January 21, 201412 yr I am new to Slackware. It is different than Ubuntu and BSD. I'm having a problem mounting my drives. Everything is fine without the plugins. But when I install the plugins I can't mount my drives after a reboot. The mount seems to go well but then Couchpotato seems lot lock up. Here is a piece of the log. Jan 20 01:41:53 Tower emhttp_event: disks_mounted Jan 20 01:41:56 Tower sudo: root : TTY=console ; PWD=/tmp ; USER=nobody ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/python /usr/local/couchpotato_v2/CouchPotato.py --daemon --config_file /boot/config/plugins/couchpotato_v2/settings.conf --pid_file /var/run/couchpotato_v2/couchpotato_v2.pid And it sets there. I removed couchpotato (by deleting the folder) and then it locked up on Headphones. So, is this a common problem? could I be doing something wrong?
January 21, 201412 yr Its going to be something simple that's taking down your plugins, most likely a configuration/setting issue. 1. If you boot in Safe Mode everything works fine, correct? (except the plugins, of course) 2. A quick description of your system: unRAID version now (and were you using a prior version and this is an update?) RAM size Cache Drive? Do you have or have you ever had SimpleFeatures installed? Are you trying to use unMENU or DYNAMIX or BOXCAR as plugins? 3. Post a system log.
January 22, 201412 yr Author Well I removed the plugins before I got to this post. So I tried to reinstall them to recreate the error and the error is gone. I must have done something wrong. Without logs I don't know what happened. So, it's working now. Thanks for the help. I don't know what I did but, if I was dumb enough to do it once I'm sure I'll do it again. Thanks.
January 23, 201412 yr ROFL. Full credit goes to earthtorob for figuring out the solution, even if he can't remember how he found it!
January 23, 201412 yr Author I see what you did there too. Well anyway....Guess what...Yeah I installed plugins and it locks up after reboot. Here is a chunk of the log. Jan 22 18:33:52 Tower logger: # Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: Executing install script for xbmcSaLUd-0.8-i486-1.txz. Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: Package xbmcSaLUd-0.8-i486-1.txz installed. Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: success Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /boot/config/plugins/xbmcsalud/XBMC-SaLUd.png: already exists Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /boot/config/plugins/images/device_status.png: already exists Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /boot/config/plugins/images/new_config.png: already exists Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /boot/config/plugins/images/information.png: already exists Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /boot/config/plugins/images/delete.png: already exists Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /tmp/xbmcsalud-cleanup: successfully wrote INLINE file contents Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: /bin/bash /tmp/xbmcsalud-cleanup ... success Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /boot/config/plugins/xbmcsalud/plgver.txt: successfully wrote INLINE file contents Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /boot/config/plugins/xbmcsalud/xbmcsalud.cfg: already exists Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/webGui/media.page: already exists Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /etc/rc.d/rc.xbmcsalud: successfully wrote INLINE file contents Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: successfully changed file mode Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/xbmcsalud/xbmcsalud.page: successfully wrote INLINE file contents Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/xbmcsalud/XBMC-SaLUd.png: successfully copied LOCAL file Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/xbmcsalud/device_status.png: successfully copied LOCAL file Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/xbmcsalud/new_config.png: successfully copied LOCAL file Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/xbmcsalud/information.png: successfully copied LOCAL file Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/xbmcsalud/xbmcsalud.php: successfully wrote INLINE file contents Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/xbmcsalud/event/disks_mounted: successfully wrote INLINE file contents Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: successfully changed file mode Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/xbmcsalud/event/unmounting_disks: successfully wrote INLINE file contents Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: successfully changed file mode Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /tmp/xbmcsalud-install: successfully wrote INLINE file contents Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: /bin/bash /tmp/xbmcsalud-install ... success Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: file /var/log/plugins/xbmcsalud: already exists Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: plugin successfully installed Jan 22 18:34:03 Tower logger: Starting go script Jan 22 19:29:22 Tower in.telnetd[16875]: connect from 192.168.1.23 (192.168.1.23) It sits there with the script starting. It did that before, it didn't matter what plugin was running. Any of them held up the system
January 23, 201412 yr Post a full syslog...the problem isn't in the specific plugin, its up above in the startup sequence somewhere.
January 23, 201412 yr Author Ugh! The log is too big for Pastebin. Any ideas? Any place I can put the log up?
January 23, 201412 yr Ugh! The log is too big for Pastebin. Any ideas? Any place I can put the log up? The preferred method is to zip it and attach directly in the forum. Text compresses very well.
January 23, 201412 yr Your syslog is about 720KB, and almost all of it is just about loading plugins and their dependencies (about half the syslog is about deleting python files!), but it never gets to loading the actual UnRAID modules! Not sure, but with only 1GB of RAM, I think you ran out of memory. Please try dropping half of those plugins, and try again. I suspect you have included everything AND the kitchen sink! It could also be a problem of conflicts between library/module versions. I lost count seeing how many times curl, python, and git, and others were attempted to load, often varying versions. I couldn't help seeing something loaded that provides Bluetooth support, any ideas as to why or what for?
January 23, 201412 yr Author Thanks. I'm not sure how these modules work. I figured putting them in the plugin folder just moved them to a place they could be installed later. It's weird to me, I read all the Install messages but when I look at the Web GUI all of the plugins need to be installed individually. What is the recommended method of removing plugins? I've been just deleting files left and right. Oh....I forgot to mention....I'm running an old P4 with a gig of ram and 3 PATA 200GB drives. It's just something I found lying around that I can play with.
January 23, 201412 yr Author Okay....So here is what i did. I booted up in safe mode and once my system was up i deleted all the files in the plugins folder. Then I rebooted and everything was fine. So I copied one file (couchpotato) to the plugins folder and reboot. And then problem came back. Yeah there were a ton of things installing and deleting. It looks like they were installed from config/plugins instead of plugins. Thats from the Windows share. syslog2.zip
January 23, 201412 yr Anything in /boot/extra is automatically installed, then anything in /boot/plugins is automatically installed, then anything in /boot/config/plugins is automatically installed. So yes, you still have a lot of stuff getting installed. Also, most plugins belong in /boot/config/plugins. Only the webGUI (or Dynamix if you are using it instead) should be in /boot/plugins. Don't just load everything you can find until you know how to load one thing correctly.
January 24, 201412 yr Author Well that works. I wonder why it installs stuff from so many places. Why do installs not last through reboot?
January 24, 201412 yr Well that works. I wonder why it installs stuff from so many places. Why do installs not last through reboot? Standard Linux packages are installed from /boot/extra. System plugins are installed from /boot/plugins. User plugins are installed from /boot/config/plugins. The entire operating system is actually running completely in RAM (RAMfs). It gets freshly reloaded on boot from bzroot and bzimage files on the USB flash drive you have unRAID installed on. These bootup files are never written, so nothing gets changed about the operating system. The only things that persist between boots are files on /boot (the flash drive) and files in /mnt (the actual disks). So, any addons are re-installed on boot from the flash drive folders I mentioned before.
January 24, 201412 yr Author So if my flash drive has out dated software will that update on boot? I wish I kept track but it seemed to me that there were files added to the thumbdrive all over the place.
January 24, 201412 yr Do you have any data drives, or are you just trying to get started? To get back to "stock", see Revert to stock system and Stock go file in dgaschk's signature.
January 24, 201412 yr Author Yeah....I've dismantled an old 8x200GB Hardware Raid. I took it offline a while ago. Building a new Raid every couple years was getting to be a pain. I had always just used a Microsoft OS and sharing. This is the first time I've tried a NAS. Mostly because of all the Plugins. I didn;t want a system running 24/7 and only just serving files.
January 24, 201412 yr Be judicious about plugins, they take up RAM memory and as you've discovered, can scatter files all over your flash drive. 'Plugins' are built by the unRAID user community. They've evolved over time with no consistent mechanism to keep them updated. Nor do they coordinate their underlying requirements. So two different plugins might require different underlying (and conflicting) compiler packages. There's some good community discussion about how to standardize all this by group agreement, and in version 6, I predict things will be simpler. The plugins are unsupported by Lime-Tech, but the open nature of the software has allowed the user community to build some pretty awesome stuff. This makes unRAID less a true NAS (file storage & management only) and more of a server (runs programs AND manages files). Before you add any plugins, read up in the forums and make sure they do what you expect. They need to run with your current unRAID version (not all plugins will work with version 5.0.x, some only work on version 4.7 and prior.) The forums are also a good place to see if the plugin is supported. DYNAMIX for a better interface is a good place to start. There's also a lot of activity around 'BOXCAR' as an interface.
January 24, 201412 yr Author Thanks... I use my fiel server for media. So I would have at most 4 systems accessing the server at one time. At one time I had a very energy efficient EPIA 533 with a few USB drives. Even that system had no trouble keeping up. Hmmm.....I Maybe I should try that old machine. UnRaid will work on USB with some work. As you can see I'm experimenting. Running a system that uses over 100 watts of electricity 24/7 to just serve files that I use maybe an hour a day isn't ideal. Adding a lot more functionality sounds a lot better. How about WOL? Anybody have good results with that?
January 24, 201412 yr As a file and media server, unRAID is very cool. Subsonic for tunes and PLEX for movies have active forum communities and are well supported. System constraints in unRAID are usually in the physical speed of your hard drives and the necessity to write the parity drive, they are not CPU or network related. Four simultaneous streams is (probably) not a problem even with a modest CPU as long as you don't need the media transcoded. Transcoding is very CPU intensive and you'll need a fast machine to handle four streams. I rip and save my DVD's as .mp4 files that are ready to stream to my ROKU with no encoding. If you have lower bitrate requirements (to tablets, etc.) you could rip multiple qualities for each movie, and Plex will pick the most appropriate for a device. This saves running the transcode on the unRAID box. There is a lot of discussion in the forums about power management and how to minimize power requirements. (since many of us leave the servers running 24x7). There's a very cool IT-X MOBO w/AMD chip that is ~$60 and has quite low power requirements. I wish it'd been around when I built my unRAID. 'USB' support. ummm...I'm not sure what you read. Its true that you can plug in a USB drive as an 'adjunct' to the array. It will mount and you can access files...it will *not* be protected by the parity drive. Protected drives are/must be SATA. I believe (but haven't personally tried) an eSATA drive in an external enclosure to unRAID is still protected. WOL is a bit of an issue. It seems to be dependent upon the BIOS and the particular MOBO. Before you spend a bundle on a new setup, read up on the WOL topics in the forums. Not everyone has been successful. It works fine for some people. I have devices that won't send the 'magic packet' to wake unRAID, so I don't use it. YMMV. If you're optimizing for power consumption, you might eventually want to read up on a 'cache drive'. A cache drive is managed by unRAID but is outside of the parity protection. Files saved to unRAID copy at full speed to the cache drive, then are automatically moved to the array as parity is calculated and written more slowly. If the cache is an SSD the initial write can be blazing fast, and the constraint becomes your LAN network speed. The other advantage of cache drive for some people, is that there are certain plugins which constantly write to a disk. (such as torrents, or the Plex media plugins). These plugins can be run specifically on the cache drive. That means the array's parity drive isn't constantly running to keep parity in sync with the data drives. If the cache drive is a small SSD, there've very little power required for a 'constantly' running hard drive. For a torrent, the plug in is configured so that once a torrent is complete, the rejoined file is moved to the protected array.
January 25, 201412 yr Author Yeah...The subsonic really interests me. I'm running it on a windows box. Of course I have to install a million updates and .net and Java and virus protection. Windows can be a pain. I've looked a little at PLEX, I thought it was a media player only. I've been running XBMC for about 10 years. I started with a Win2K box AMD K6-III underclocked to 200MHZ with a 1Tb hardware Raid that served just fine. Of course back then videos were less than 500KB/s. I never bothered with transcoding on the fly. Whats with PLEX? What sets it apart from XBMC?
January 25, 201412 yr Plex has a server component and client player component. The server has the media library and serves it up to possibly multiple clients. You can run the server on unRAID where the media is and play it on anything on your network, including little boxes like Roku, tablets, smartphones.
January 25, 201412 yr Whats with PLEX? What sets it apart from XBMC? In the home, you can use small clients at the TVs, so you don't need a full HTPC running XBMC. I use Apple TV devices in my home to stream videos from my unRaid server running Plex. Smart TVs that support DLNA can also stream directly from the Plex server (but the user GUI is not so great). You can also access your Plex server remotely, from a PC, smartphone, tablet, etc... The Plex server will automatically transcode the quality of media stream to match the connection speed. With a PlexPass subscription you can even sync selected media files to your phone or tablet to watch offline without an internet connection.
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