Just recently started with plugins, and one thing I've noticed is that upon a reboot it appears that all plugins will re-download the required packages they need for installation.

Of course, this allows for the newest stuff to be found/used, but it also seems to access the web unnecessarily if no packages have changed.

 

Have I misunderstood how this works, or is there a local copy kept on the flash and only newer packages get downloaded?

 

If not, doesn't it make sense to specify a local plugin packages repository either on the flash or cache drive to minimize re-downloading and therefore speed up the boot-up process?

 

Discuss...

That was my impression (correct or not - I can't really say) so I download the .tgz file for the VMWare tools plugin and put it in the "extra" folder.  I loose my internet connection at the worst times so didn't want to have to disable the VMWare tools when I reboot my unRAID VMs.  The other plugins I use are from unMenu which downloads the .tgz files one time only.

It depends on how the plug-in author writes it. Most, if using the plug-ins system for downloading files/packages, will only download once and will check for the package upon reboot, if it exists it will skip, if not it will download it. These are located in /boot/packages/.

 

As far as newer versions, if using the plug-ins system, you can only specify a specific url, so the same package will be downloaded regardless of if there is a newer package. The plug-in author is required to update the plug-in to use the new package, in which case it would be downloaded on first run.

 

What you are probably seeing is where the package is checked and then installed, not actually downloaded again. They must be re-installed on every boot. For some plug-ins (the ones I maintain as example), depending on where you specify the install directory will dictate whether or not something must be downloaded on each boot. For sabnzbd for instance, if you leave the install directory as default it is stored in ram and must be downloaded after a reboot, if you set the install dir to a disk it will not be re-downloaded.

Ok, so the expectation is that all needed plugin packages are (supposed) to be installed in /boot/packages

and I can see that now.  That's essentially what I was looking for.

 

Thanks.

I'm having a hard time understanding how the new plugin system works. I'm coming from the understanding of manually installing packages and starting "plugins" in 4.7. Example of part my go script:

 

installpkg /boot/packages/SABnzbdDependencies-2.1-i486-unRAID.tgz
python /mnt/cache/_custom/usr/share/packages/sabnzbd/SABnzbd.py -d -s 0.0.0.0:88

 

To "install" sabnzbd all I had to do it download the zip and extract it on my windows comp then move the extracted files to the sabnzbd folder from which I execute SABnzbd.py with the above go script sabnzbd would start automatically on boot.

 

I'm lost on how to get the same functionality with the new plugin system. Maybe I'm trying to complicate something simple, I'm not sure.

 

If every time a plugin loads it downloads the needed packages then I can only see this causing problems. First, if the plugin can't download the package for whatever reason then the plugin will fail to load. I've seen this a few times with a few plugins.

Second, every time the plugin loads it will download the latest version. Personally I like to update manually, that way if something breaks I know it because of the update. If when you reboot your server the plugin loads an updated version of the software and there is a bug in it you have no idea where to start looking.

Third, if your internet connection is down and your server is rebooted then all the plugs won't load.

Lastly, how does one get the plugins to start automatically start?

The packages are downloaded the first time the plug-in is installed(atleast for the majority of the ones I've seen).

 

Depending on the plug-in, the first time the plug-in loads it will download all dependencies(static versions, so they have to manually be updated). Again, this is dependent on the author, but most I've seen are this way. For the plug-ins I maintain the only thing that re-downloads each boot is the actual app, sab, sickbeard and couchpotato to name a few. This can be bypassed by setting the install directory to a disk instead of the default in ram.

 

Workaround from #2 takes care of #3

 

Plug-ins should start automatically on boot if set to "enabled". Again, depends on the author.

Thank you Influencer! I greatly appreciate all the help you provide and the fantastic plugins you have put together. I hope all authors will follow your standards.