[XEN VM IMG] ArchVM <--- deprecated 01/07/2014


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Assuming this would work or is this backwards? Do i need to rm -rvf * in /opt/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/ ?

 

ln -sf /opt/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/ /mnt/towercache/.custom/Plex/home/Application\ Support/

 

Not sure this would prevent a full Libary rebuild though as the files will still point to unraid locations ie:

 

File /mnt/user/Data/Movies/  (unraid mount)

not

File /mnt/tower/Movies/  (Arch mount)

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First off thanks for all the work on getting this vm image and repository going. I am memorizing my xl commands now.

 

Also, since there is alot of Plex users, any appetite for plex home theatre in a vm, there is a arch version of it. Just not sure if it will preform better then xbmc when passing through the video card.

 

https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/87416-plex-home-theater-for-arch-linux/?p=506327

 

Finally, I have noticed some mention of nano, is use it extensively also but in unraid I have always just used mc.

 

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Wait just one darn second...I guess even while trying to follow all the goings on I missed something, but I am ok with it.  I just want to confirm that I am understanding this correctly.

 

So I just watched video 1 and it was very informative.  Now, if I understand this correctly, the current beta 3 comes with xen out of the box and ready for vms.

 

Meaning, as opposed to me installing Arch, blah blah bunch of steps, yaourt -S xen, update grub etc.  reboot arch and have a arch OS with Xen ready to run VMs such as virtualized unraid, win X, etc.

 

Instead, version 6 is unraid as usual but with xen ready to go out of the box, so instead of unraid being a vm, it is my base os and any VMs I want to run I create as with the above example on top of unraid and they merely run off the cache drive?  Thats freaking awesome!  I never realized that was the direction...I thought we wanted to just make unraid a vm...

 

Now just some other house cleaning.  I know opinions will vary, but is it to the point the cache drive is no longer really needed as a cache drive, so writing direct to data drives is fine?  Second, what if the vms we run exceed the size of the cache drive, can more be added, use a disk that is not a cache drive, issue is not addressed yet but will be (or did I miss something)?

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Assuming this would work or is this backwards? Do i need to rm -rvf * in /opt/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/ ?

 

ln -sf /opt/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/ /mnt/towercache/.custom/Plex/home/Application\ Support/

 

Not sure this would prevent a full Libary rebuild though as the files will still point to unraid locations ie:

 

File /mnt/user/Data/Movies/  (unraid mount)

not

File /mnt/tower/Movies/  (Arch mount)

 

Sorry if you've done this already but better safe than sorry:  Please tell me you've made a copy of your library before you've started symlinking and starting Plex?!?! 

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Furthermore, i currently use a 128GB ssd as cache drive, my current apps ( as plugins) are installed on it, and the rest is used as workspace for sabnzbd to place its temp parts and construct its archives... so i can download without any disks spinned up and using low power.  But if it also needs to be the place for one or more vm's, i need a bigger ssd. A LOT bigger...?

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Yes, you might.  But lets face it.  At some point we might have to accept that just like any other server running a full blown OS and services, one drive might be spinning all the time unless it is able to spin-down during no kidding periods of inactivity. 

 

Can an OS go to sleep in a VM just like it does bare metal?  And will the drive sotring the VM's virtual drive spin-down just as if it were asleep?  Assuming that is something else isn't keeping it awake, like Xen or some UnRaid plug-in?

 

That is, unless you can afford a larger SSD!

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smakovits, no need to use a cache drive at all... You can mount any disk in your go script as an "app disk" outside of the array or cache drive. I would not suggest putting you vm on the array, because all the vm logging and other disk writes will keep your array working very hard. I have 2 1TB drives in a hardware raid 0 as my app drive... Work perfectly as an app drive now, but will be storing a vm or 2 in the near future when I take my stab at the v6 beta.

 

Anyone want to try and get a MacOS X server vm configured?

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smakovits, no need to use a cache drive at all... You can mount any disk in your go script as an "app disk" outside of the array or cache drive. I would not suggest putting you vm on the array, because all the vm logging and other disk writes will keep your array working very hard. I have 2 1TB drives in a hardware raid 0 as my app drive... Work perfectly as an app drive now, but will be storing a vm or 2 in the near future when I take my stab at the v6 beta.

 

Anyone want to try and get a MacOS X server vm configured?

 

Xen, so far as I've ever tried it doesn't support OS X. I had a good go a few months back, not to say it can't be done, but I don't think it can be.

 

I have said this already, maybe I need a way of communicating the repo better, but openVPN isn't added yet due to it's complexity and my lack of understanding (therefore unable to test it and make sure it works) and SQL is in the default Arch repository as MariaDB.

 

Ideally, to run the VMs from is an LVM container but unRAID doesn't yet support these. I will work on Tom to get them enabled, or figure out BTRFS which I believe has similar capabilities. As with any OS, if it exceeds the size of the drive you're going to run into problems. With 4tb drives available though, surely this isn't an issue? I run 4 VMs from 1 128GB SSD, and my test system has a 60GB ssd which runs 3 VMs and an old 160gb 'scratch' drive for sabnzbd's temp directory and storing other crap that isn't array worthy or is high IO.

 

@smakovits - glad you see the light bulb, it's incredibly exciting that this project has come off to see light of day.

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Hi ironicbadger,

 

Thanks for the VM, I've just gone through the whole process, seemless :)

 

One issue though : my nfs shares seem to be "mounted" read-only :

 

[root@ArchApplianceVM Nexus5]# touch test

touch: cannot touch ‘test’: Read-only file system

 

Any idea? It's great having a new toy to play with, but if it can't communicate with my unRAID shares... :-/

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Assuming this would work or is this backwards? Do i need to rm -rvf * in /opt/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/ ?

 

ln -sf /opt/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/ /mnt/towercache/.custom/Plex/home/Application\ Support/

 

Not sure this would prevent a full Libary rebuild though as the files will still point to unraid locations ie:

 

File /mnt/user/Data/Movies/  (unraid mount)

not

File /mnt/tower/Movies/  (Arch mount)

 

Sorry if you've done this already but better safe than sorry:  Please tell me you've made a copy of your library before you've started symlinking and starting Plex?!?!

 

No i did not do this yet i assume this is bad?

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Well it is only bad if you define recreating your entire database as bad [shrug].  Mine is smaller than yours and I would prefer to avoid that.  So yeah make sure PMS is stopped, and then make a full copy of the library directory.  Your array makes a great spot for that :) 

 

Frankly I make weekly rsync scans of my library to my array just in case my SSD fails.

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....

How do you autostart services on ubuntu? Usually, it's an init script or some other nightmare in my experience. With Arch it's 'systemctl enable service'. Newbie friendly for sure. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

i'm not an ubuntu expert but they're using upstart, so starting a service is similar to systemd ... e.g. service nzbget start, or something close to that :)

 

the merits of systemd vs upstart, now that's a whole different story

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so whats the speed like with nfs shares?  I used to have Sab on a diffrent vm from unraid and the problem I ran into was how slow it was. It would take 20 minutes to move a large download because nfs was only going 20-30Mb/s vs the 60 to 100 I would get locally. I've also had trouble with unraids NFS being unreliable and disconnecting or other weird stuff that doesnt happen on ubuntu with nfs shares

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so whats the speed like with nfs shares?  I used to have Sab on a diffrent vm from unraid and the problem I ran into was how slow it was. It would take 20 minutes to move a large download because nfs was only going 20-30Mb/s vs the 60 to 100 I would get locally. I've also had trouble with unraids NFS being unreliable and disconnecting or other weird stuff that doesnt happen on ubuntu with nfs shares

 

Unraid did used to have issues with NFS stale file handles but those are since resolved

 

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

 

 

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Hi there how difficult would open VPN server and SQL be to install?

 

 

Thornwood

 

Open vpn seems better fit for running on a firewall,  installed directly on pfsense,  Ipcop,  smoothwall, etc.  To me open vpn on a firewall is a way better place than on a server running media and download apps.

 

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

 

 

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Hi there how difficult would open VPN server and SQL be to install?

 

 

Thornwood

 

Open vpn seems better fit for running on a firewall,  installed directly on pfsense,  Ipcop,  smoothwall, etc.  To me open vpn on a firewall is a way better place than on a server running media and download apps.

 

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

 

That depends whether you want your download apps to go via the VPN or not.  Ideally I'd like to be able to have certain downloads go via a VPN and others not.  The multiple VM setup seems like an ideal way to do this from what I can see?

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In my experience,  open vpn allows you to vpn to your home Internet from the outside. For example,  your at work, vpn-d home,  browsing the Internet at work through your home connection.  The stuff you mention you vpn from home to 3rd party to annonimize yourself while downloading.  If it uses open vpn,  I didn't know,  in that case it's probably just another install of some software and some configuration which shouldn't be too difficult. I just assumed to use ssl and avoid public torrents where possible

 

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Hi ironicbadger,

 

Thanks for the VM, I've just gone through the whole process, seemless :)

 

One issue though : my nfs shares seem to be "mounted" read-only :

 

[root@ArchApplianceVM Nexus5]# touch test

touch: cannot touch ‘test’: Read-only file system

 

Any idea? It's great having a new toy to play with, but if it can't communicate with my unRAID shares... :-/

 

Any idea about this? I've spent a few hours yesterday trying to figure it out... My NFS shares are exported as rw under unRAID, and autofs seems to mount them as rw also, but a simple touch isn't working...

 

I went back to unRAID 5 for the time being. I must say, having unRAID6 uncrippled by the plugins I'm running under v5 was great. This whole virtualization thing is awesome :)

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Hi ironicbadger,

 

Thanks for the VM, I've just gone through the whole process, seemless :)

 

One issue though : my nfs shares seem to be "mounted" read-only :

 

[root@ArchApplianceVM Nexus5]# touch test

touch: cannot touch ‘test’: Read-only file system

 

Any idea? It's great having a new toy to play with, but if it can't communicate with my unRAID shares... :-/

 

Any idea about this? I've spent a few hours yesterday trying to figure it out... My NFS shares are exported as rw under unRAID, and autofs seems to mount them as rw also, but a simple touch isn't working...

 

I went back to unRAID 5 for the time being. I must say, having unRAID6 uncrippled by the plugins I'm running under v5 was great. This whole virtualization thing is awesome :)

 

I am having the same issue. 

 

Thanks for the awesome write-ups!!!!!

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One issue though : my nfs shares seem to be "mounted" read-only :

[root@ArchApplianceVM Nexus5]# touch test

touch: cannot touch ‘test’: Read-only file system

Any idea? It's great having a new toy to play with, but if it can't communicate with my unRAID shares... :-/

Any idea about this? I've spent a few hours yesterday trying to figure it out... My NFS shares are exported as rw under unRAID, and autofs seems to mount them as rw also, but a simple touch isn't working...

 

Me three  :)  I can't seem to figure it out....but this is my first go at NFS......SMB file creation is OK.

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Going to get a new image out today. Will replicate this NFS stuff on my setup and if required, fix it.

 

Also going to attempt to get samba auto mounting, but I only have about an hour before I need to head out for a few days.

 

 

edit: The issue is that it mounts v6 NFS shares as read only, don't know why yet. It mounts v5 shares just fine, read / write.

 

 

edit 2: autofs with samba is a PITA. So for now, just mount your unraid shares using the following command. I'll figure something better out before long but I have to go out soon. Sorry, it's a hack job for now but will work.  8)

 

Mount your samba shares like this

 

mount -t cifs //Tower/data /mnt/tmp -o guest,rw

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