Documentation?

[MrNeo]

Hi, been evaluating moving to unraid and playing around with it on a VM, but many questions come up and it's rather hard to find documentation on anything, most links end up being very old and broken or irrelevant.

One of the issues I'm having is that I will need extra kernel modules, apparently I can make plugins for that but no docs or how-to exist.

 

Feels lacking for a paid product that's closed source, that docs depend a lot on community.

 

I would even consider other option but none seems to truly exist (array with live parity update).

 

Am I missing something here?

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, MrNeo said:

Hi, been evaluating moving to unraid and playing around with it on a VM, but many questions come up and it's rather hard to find documentation on anything, most links end up being very old and broken or irrelevant.

 

The online documentation is accessible via the ‘Manual’ link at the bottom of the GUI or the DOCS link at the top of each forum page. The Unraid OS->Manual section in particular covers most features of the current Unraid release.    Forum links are unreliable.

 

Adding kernel modules is non-trivial as Unraid is only validated against a specific set of options, and adding extras is done at your own risk.  In that sense the core system is more like an ‘appliance’.  If there is a good Use Case then Limetech can often be persuaded to add them for the next release.

 

Note that all of the GUI and documentation is freely available on GitHub although Limetech maintain control as changes have to be submitted via Pull requests so they can be validated. 

[MrNeo]

So online docs are lacking end of story fine.

 

About kernel modules I'm aware it's something at my own risk, my needs are simple a webcam and a specific CAN driver that would allow me to run my 3d printer off docker containers (I had this setup previously in another system) and I didn't want to get into creating a Vm just to pass these things through and end up running docker inside, these are all mainline kernel drivers.

If there were instructions on how to do it it would be perfect, with a big disclaimer of "USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!"

 

I also found @ich777 docker container that helps build the modules and have successfully compiled it, but the system froze as soon as I loaded it (I'm assuming either a missing dependency or any other kind of incompatibility that I have to see if the logs mention)

[ich777]

33 minutes ago, MrNeo said:

So online docs are lacking end of story fine.

I don't feel like that.

Because Unraid runs from RAM such things are rather complicated (compiling and make sure that it is load every time Unraid boots) or at least not that easily achievable and such question doesn't come up that often. <- if such question do come up most of the times it can be asked in the Feature Request forums if the module can be built into the base Unraid OS or users a pointed in my direction.

 

34 minutes ago, MrNeo said:

webcam

As already said use the DVB Plugin with the LibreELEC package, there should be most webcams be included.

 

35 minutes ago, MrNeo said:

a specific CAN driver

Could you be a bit more specific which Kernel module exactly?

 

36 minutes ago, MrNeo said:

If there were instructions on how to do it it would be perfect, with a big disclaimer of "USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!"

These are basically all Community Application applications.

 

37 minutes ago, MrNeo said:

I also found @ich777 docker container that helps build the modules and have successfully compiled it

Was it that one: https://github.com/ich777/unraid_kernel

 

38 minutes ago, MrNeo said:

but the system froze as soon as I loaded it

How did you load it or what did you do exactly? Did you copy it over to Unraid? Did you made sure the system was aware of the new module? There is nothing like dkms on Unraid available.

 

Should we continue this conversation here or via PM?

[MrNeo]

@ich777 we could keep conversation here as it may be helpful for someone else.

 

11 minutes ago, ich777 said:

As already said use the DVB Plugin with the LibreELEC package, there should be most webcams be included.

Yep ended up working even without a reboot, one is fixed.

 

11 minutes ago, ich777 said:

Could you be a bit more specific which Kernel module exactly?

Specifically CAN_GS_USB

 

11 minutes ago, ich777 said:

How did you load it or what did you do exactly? Did you copy it over to Unraid? Did you made sure the system was aware of the new module? There is nothing like dkms on Unraid available.

Built, copied over entire /net/can module dir, ran depmod and then modprobe can to load the module. After that system just froze.

[ich777]

14 minutes ago, MrNeo said:

Specifically CAN_GS_USB

On what Unraid version are you currently? I assume you compiled it as module and not built in.

 

14 minutes ago, MrNeo said:

After that system just froze.

Could it be the case that you Hypervisor doesn't like that module or better speaking that it is related that you run Unraid in a VM?

Please remember you could always plug the USB boot device into that computer where you currently run the VM (or your main PC), boot from it, install the module there and see if it loads <- as long as  you don't start the Array the system will be left untouched because Unraid runs from RAM.

[MrNeo]

Meanwhile I tried on a physical computer, same issue.

 

It was compiled as a module, I was careful enough to not select anything as built in. I will do some more testing and if I need any further help I'll ping you.

[ich777]

8 minutes ago, MrNeo said:

Meanwhile I tried on a physical computer, same issue.

Can you please tell me on what Unraid version are you and trying to do all of that?

[MrNeo]

7 minutes ago, ich777 said:

Can you please tell me on what Unraid version are you and trying to do all of that?

sorry completely forgot to say it's 6.12.6

[ich777]

13 hours ago, MrNeo said:

sorry completely forgot to say it's 6.12.6

I've looked into that now a bit more in depth (...yes, I did partially recompile everything).

First of all it's not possible (at least not that easily) to compile that module on Unraid because the module that you need depends on CAN and CAN_DEV which can be built as a module but you also need CAN_NETLINK which is only available as a built in module and so to speak not available on Unraid by default and even if you copy over the CAN_GS_USB module you are most likely missing the symbols from CAN_NETLINK and that's why you are experiencing crashes when you actually load the module.

 

However with a feature request to build Unraid with CAN_NETLINK so that it's built into the base OS you can build the module and actually load it but for that you have to wait for the next Unraid version...

 

You actually could build a custom bzimage alongside with the modules that you need but that is really advanced and also requires a rebuild from a ton of kernel modules because CAN_NETLINK is part of the NETDEVICES and you would also need a custom bzmodules after that to.

 

May I ask what overkill printer has a CAN Bus interface?

 

Hope that explains it a bit more in depth and somewhat helps...

[MrNeo]

Thank you for going through the effort of testing it out and finding the root cause of the crash.

 

13 minutes ago, ich777 said:

However with a feature request to build Unraid with CAN_NETLINK so that it's built into the base OS you can build the module and actually load it but for that you have to wait for the next Unraid version...

Where to I request that?

 

13 minutes ago, ich777 said:

You actually could build a custom bzimage alongside with the modules that you need but that is really advanced and also requires a rebuild from a ton of kernel modules because CAN_NETLINK is part of the NETDEVICES and you would also need a custom bzmodules after that to.

I don't mind, do you have any guidance on that as a temporary solution?

 

14 minutes ago, ich777 said:

May I ask what overkill printer has a CAN Bus interface?

Well I don't think it's overkill, it's just a toolboard that talks over CAN (klipper running with CAN Bridge), instead of running at least 10 wires to the toolhead I run 4

[ich777]

1 minute ago, MrNeo said:

Where to I request that?

Create a post in the Feature Requests subforums with a short description and for what you need that module and in combination the modules that I've mentioned above.

 

I can also pitch that maybe a bit and see if it get's accepted.

 

12 minutes ago, MrNeo said:

I don't mind, do you have any guidance on that as a temporary solution?

That is actually not that easy and would take me also some time since I have to recompile the Kernel (and of course the modules) filter them out (maybe that's not needed because it's completely custom at the moment) and repack everything for you.

 

I can do that for you but it's getting pretty late over here and I'm tiered, had a hard week at work (thank god that we have a holiday tomorrow).

[MrNeo]

2 minutes ago, ich777 said:

Create a post in the Feature Requests subforums with a short description and for what you need that module and in combination the modules that I've mentioned above.

Will do.

 

2 minutes ago, ich777 said:

That is actually not that easy and would take me also some time since I have to recompile the Kernel (and of course the modules) filter them out (maybe that's not needed because it's completely custom at the moment) and repack everything for you.

I expected it to be tricky, and I did not want to ask you to do it for me, I'm aware it's likely a lot of work.

 

4 minutes ago, ich777 said:

I can do that for you but it's getting pretty late over here and I'm tiered, had a hard week at work (thank god that we have a holiday tomorrow).

If you're willing to I would appreciate, otherwise a basic set of instructions on how to do it works for me, compiling a kernel and moving around the system is not something unknown to me, but if this moves forward as a possible solution to me then and the changes are not accepted by unraid team then I will be stuck with this method, and I will either give up or keep annoying you and asking for a repack, hence knowing how to do it would be a better option for me.

 

It it comes to it I might just give up on the idea of keeping all the printer software in the same server and move everything into a raspberry pi.

[ich777]

10 minutes ago, MrNeo said:

If you're willing to I would appreciate, otherwise a basic set of instructions on how to do it works for me

This is not as basic as you think, if I write that here out it is maybe more work than to do it for you since modules and bzimage are different files and have a specific structure.

 

15 minutes ago, MrNeo said:

and the changes are not accepted by unraid team

This is not very likely to happen.

 

16 minutes ago, MrNeo said:

hence knowing how to do it would be a better option for me

If it get accepted it would be better to create a plugin for the module so that others can also benefit from it, I hope that makes sense to you.

[MrNeo]

3 minutes ago, ich777 said:

If it get accepted it would be better to create a plugin for the module so that others can also benefit from it, I hope that makes sense to you.

I agree, for my specific use case I think the overlap of people running Unraid with a 3D printer that runs Klipper in CAN Bridge mode might be very small, but i'll create the feature request.