Unraid: A Newbies Review/Issues

This will be a long post. TL;DR, a newbies has issues with the Unraid (unsurprisingly). But also hopes to provide constructive criticism for the devs to improve Unraid.

Apologies to the mods if this is being posted in the wrong forum. But there doesn't seem to be a feedback section and some of my points are easily classified as support issues anyway so I thought this place was the next best location to submit this back to the powers that be (if they read what's posted here).

Disclaimer: As a newbie, I may be missing or misunderstanding something that could be causing my issues. If this is the case, I would love to be advised on what to do so that I can improve my understanding of how to correctly use Unraid. Obviously this is from from a newbies perspective and is not really aimed at professional users. This is more from the perspective of someone transitioning from turn-key solutions like Synology, Asustor etc, to a DIY solution like Unraid. I also understand that as a DIY solution, Unraid is never going to be as streamlined and easy as the aforementioned turn-key options. That being said, if it is the devs intention to help Unraid break into a wider market in the future where us turn-key users inhabit, then I think this feedback/criticisms/issues will actually be helpful to you.

In no particular order:

1. No auto-log out of the webgui after a period of inactivity. This is a basic security feature in all of the turnkey NAS OS's like DSM, ADM etc. I found it shocking that this has never been a feature of Unraid.

2. No native ISCSI support. 3rd party app that implements this is severely out of date and buggy from the comments I read on its support thread. ISCSI is a core NAS function. How is this not a default feature of the base install?

3. The CA store is confusing to newbies. There are so many variants of the same app. If a user searches for PostgreSQL for example, not only are there half a dozen specific PostgreSQL named results due to the many different versions, but some are variants tied to other apps that require PostgreSQL. In addition to that, some of those variants will only work with specific versions of those other apps. And in addition to all of that, the CA store will also output multiple pages of apps from your search that at first glace, have nothing to do with your search term. But it turns out these other apps have buried your search term in their description, rather than where it should be, either in their title or in a separate dedicated field that app developers should be forced to fill that includes all the 3rd party app requirements an app has, that is viewable at the top level of a search. I.e. without having to click on the app at all.

4. No native SMB sub-folder share control at sub-folder level. This was even more surprising to me than the lack of ISCSI support. Again, Unraid relies on a 3rd party app to fulfill this basic NAS function.

5. No ability to rename root username (Could just be a Linux limitation I'm guessing. But basic security tenants teach to you always rename the admin username account such as it is).

6. Archaic file browser UI. Needs to be upgraded to a Windows File Browser or KDE Dolphin style file browser instead.

7. No native backup feature (once again relying on a 3rd party apps).

8. 1st party apps that are not part of the base install that are practically mandatory for any install (e.g. Unassigned Devices, Recycling Bin etc). What's the point of making them something the user has to download if they're so critically necessary and made by Lime tech anyway?

9. No native auto-updater for apps (once again relying on a 3rd party app).

10. "Unassigned Devices" leaves ghost SMB shares still visible on remote computers despite the associated drive long since physically disconnected from the Unraid machine.

11. Not enough customisation of alternative themes. Once again relying on 3rd party apps like "ThemeUI" to pickup the slack.

12. No built in hardware fan control (base install should come with suite of necessary drivers for popular brands. App store provides this, so it's not like they couldn't easily implement it by default). I understand the desire to not bloat the base install. But considering how extremely critical cooling is, I think some effort should be made here even if there's a million and one hardware combinations people could be using to build their NAS. At least throw in the ones from the big name brands like Asus, MSI, Gigabyte etc.

13. USB installer still not updated to support ISO install straight to SSD. Users still must go through the additional hoop of installing to USB, then transferring to SSD via Internal Boot tool. Even worse is the fact that there is no warning of this additional step in any of the online advertising of this feature. So it can catch a lot of newbies off-guard.

14. No explanation of who the "Nobody" owner is or why they end up owning so many of your folders.

15. Extremely slow data transfer (around 60-70MBps) when trying to move data to the NAS from external USB 3.2 HDD's. Likely caused by the existence of the parity feature, so probably nothing can be done about it without yet more tweaking of settings that newbies will obviously not be aware of.

16. Many of the Dynamix series of apps (which are apparently first party by Lime tech?), are out of date, buggy, and no longer function properly e.g. Dynamix Cache Directories. A quick glance at their support threads will illustrate this.

17. Attempting to uninstall an app via Community applications with the "Actions" menu results in an indefinite pop-up box with 3 jiggling dots that never goes away or completes.

18. The case of the missing share settings: I created a brand new share on a brand new install of 7.3.2. Needed to change/delete if later. Couldn't. Why? Because the entire share settings of that particular share of the Unraid GUI was missing. Only managed to get rid of it by deleting the folder itself from the file browser GUI. When I researched this issue, it turned out others have also encountered this problem. Although in their case, it was blamed on a failure/bug during an upgrade process when they upgraded their Unraid OS version. However, I have now proven that this issue can occur on brand new vanilla installs, nothing to do with upgrading the OS.

19. Apps that rely on other apps. Let's look at something like Immich for example. On Synology, a user can just one-click install it and all its dependencies are automatically installed and configured in the background. The user can then immediately access the Immich webgui. Whereas on Unraid, you have to first figure out what it requires in the first place by hoping to come across a guide that actually works. Then you have to figure out the correct variant of Redis and PostgreSQL images are the correct ones in the CA store to install. Only then can you begin to setup Immich.

20. Need the ability to create encrypted shares. As of now, Unraid can only encrypt entire drives (not folders). But the encryption of individual shared folders is a common feature to turn-key NAS OS's. It's a very handy feature that Unraid really should have.

21. In order to gain SMB/NFS access to an externally connected USB HDD, the user must: 1. Download and install this plugin. 2. Figure out the way the plugin works. 3. Change the default settings of the plugin to allow appropriate user permissions. 4. Work out that you need to click the little gear icon next under the settings column that corresponds to your HDD volume. 5. Manually toggle the "share" setting to on. Now compare this to something like Synology where it's literally "plug and play". Suffice it to say, the way Unraid does it is extremely obtuse and difficult to figure out for a newbie.

Now before all the pitchforks come out: Yes, I understand that Unraid is a different beast compared to the likes of DSM or ADM turnkey NAS OS's. So I get that some things will always be different by nature of what it is. But at the same time, I think it is important to highlight that if devs are at least vaguely interested in widening Unraid's appeal to the more "noob" mass market, then these are the kinds of criticisms that they should address.

Anywho, thank you for making Unraid and freeing me from the ever increasing enshitifiction that the devs/management at Synology seem to be hell-bent on.

Edited 44 minutes ago44 min by DCCXVIII