outsider Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 Is there a way to add more disks to the unraid system which will show up in a unified file structure? (by unified I mean how the /mnt/usr shows a unified view of /mnt/disk1, /mnt/disk2, /mnt/diskxx) And I realize that disks outside of the unraid interface will not get protected by the parity drive. I would be interesting if I could add a USB drive to the system (or another network share), and have it show up as part of a custom mount point (unioned with the existing /mnt/user/ ) which could then be shared. Has this been talked about/done before? Link to comment
Joe L. Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 Is there a way to add more disks to the unraid system which will show up in a unified file structure? (by unified I mean how the /mnt/usr shows a unified view of /mnt/disk1, /mnt/disk2, /mnt/diskxx) No. The "User-Shares" only looks at the devices in the array. And I realize that disks outside of the unraid interface will not get protected by the parity drive. I would be interesting if I could add a USB drive to the system (or another network share), and have it show up as part of a custom mount point (unioned with the existing /mnt/user/ ) which could then be shared. Has this been talked about/done before? You can create other shares, and you can probably create a mount-point on an existing disk under user-shares and mount the external disk there (and not create a new share, but access the disk as a folder in an existing share). But it is not "unioned." You cannot have "movies" in it unioned with "movies" in your protected array. The "User-shares" is one of the proprietary parts of unRAID, all you can do is make a post in the "Feature Requests" forum to have it include other disks, and get in line behind all the folks waiting for features more universally desired. Joe L. Link to comment
outsider Posted January 14, 2009 Author Share Posted January 14, 2009 Thanks for the reply Joe. I guess (thinking about it some more) what I wanted to know was how the /mnt/user mount point is created to show the contents of disk1, disk2... I noticed in the /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab reference to shfs and fuse. So I gather that shfs is the glue that unions the disks together, since the shfs is referenced with the share /mnt/users Is there a configuration file for shfs? What is it's usage? Can one envoke it separately to join other volumes together the way the /mnt/user unioning currently works, in order to union other drives in the system (outside of the unraid interface)? Or is the unioning taking place on a much more complicated level? Link to comment
Joe L. Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 Thanks for the reply Joe. I guess (thinking about it some more) what I wanted to know was how the /mnt/user mount point is created to show the contents of disk1, disk2... I noticed in the /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab reference to shfs and fuse. So I gather that shfs is the glue that unions the disks together, since the shfs is referenced with the share /mnt/users Is there a configuration file for shfs? What is it's usage? Can one envoke it separately to join other volumes together the way the /mnt/user unioning currently works, in order to union other drives in the system (outside of the unraid interface)? Or is the unioning taking place on a much more complicated level? The "User-shares" is one of the proprietary parts of unRAID. There is no config file, it is specifically made to work with the unRAID "md" devices mounted at /mnt/disk* and /mnt/cache. There is no documentation of it either either. It is a loadable "fuse" module written specifically for unRAID and it uses the config/shares files to define where it writes new files based on the space available, that is all I know. Sorry. I can tell you I've tried to use symbolic links to "union" in other files from outside the protected array, but the symbolic links did not work for me. Joe L. Link to comment
outsider Posted January 14, 2009 Author Share Posted January 14, 2009 Got it. I have played with something called "aufs" which is a unioning file system, and it works very much like the unraid system does in terms of joining the disks. Maybe I'll look into running aufs on the unRAID system to do my other unioning... Link to comment
Biggy2872 Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 Thanks for the reply Joe. I guess (thinking about it some more) what I wanted to know was how the /mnt/user mount point is created to show the contents of disk1, disk2... I noticed in the /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab reference to shfs and fuse. So I gather that shfs is the glue that unions the disks together, since the shfs is referenced with the share /mnt/users Is there a configuration file for shfs? What is it's usage? Can one envoke it separately to join other volumes together the way the /mnt/user unioning currently works, in order to union other drives in the system (outside of the unraid interface)? Or is the unioning taking place on a much more complicated level? I'm not yet 100% proficient at all the underlying aspect of linux yet but here are some ideas that come to my head right away... The only thing I could suggest is to compare the /etc/fstab anf /etc/mtab when the user shares are enabled and disabled. That might give you some insight into the operation of user shares. Maybe you will be able to figure something out that way. My guess is that shfs stands for share file system. I'm assuming only one instance of it can exist(?) because Tom has not released a version of unRAID which supports multiple arrays and therefore combining multiple arrays into user shares as well (basically adding something outside of one array to the array in user shares). It has been said before, that he is working on multiple arrays. I may be completely wrong but it seems like this may be a futile effort until at the very least multiple arrays are supported under a unified user share system. The features you require just may not be there yet. (assuming this is a proprietary piece of software as Joe L explained). A feature requests is likely your best bet until then, who knows he might even include the features you require while working on the multiple array solution. Again i'm just guessing. Cheers, Matt Link to comment
Joe L. Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 Thanks for the reply Joe. I guess (thinking about it some more) what I wanted to know was how the /mnt/user mount point is created to show the contents of disk1, disk2... I noticed in the /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab reference to shfs and fuse. So I gather that shfs is the glue that unions the disks together, since the shfs is referenced with the share /mnt/users Is there a configuration file for shfs? What is it's usage? Can one envoke it separately to join other volumes together the way the /mnt/user unioning currently works, in order to union other drives in the system (outside of the unraid interface)? Or is the unioning taking place on a much more complicated level? I'm not yet 100% proficient at all the underlying aspect of linux yet but here are some ideas that come to my head right away... The only thing I could suggest is to compare the /etc/fstab anf /etc/mtab when the user shares are enabled and disabled. That might give you some insight into the operation of user shares. Maybe you will be able to figure something out that way. My guess is that shfs stands for share file system. I'm assuming only one instance of it can exist(?) because Tom has not released a version of unRAID which supports multiple arrays and therefore combining multiple arrays into user shares as well (basically adding something outside of one array to the array in user shares). It has been said before, that he is working on multiple arrays. I may be completely wrong but it seems like this may be a futile effort until at the very least multiple arrays are supported under a unified user share system. The features you require just may not be there yet. (assuming this is a proprietary piece of software as Joe L explained). A feature requests is likely your best bet until then, who knows he might even include the features you require while working on the multiple array solution. Again i'm just guessing. Cheers, Matt Long ago, Tom did make a brief mention of experimenting with the ability to see multiple unRAID servers as a single "share" but no more has ever been said. The post where he mentioned it is here Joe L. Link to comment
Biggy2872 Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 Long ago, Tom did make a brief mention of experimenting with the ability to see multiple unRAID servers as a single "share" but no more has ever been said. The post where he mentioned it is here Joe L. Actually, I was refering to these posts in particular: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=632.msg4091#msg4091 and the first post in the "Ye Old Laundry list" http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=266.msg1861#msg1861 items number 11 and 12 (as of today). - support more than 1 array (parity group) in same system - permit some disks to be outside the array. This will let you select devices which will not be included in the parity-protected array. I hadn't even seen the post you linked, thanks for the heads up on that one, it sounds like an interesting idea (as well as reading about all the wifi/LAN enabled household products ) Cheers, Matt Link to comment
NLS Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 I wonder why this laundry list still exists. We very rarely see new features in unRAID that are in there. NFS is slowly coming, but that's about it. Link to comment
SSD Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 Back to the OP's questions, although it is not possible to add some arbitrary disk and have it participate in user shares, it IS possible to add a cache disk and disable the mover script. The cache disk is a single disk that IS able to participate in user shares. I don't think it would be a big deal to change the cache disk from one drive to another (but you could only have one drive at a time). I am also not sure if the cache disk can be a USB disk - but I expect that it can be. As I think about this, unRAID probably is going to want the cache disk to be formatted for ReiserFS, so that may be a problem. Perhaps if the OP would better explain what he is trying to accomplish, we might be able to come up with some creative solutions. Link to comment
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