Hi all. Still getting used to the unraid way of life. Used to run Debian and OMV.

I dont love JBOD/Mergerfs type FUSE file systems and have been using unraid as disk shares (also heard its faster than user shares?). I like having the least amount of drives spin up as possible which involves keeping media/pics/whatever on separate drives which I find easier to manage.

 

If I set the downloads share to cache -> array BUT my vpn container is set to download to /mnt/disk2/Downloads.. is that redundant? Would I need to set the vpn mount point to /mnt/user/Downloads for the share setting to take hold? Most mount points for me are set to disk shares going directly to the root folder I specify. If thats the case, do the share settings not apply here and only apply for /mt/user/XXX? Thanks for any clarification!

Each disk has share settings if you share the disk. User Share settings are independent of that. If you want your download user share to include cache you have to refer to the user share path. 

 

Don't know if that answers your question since I'm not sure what your question is. 

Sorry, I guess it's a multi part question. Would /mnt/user benefit me in anyway if I'm not using the FUSE capabilities? Does making my Downloads share settings cache -> array do anything different than me pointing my download dockers to download to the cache drive then moving them off into the expected folder in the array?

 

I think I'm my head any Share settings only affected the /mnt/user and not /mnt/disk.

 

If you use /mnt/user/Downloads, you are using fuse.

 

If you don't use /mnt/user/Downloads, and instead use /mnt/disk2/Downloads, then any files on cache (or any other disk or pool except disk2) are not included when accessing Downloads.

 

After they are moved none will be on cache, but before they are moved, all downloads are in /mnt/user/downloads whether they are on cache or on the array.

Thanks trurl. Ive been mounting everything as /mnt/cache or /mnt/disk directly but only have user shares set up under shares.. which I think I should have been setting up disk shares instead? Is it possible to convert from one to another? All of my data resides on say /mnt/disk1/Movies, /mnt/disk3/TVshows and no folder is scattered between multiple drives. I apologize if I'm not being clear would just hate to have done things incorrectly.

User shares are simply the combined top level folders on array and pools. This is how Unraid allows folders to span disks.

 

If you create a user share in the Unraid webUI, Unraid will create a top level folder named for the share on array or pool in accordance with settings for the share.

 

Conversely, if you create a top level folder on array or pool, it is automatically a user share named for the folder. User shares created in this way have default settings until you change them.

 

I always recommend only using user shares and not using disk shares at all. You can control which disks a user share uses, and whether and how it uses pools, in the settings for the share. So you can easily restrict your Movies to a specific disk, for example, without actually sharing disks.

 

And, with Unraid v6.12+, if a user share is confined to a single disk or pool in its settings, your can set that user share to bypass fuse (Exclusive access) if you Permit exclusive shares in Global Share Settings.

 

In any case, don't mix disks and user shares when moving or copying files since Linux doesn't know that these are different views of the same files, and it could try to overwrite what it is trying to read..