at boot to get virtiofs to work. If you look a page back in this thread I linked what to do. That has an new version of qemu, virtiofsd, and some other stuff that was added. I've been running it for so long including backported to 6.12 that this could be why I haven't had this issue.

[_cr8tor_]

My business needs backups are almost 14TB of data.

Personal media i would just download again and i use google for personal stuff that actually matters. (keep work/personal separate)

 

I will look into the things you mentioned as i can.

 

Thanks for your time.

[SnarfsMojo]

On 9/23/2024 at 11:27 AM, mackid1993 said:

Maybe test in another VM to see if it's Windows or Unraid. Also perhaps maybe something got messed up in your XML. I've seen Virtofs shares refuse to mount because something in the xml got messed up. You can try recreating the VM template.

just to follow up on this, I have been super busy as of late.  last night I finally set aside time to dig in and try to fix the issue.  and lo and behold, the issue has resolved itself *shrug*. not great, but not the end of the world   let's just hope it stays fixed!

[mackid1993]

25 minutes ago, _cr8tor_ said:

My business needs backups are almost 14TB of data.

Personal media i would just download again and i use google for personal stuff that actually matters. (keep work/personal separate)

 

I will look into the things you mentioned as i can.

 

Thanks for your time.

Well for business backups you shouldn't be doing this. It's totally unsupported by Backblaze if not completely against their terms of use. I would suggest making a regular support thread for backup advice. There are solutions but for business critical data you'll need to pay for object storage.