This is a bit of a weird one and it probably seems pretty basic, but it's pretty important to me 😣

I'm not sure what changed, but for some reason I can't create shares with spaces or '-' anymore. As you can see, I have literally *heaps* of shares with spaces, '-' and special characters but now it won't let me create anything like that.

It's a feature I *desperately* want / need. Can anyone help me out with this please?

Thanks!

These are no longer allowed in more recent Unraid releases because they will conflict with ZFS, it an affected share is set to use it in the future.

19 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

These are no longer allowed in more recent Unraid releases because they will conflict with ZFS, it an affected share is set to use it in the future.

😡
There has to be some setting or config somewhere in Unraid I can change this! If it can or will conflict with ZFS, then logic dictates that any existing shares with conflicting characters shouldn't be allowed either.
If those shares are still allowed then....I don't know what else to tell ya

@eliminatrix2 , I have been aware of this situation for a period of time now. I believe it exists because of the 'noise' that ZFS fans are making about their 'desperate' need for ZFS. In this frenzy, those of us who will never use a ZFS anything have been sidelined!

One solution would be to add logic to the 'Add Share' tab to check for illegal characters in a share name if a ZFS pool is being selected (#1):

I feel that this is the point where this requirement should be imposed.

At the same time, the 'Help' text should be reworked to specify the restrictions of ZFS pools as to legal characters allowed (#2)

Since you are the one for this who has a 'horse-in-the-race', I would suggest that you should be the one to request some action. Perhaps the best thing would be to create "Bug Report". (That is the only section that the developers look with regularity!!!)

Edited February 18Feb 18 by Frank1940

23 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

One solution would be to add logic to the 'Add Share' tab to check for illegal characters in a share name if a ZFS pool is being selected (#1):

You can add a drive to the array at any time and decide it should be ZFS-formatted, and any share should be able to use it as it will by default. So the current status of not allowing any zfs-illegal share names anymore makes sense.

OP's setup to have all those things as individual shares is a bit weird in the first place, most people would have a "media" share with those folders inside it, no problem then.

Edited February 18Feb 18 by Kilrah

11 hours ago, eliminatrix2 said:

It's a feature I *desperately* want / need. Can anyone help me out with this please?

In the meantime, you can just create the share by making a folder in /mnt/user - then it'll show up the same as any other share and you can configure it from the gui

8 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

You can add a drive to the array at any time and decide it should be ZFS-formatted, and any share should be able to use it as it will by default. So the current status of not allowing any zfs-illegal share names anymore makes sense.

It is my understanding that is NOT ZSF formatted drives that are the problem. It is ZFS pools that have the restriction. (If it was ZFS formatted drives, this board would probably have been lit-up long ago with folks who have shares with not-illegal names. )

12 minutes ago, Michael_P said:

In the meantime, you can just create the share by making a folder in /mnt/user - then it'll show up the same as any other share and you can configure it from the gui

This is the reason I feel that the Add Share tab needs the work. The restriction on share name is overly restrictive ONLY in that location! IT is not rocket science to fix it there...

I might be brutally honest at this point— One might well consider that ZFS is still half-baked. It should be able to handle the normal naming conventions that most modern file systems do. This is a throwback to DOS 3.11 and CPM days!

😁

12 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

This is the reason I feel that the Add Share tab needs the work. The restriction on share name is overly restrictive ONLY in that location!

No because the location might not include a ZFS filesystem at the time of creation but one could be added later and it should work. Reread previous post.

Edited February 18Feb 18 by Kilrah

5 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

No because the location might not include a ZFS filesystem at the time of creation but one could be added later and it should work.

Correct, this was the thinking when LT changed this.

The logic of this is correct but it falls apart when one considers that there may be thousands of Unraid users who already have shares that contain illegal characters. If they modify that share to use a ZFS pool what happens?????

The logic in this Tab must be able to accommodate this. Perhaps it should just issue a warning if the share name contains one of the illegal characters but does not use a ZFS pool. In the case where it uses a ZFS and the share name contains a illegal character, then it should refuse to complete the operation. This would cover both the Share creation process and the Share modification process.

1 hour ago, Frank1940 said:

If they modify that share to use a ZFS pool what happens?????

They will see the warning and should correct the name before doing any changes to the share storage options.

18 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

They will see the warning and should correct the name before doing any changes to the share storage options.

If I don't set an option that requires the usage of a ZFS restricted setting, why should I not be allowed to make it? That would seem to be the most user-friendly implementation of this restriction. I don't see any reason to even consider using ZFS on either of my server. (And I don't believe that 'bit-rot' can occur on modern hard disks— the data is there as originally written on the disk or it will either (1) correct it or (2) throw an error ...)

Edited February 18Feb 18 by Frank1940

Personally, I like that spaces and other special characters are not supported in general, since there have been multiple issues before with mover and other share operations because of them, mostly spaces, but if you feel strongly that they should be supported for non zfs starage it may be worth making a feature request; if many users upvote it, LT may consider changing the current behavior.

+1 for the I like spaces in my folder and file names camp. And capital letters. There, I said it.

21 hours ago, JorgeB said:

<<<SNIP>>> but if you feel strongly that they should be supported for non zfs starage it may be worth making a feature request; if many users upvote it, LT may consider changing the current behavior.

See here:

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/197301-fix-logic-on-add-share-tab/

Edited February 19Feb 19 by Frank1940