Upgrading from (very) old unRAID – preinstall hardware/problem checkup

[Zithras]

Way back when I first bought unraid, I installed 4.4.2 on two servers.  I haven’t posted much at all since, but still check the forums regularly.  So far, happily, unRAID has worked just fine for the past few years, and I’ve been perfectly happy to let it carry on working just fine.  However, for some time now, I’ve rather desperately wanted to start upgrading to >2GB drives, especially as the pricepoint per mb for these drives has become more and more competitive.  I really didn’t, however, want to install a release the community seemed divided on whether to support/write addons for, or regard as a beta, so have been checking the forum daily for months now.

 

But, the wait is over! 5.0 is OUT! FINALLY!  Oh happy day. I hope.  I suspect theres a lot of us who have been waiting silently in the wings, really wanting to install a product with large drive support that wasn’t a beta

 

So, looking over the release notes and suchlike, it seems I should do an inplace-upgrade to 4.7, then backup my configuration folder and do a fresh upgrade to 5.0, copying over my config folder.  Installing 5.0 seems to be easy enough, upgrading to 4.7 may be trickier, since its been so long since most of the people on the forums have had to worry about that…Before doing this, I wanted to ask on the forums if there’s anything I should be aware of/watch out for before trying to figure out how to do this.  In particular, I remember some discussion about certain hardware being incompatible with later versions of unraid, although I don’t remember the details.  I’ll post my server hardware down at the bottom of the thread, in case anyone recognizes anything horrible. 

 

As far as addons go, there’s only a few that I really want to replicate the functionality of:

1) I use crontab and rsync to back up server 1 to server 2 every month, and schedule a bimonthly parity check.  I see no reason why cron in 5.0 won’t work just as well.

2) ACPUSPD shuts down the system after 5 minutes on APC power.  Again, I think this addon is mirrored in 5.0

3) I use unMenu as an easy interface that lets me see how much used and free space I have on each drive, and total array free space.  It’s a much easier to read menu than the default unRAID screen, which doesn’t show the total array free space.  Is unMENU available in 5.0, or has the main UI been updated at all?

4) I use BubbaRAID to do a quick check for errors every few days (giant red messages on the bottom), and, most importantly, to spin up and check the SMART status of all the drives once or twice a month, with nice easy to read graphs and all, most importantly showing me any new bad sectors and the increase of bad sectors on the drives through time.  I’d really really love a way to do this without installing an entire custom unRAID package.  Is there anything else out there that gives both numerical and graphical SMART test results/history for all drives with one click?

5) I don’t have it now, but I’d love a way to access the entire array online, through an ftp server,  web interface, whatever, that (given a sufficiently complex password or keyfile) is secure enough that I can keep it running without worrying about it much.  What’s recommended for this? Anything?  When I installed 4.4.2 there really wasn’t a solution for this, unless you wanted to try and run unRAID on top of a full linux distribution.

Server hardware (both are the same except for the CPU):

 

CPU: Intel Pentium Q6600 G0 / Intel Pentium E5200

Power: PC Power & Cooling S75CF 750W

RAM: G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)

SATA cards: Adaptec 2240900-R PCI Express 4-lane 2.5 Gb/s SATA 1430SA x2, SYBA SD-SA2PEX-2IR PCIe SATA II Controller Card (Sil3132 chipset) x3

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard

Video card: CHAINTECH GSP5200T2 GeForce FX 5200 128MB DDR PCI Video Card (servers usually run headless, unless I’m troubleshooting something)

Other: Supermicro 5-in-3 SE-M35T-1B Drive cages x4, fan controller, cables, case, APC, etc.

 

Thanks for the help!

Zithras

 

TLDR version: Upgrading from 4.4.2, anything to watch out for?  Any hardware upgrades required? (I hope not)  Need a replacement for bubbaraid too, or at least a good way to view smart status.

 

[Zithras]

Well, I'm guessing the lack of a response (specifically, the lack of a response along the lines of 'oh no! That hardware will blow up your house, cause worldwide devastation, and begin the End Times!') means I shouldn't run into any obvious hardware issues.  Ill try and upgrade servers over the next few weeks and see how it goes.  Expect more threads as new, unforseen difficulties emerge (which they will, I'm sure).

[garycase]

No, upgrading isn't going to blow up the house 

 

The reality is, you don't need to even bother upgrading to 4.7.

 

I'd just do the following ...

 

=>  Backup your entire flash drive "just in case".  And note the serial number of all non-data drives (e.g. parity and cache)

 

=>  BEFORE you modify your flash drive, use a DIFFERENT space flash drive; format it with the UNRAID label;  copy the entire v5.0 distribution to it;  run the "Makebootable" bat file from the flash drive (in admin mode); and then confirm that it will boot on your server.    Don't DO anything with it -- just let it boot and confirm you can then access //tower to see it's main page.  DO NOT assign any drives, etc. ... this is just a boot test.    [some older systems require a bit of trickery vis-à-vis syslinux to get them to boot]

 

=>  As long as the above worked okay;  now do that with your "real" flash drive (being sure you have the key file saved);  add your key file; and then boot to v5.0.    Assign your data drives and Start the array -- you should "see" all the drives just fine.  If anything shows as "unformatted", STOP and get help here -- do NOT format them.    As long as all is okay; Stop the array; assign the parity drive; and let it do the parity sync.

 

Obviously I'd do that one server at-a-time 

 

So ... you'll end up with two nice v5.0 servers.    You can now install UnMenu and add the APC package (works fine with v5).    I don't use BubbaRAID, so I'm not sure if it still works with v5.0, but I'm sure it'll be upgraded now that v5.0 is out if necessary.    As you noted Cron jobs are Cron jobs, so that's not an issue.

 

As for remote access -- I think there are a few web server add-ons, but I've never tried them.  If I want to access my array remotely, I just log into my main PC via LogMeIn, and then just access the UnRAID servers from there.    Both of my servers are set for WOL, so I can turn them on remotely; and then get whatever I need from them via my main PC.

 

[Thornwood]

I don't think bubba raid will work on 5 based on my memory. Out side of that is the gigabyte motherboard or intel kind of confusing. If gigabyte please make sure it did not place the bios on a hard drive. I think it it called LNA but not too sure. Look through forum about gigabyte motherboards and you should find some information. Regarding all other plugins most are all ready ported to Unraid 5 like the newest unmenu.  For connecting from the outside network search in the forum for openvpn. Hope this helps.

[garycase]

I don't think bubba raid will work on 5 based on my memory. Out side of that is the gigabyte motherboard or intel kind of confusing. If gigabyte please make sure it did not place the bios on a hard drive. I think it it called LNA but not too sure. Look through forum about gigabyte motherboards and you should find some information. Regarding all other plugins most are all ready ported to Unraid 5 like the newest unmenu.  For connecting from the outside network search in the forum for openvpn. Hope this helps.

 

The Gigabyte issue is a "host protected area" (HPA) ... which it uses to store a copy of the BIOS.  I'm fairly certain a GA-EP45-UD3P is new enough that it doesn't have that issue [i don't think any of their Socket 775 boards had the problem] => but it certainly doesn't hurt to check.

 

[dlandon]

I'm running that exact motherboard with 5.0 without any issues.  If I remember correctly there is a bios setting to turn off HPA, or it is not an issue.  Can't reboot the server right now to find out.