The Uncast Show Episode 16 with Andrew Zawadzki - Creator of Community Applications

[SpencerJ]

 

Thanks to everyone who submitted questions. We hope you enjoy the show! Youtube video should be out in the next few days. 🍻

 

Get to know Andrew Zawadzki, aka @Squid, an Unraid legend responsible for the Community Applications, Fix Common Problems, and User Scripts plugins, among many others. 

 

On this episode, Join Ed and Andrew as they discuss Unraid 6.12-rc2, ZFS pros and cons, answer listener questions, and more!

⏱️ Discussion Timestamps
0:45 -Intros and getting to know Andrew

2:30 - Origin of the Squid moniker

3:50 - What Ed and Squid are watching

4:40 - First computers and interest in technology

6:30 - First forays into Linux and Unraid

9:35 - Andrew's first Unraid build, current rig, and total array size

13:20 - Cheers for beer in official Unraid beer glasses 🍻

14:30 - The origin story of Community Applications, future CA plans, and details about Dockerhub

20:15 - Discussing Andrew's other Unraid Plugins: Fix Common Problems, Appdata backup, User Scripts, and how they stack up against the most popular Unraid downloads

24:05 - User Scripts feature request by Ed

26:02 - Listener Question from @-Daedalus about why or why not plugins are shipped natively with the OS

29:25 - Unraid 6.12.0-rc2 and ZFS: Pros & Cons, use cases, and what Unraiders need to know

32:05 - PSA regarding backups!

33:30 - ZFS Send, compression, and other ZFS features and possibilities

38:58 - Some downsides of using ZFS

41:30 - Unraid Array Parity vs. ZFS pools; differences in data loss and other risks to consider

44:50 - New Customizable Dashboard in Unraid 6.12; Ed's Christmas wish came true! 

45:30 - PSA on some plugins that are now incompatible with Unraid 6.12

47:10 - Listener question from Matt asking about booting from USB2 vs. USB3 flash drives

51:30 - Listener question from  @dansushi about Gaming on VMs

55:52 - Listener question from @Mr. Traxson on managing multiple Unraid servers and clustering

1:00:50 - Listener question from @spxlabs about Home Automation videos and Unraid

 

[dansushi]

I keep hearing about how you can have a Gaming VM on Unraid. What are the methods that people are using to actually connect to this gaming VM? If I have my Unraid Server in one room of my house and want to use the Gaming VM in another room, do I have to buy a laptop to then remotely connect to it? Or if I have a spare keyboard/mouse + monitor, is there some sort of NUC or Raspberry Pi or other way cheaper device that I can use to actually access the Gaming VM?

[penz6]

Hello! I am running an all SSD array with a Sata SSD acting as the main drive and a NVME as a parity drive, would it be better to switch that array to ZFS now that support is being added? I don't plan to ever expand the array. And how would I do that?

[Mr. Traxson]

I own many unraid servers, and I believe I'm not the only one. What are some features you wish unraid would add for users who own and manage many unraid servers?
I wish there was better Active Directory Domain services. You can connect to a domain, but its pretty buggy and not very user friendly. 
I think it would be nice to have a way to "Cluster" your unraid servers to enable hardware and storage sharing and better management of multiple servers.
What are y'alls thoughts? 

[danimal86]

11 minutes ago, Mr. Traxson said:

I own many unraid servers, and I believe I'm not the only one. What are some features you wish unraid would add for users who own and manage many unraid servers?
I wish there was better Active Directory Domain services. You can connect to a domain, but its pretty buggy and not very user friendly. 
I think it would be nice to have a way to "Cluster" your unraid servers to enable hardware and storage sharing and better management of multiple servers.
What are y'alls thoughts? 

to piggy back on this, would be nice to be able to have multiple unraid servers work together. 

 

I'm still patiently waiting for the part2 of spaceinvaderone's video on how to setup plex failover from a backup server.  

[-Daedalus]

Squid, as an author of many widely-used plug-ins, which (if any) do you think should be shipped as part of the OS proper? Can you talk about why this isn't the case?

Same question to Ed.

[a12vman]

I too would like to hear about  plug-in vs baked-in functionality.  

I am amazed that something like Unassigned Devices is not Native Functionality.

 

Also, any plans to add guardrails for long-time users like me?  

I have been a user since 2009 starting with 1 TB drives. 

I started with ReiserFS and never paid attention.

 

I've done numerous hardware and drive upgrades over the years with no issues.

 

Recently I picked up an 18TB drive.  I had no idea that ReiserFS was being deprecated.

Pre-Cleared the Drive and all is good. Replaced an aging 8TB data drive with the 18TB Drive.

Started having issue shortly after the re-build was complete.  I ended up putting the 8 TB Drive 

back in using the "New Config" Method.  Formatted the 18TB Drive as XFS then followed the guide to 
migrate my data off of each drive using unBalance.  

 

I've already learned my lesson and suffered the pain of converting my data drives from Reiser to XFS.

I didn't lose any data but there was no warning or error message when trying to add an 18TB data drive 

to the array with an invalid FS.  What made it worse was the fact that I had already been running with an

18TB drive(in the Parity Slot) for months with no issues at all. In my mind I had no cause for concern when it 
came time to replace 8TB with 18TB.

 

 

Edited March 15 by a12vman

[itimpi]

5 hours ago, a12vman said:

I am amazed that something like Unassigned Devices is not Native Functionality.

The big problem with making something like this baked in is that it would mean long delays between updates.   It only makes sense to bake it in when updates become infrequent.

 

5 hours ago, a12vman said:

Also, any plans to add guardrails for long-time users like me?  

I have been a user since 2009 starting with 1 TB drives. 

I started with ReiserFS and never paid attention.

This is one I agree with.    The issue of reiserfs and disks larger than 16TB has been known for some time and there should be a baked in check for this to stop you setting reiserfs up in such a scenario.   Simply mentioning the issue in release notes is not sufficient.   I also think that with the advent of reiserfs support being removed from the Linux kernel any users still using it should be forced to acknowledge that they know about the issue so that they get on with converting any existing reiserfs drives off that file system before support gets removed from Unraid.

 

Having said that I admit I have not checked to see what happens on the 6.12 release if you try to set up a new disk with reiserfs.

[boogerburns]

Any predictions on whose going to win the Stanley cup?

 

What are y'all's opinion on kubernetes and community solutions and/or native unRAID support? 

 

Do y'all have any more super exciting plugins like Dynamix File Manager on your radar and/or your own personal backlog that you'd like to share?

[caplam]

obviously questions about zfs. 

I'm a long time user of linux but still a noob. I used proxmox, esxi in the past and unraid since 4 years but i still need some guidance.

So i would appreciate some sort of faq about zfs:

- pro and cons of zfs pool as main array and as cache of main array

- how to choose disk layout

- how to best use ssd, how many cache pools

- best way to organize backups according to data type (flat files folders, nextcloud, dockers, vm,....) and run it.

 

I'm waiting for stable release to reorganize all my data and my backups.

[SpencerJ]

The pod is up now and the full youtube video should be up within a couple of days! 

Thanks to everyone for submitting questions and for listening.

 

 

[ChatNoir]

The Youtube version is out :

 

(I have not watched it yet)

[-Daedalus]

Thanks for the episode! Really good listen!

 

I should have made my original question clearer: I more meant, why aren't certain plugins installed by default. If they were OS-native that is a different story.

[Squid]

15 minutes ago, -Daedalus said:

Thanks for the episode! Really good listen!

 

I should have made my original question clearer: I more meant, why aren't certain plugins installed by default. If they were OS-native that is a different story.

That's a slightly different question.  I would have to say that if plugins were installed by default on the OS then that would imply (for right or wrong) that they are OS-Native.   CA itself is currently the only plugin that for all intents and purposes is effectively built-in but still a separate download and update stream from the OS (excluding MyServers).  I don't really see that changing in the future.

[DarphBobo]

Interesting show.  But one clarification.  Near the beginning did you really suggest to google a dick pic????

[nostradumas]

The chode abides.

[Lolight]

Thank you for bringing in The Legend! 👏

 

An outstanding episode - focused on all things Unraid without much of a distraction related to other stuff.

IMO it's the best one so far since the change to the new format with Spaceinvader One.

Please bring other Unraid plugin and app devs for the future episodes.

[Squid]

On 3/28/2023 at 4:49 PM, nostradumas said:

The chode abides.

I take it then that you did the search???

[kizer]

Sir @Squid

 

Crazy seeing people in real life vs just their Avatar. 

[Squid]

I prefer my Avatar....  Not the easiest thing for an anti-social person to do...

[SpencerJ]

1 hour ago, Squid said:

I prefer my Avatar....  Not the easiest thing for an anti-social person to do...

maybe you’re more social anti-social? 😉

[ConnerVT]

You did great, Andrew.  Thank you so much for sharing with us.