Help - do I need to upgrade from 1.050930?


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I have been happily running 1.050930 for years. I haven't had a drive failure yet so I haven't really put the unRAID to the test yet. I am wondering if there have been bugs found that I might run into if there is a failure. Or are there other reasons I would want to upgrade?

 

Is there an easy way to find the revision history for the software versions? Is the upgrade procedure from 1.050930 documented somewhere? Seems like this info would be in sticky threads or documented on the lime-technology main site but I haven't found it...

 

I haven't been keeping up with this product since the forum was a thread on AVS. There are thousands of posts since I last read!

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Thanks! - when looking for the download I found the upgrade instructions so I should be set there too. I downloaded 3.0, 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2.1 and read the readme.txt files to see what bugs were fixed in each release. Nothing jumped out at me as necessary for my server (not sure though). I wonder what the changes were from 1.050930 to 3.0... I'm just paranoid/worried about any bugs that might show up when one of the drives finally crash and the unRAID is put to the test.

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There was one MAJOR bug fix in version 2.060706.    It fixed a problem where attempting to replace a failed drive would fail if the replacement drive had never previously been formatted.  Tom never ran int it in his prior tests since he always used drives that  had been previously formatted in a prior test. 

 

Since few people ever had a drive fail while running the older version, this bug did not show itself.  Only after one or two people struggled with drive failures did the bug get identified and fixed.  It was a while before Tom could even duplicate the bug in his lab. (again, since he was working with the same drives over and over again in his tests)

 

You will want to upgrade because of this... if you do not, you will need to manually format a new drive when attempting to replace a failed one... the automatic process will not work.  This only complicates your life at a time when you want to get your  array back fully working after a drive fails.

 

The release note for 2.060706 said this...

Version 2.060706 of the UnRaid software is now available.  The only change in this release vs. previous (2.060324) is a critical bug fix related to upgrading a disk.

 

Since that time, there have been a few releases with improvements, writable user-shares is a huge improvement.  There also have been a few where one specific feature, or a specific driver for a chipset did not work (or work as well as the prior release)  This currently the case with certain Realtec chipset based network interfaces.  Hopefully, they will be back working at full speed in the next release.

 

As an early adopter of unRaid Tom has offered to supply two "Pro" keys to enable two USB flash drives you purchase locally.  About all you would need to do is get him the serial numbers.

 

So, get yourself a new flash drive, and follow the instructions to load the newest version of unRaid on it.  (don't overwrite your current flash drive, that way no matter what, you have a fallback you can boot on)  I've seen people going for huge flash drives, but unless you are going to add software packages of your own a 256 Meg or 512 Meg is plenty of space.

Then, using the instructions, make note of the locations and serial numbers of all your existing drive since you will need to re-assign them on the new drive-assignment page in the current web-interface.

 

If you need guidance, make a post in the 4.2 thread. Somebody will assist.  Biggest issue for most is removal of "u3" software bundled on some flash drives (you will need software downloadable from the drive mfg web-site to do it) and setting the volume label on the flash drive to UNRAID.

 

Joe L.

 

 

 

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I bought 1G SanDisk Cruzer Micro that came with the U3 software. It didn’t work in my Dell PC. It worked in my laptop so used that to setup the OS. Plugged new USB drive into unRAID and it didn’t work. Dorked around for hours and then found this thread (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=359.0). After trying "syslinux -sam f:" it worked.

 

Below are the steps that worked for me – a compilation of the following pages:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1384.0

http://www.lime-technology.com/wordpress/?page_id=15

http://www.lime-technology.com/wordpress/?page_id=46

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=359.0

 

 

1. Get new flash disk

2. remove U3 software if present

3. Prep it with syslinux and unraid version

4. Create and copy super.dat file to the new USB config directory (along with network.cfg and ident.cfg)

5. Get registration key from Lime-Tech and copy it into the config directoy

6. run “syslinux -sam f:”

7. With your current server, make a note of each disk's model/serial number

8. Stop current raid array and shut down server

9. Replace the old USB with the new configured one and reboot

10. Go to the Devices page and assign the hard drives appropriately based on model/serial number

 

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