Hello,

I ran into an issue with an application (opencloud) which uses extended file attributes. The application is a cloud service.

I set up a VM with Alpine 3.22 with an semi-automatic installation and setup script. To avoid the VM runs out of storage I first wanted to save the data outside the VM via virtioFS. Since I read NFS is the recommended protocol I tried this out. But I am not able to get the app run in unraid.

After a couple of tries I set up a VM on my desktop (Linux mint) where it is running without issues. Knowing I have a running configuration I connected my desktop VM with unraid via NFS. But I ran into the same issues as mentioned before.

Obviously (according to the opencloud log) there is an issue with xattr.

opencloud-1 | {"level":"error","service":"storage-users","host.name":"92884baaca17","protocol":"http","error":"http service dataprovider could not be started,: tree: unfit storage '/var/lib/opencloud/storage/users': extended attributes not supported: xattr.Set /var/lib/opencloud/storage/users/posixfs-xattr-check-1339827557 user.posixfs.test: operation not supported","time":"2025-12-11T19:44:26Z","line":"github.com/opencloud-eu/reva/[email protected]/cmd/revad/runtime/drivenserver.go:91","message":"reva server error"}

I tried to set and get extended attributes in unraid and in the VM separately. Both worked. But reading xattr from the from one to the other does not work.

After some research I found an issue at github where the Kernel was the root cause. https://github.com/siderolabs/talos/issues/11843

Maybe you can check this? Is unraid supporting nfs V.4.2 natively?

Update:

I just tested ability to read and write xattr from the guest VM on the host. For all tests I used the NFS4 protocol with the same export rules.

Mounting point:

192.168.178.43:/mnt/user/opencloud on /root/opencloud/persistent-data type nfs4 (rw,relatime,vers=4.0,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,namlen=255,hard,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,clientaddr=192.168.178.125,local_lock=none,addr=192.168.178.43)

First of all unraid on its own:

root@Kiarax:~# touch /mnt/user/opencloud/self_test

root@Kiarax:~# setfattr -n user.test -v "this is a test" /mnt/user/opencloud/self_test

root@Kiarax:~# getfattr /mnt/user/opencloud/self_test -d

getfattr: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names

# file: mnt/user/opencloud/self_test

user.test="this is a test"

Alpine guest VM on unraid

alpine-ocaido:~# touch /root/opencloud/persistent-data/alpine_testfile_on_unraid

alpine-ocaido:~# setfattr -n user.test -v "this is a test" /root/opencloud/persistent-data/alpine_testfile_on_unraid

setfattr: /root/opencloud/persistent-data/alpine_testfile_on_unraid: Not supported

alpine-ocaido:~# getfattr /root/opencloud/persistent-data/alpine_testfile_on_unraid -d

alpine-ocaido:~#

Then I tried to read the xattr from the self test and I got no response.

alpine-ocaido:~# getfattr /root/opencloud/persistent-data/self_test -d

alpine-ocaido:~#

A similar alpine guest VM on my desktop. No problems at all.

alpine-ocaido:~# touch /root/opencloud/persistent-data/alpine-testfile_on_host

alpine-ocaido:~# setfattr -n user.test -v "this is a test" /root/opencloud/persistent-data/alpine-testfile_on_host

alpine-ocaido:~# getfattr /root/opencloud/persistent-data/alpine-testfile_on_host -d

getfattr: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names

# file: root/opencloud/persistent-data/alpine-testfile_on_host

user.test="this is a test"

alpine-ocaido:~#

So, for whatever reason, I am not able to read or set extended attributes via NFS from the VM on the unraid environment.

If anyone have an idea how or why, please do not hesitate! 🙃

Edited December 15, 2025Dec 15 by caracola

Hey, did you ever figure this out? Im trying to get xattr working for Opencloud to a "dumb" unraid share via NFS and cant get seem to get it working

Hey,

Yes and no.

The No:

Honestly I did not try to get this work since a couple of weeks (or months in the meantime), because this was so frustrating drove me nuts. I hoped that any unraid maintainer would be interested in this but obviously this issue is not that "relevant".

I guess there is occurs an issue somewhere between the both OS (unraid and alpine). I found a couple of posts in several forums about this topic. There definitely was an issue in the Kernel which had an impact of xattr and NFS. But according to my investigation this issue was solved in the Kernel's which are used by unraid and the alpine version I used.

But....

What I found out, that these problems occurs not only in the combination alpine <-> unraid. I ran into the same error using Debian (I think I took trixie).

The Yes:

If this is not strange enough, with Ubuntu Server 24.04 it worked as expected.

So, in case you do not need a real tiny base OS, give Ubuntu Server a try.

Only a few thoughts:

According to the Opencloud manual it is important that NFS-Version 4.2 is supported and used. On Server- and Client-Side. Well, nice to know but this is no guarantee because according to the specs from Debian and Alpine, both should support this version. Maybe I am to dumb or naiv but that lets me think there is something wrong on the unraid side. But on the other hand, it is working with Ubuntu Server. Since NFS and xattr are (more or less) standardized, I am wondering if the behaviour of the OS's differ somehwhere (Kernel) how to deal with it.

In case you have further information or thoughts, please share here. I appreciate that.

Update:

Regarding the part I mentioned, that Ubuntu Server fixed this issue:

I can not confirm that Ubuntu brings a solution. For whatever reason I am not able to reproduce it.

Edited April 17Apr 17 by caracola

It's early AM here so I am not positive we are hitting the same issue but are you able to get OpenCloud working on Unraid and this is just the app in a vm that isn't working?

Trying to migrate OpenCloud from a nas (docker compose) to Unraid (docker compose) and it isn't having it. So before I start from scratch and migrate data, wanted to see if there was some bigger issue that made OpenCloud+Unraid a no go.

Yes, unraid does not support docker compose out of the box. There is a community app to add this feature.

Here is also a script to get opencloud running on unraid. I did not tried it because this is not that kind of solution I am looking for.

I want to deploy it within a VM in that way it was made for. And this is not a problem.

It is not a problem to get opencloud running within a vm. The problem is to share the unraid pool via NFS or virtioFS to avoid storage issues in the VM.

53 minutes ago, caracola said:

It is not a problem to get opencloud running within a vm. The problem is to share the unraid pool via NFS or virtioFS to avoid storage issues in the VM.

Is there a reason that the VM cannot access the files as network shares via SMB?

Honestly I did not try this because for my usecase the FS has to be POSIX compliant. SMB needs an extension to fullfill this. Native SMB is not (yet) supported.

Requirements | OpenCloud Docs

Runs on anything from a Raspberry Pi to a data center.

Thanks for the clarification - different issues that we are running into.

Yeah, aware of the lack of native docker-compose and am using Dockhand to manage that. My issue is likely around permissions but wanted to check before starting fresh.