I have browsed the wiki but haven't found any information on this topic.

I know 3 different paths now:

/boot/plugins

/boot/packages

/boot/extra

 

I know that upon reboot everything I installed manually is gone. I only found a very old thread (from like 2008) which explains how to mod the bzimage to include other packages, but this was for unRaid 4. Now I just have the Dynamix Plugin currently in /boot/plugins and it is working after a reboot.

To get screen working I put it (and the additional libraries) into /boot/extra - so apparently .txz files get automatically installed when in this directory and .plg files go to /boot/plugin

 

But what about the last one? /boot/packages already contain some packages like powerdown or openssl or lm_sensors (don't even know what this is) - those are not automatically installed apparently.

 

So if I want something to always be available I move it to /boot/extra? But then again what's the difference between a package and a plugin? Is it that everything in plugins is installed via installplg while the packages are installed via installpkg?

 

The wiki is lacking a lot of information on simple topics like: how to replace telnet with ssh. It even took me some searching the forums on how to install screen since all the info on the wiki relates to either unRaid 4 or unMenu (something obsolete apparently). When I have some spare time I will try to update some of the pages with my findings.

There's a lot of discussion about this in the forums.

Plug-ins are user developed and there's no accepted best practice, just several different ways of installing them based upon the individual developer's skills and knowledge.

That said, there is a movement by the users to standardize. In particular, Nicinabox and Bonienl have excellent posts and work going.

Here's what I recommend...all have threads in the forums:

DYNAMIX and any of its plugins.

CONTROL PANEL has many plugins ready to by installed via the webGUI.

INFLUENCER has published a lot plugins with consistent packaging and instructions.

The standard for new plugins not yet incorporated into Dynamix or Control Panel is to post installation instructions as Post #1 of the thread announcing the plugin.

 

When i first started with unRAID, I always shutdown the array, popped the flash into my PC and drag and dropped the install packages into the appropriate place...I wasn't used to unix...that was the only way to keep straight the 'in memory' version of unRAID and the 'on flash' version of running unRAID.

 

Try this thread...its for Transmission, not Screen, but I think it will answer a lot of your questions. The BM should start at the interesting part.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=27121.msg237851#msg237851

 

 

See here

 

Note that only system plugins, which in your case is only the main Dynamix webgui, belong in /boot/plugins. All other plugins, including any of the extra Dynamix features, belong in /boot/config/plugins.

 

It might work if you don't do it this way, but the /boot/plugins vs /boot/config/plugins is to control the order that things get installed in. Even that doesn't always guarantee there won't be conflicts, since different plugin authors have used conflicting version of libraries and one plugin can sometimes overwrite what another plugin has already done.

 

As it goes through each of those folders in the order I showed in that other post, within each folder, it just does them in alphanumeric order.

 

As for the difference between a package and a plugin, as you said, a package is a standard slackware package that gets installed using the installpkg command. A plugin is an unRAID plugin that gets installed using the installplg command.

 

The /boot/packages folder is just a place where the plugins (and possibly other scripts) put stuff that they will be installing for you. Nothing in there gets installed automatically without a plugin or script doing it.

 

I would consider the old method of modding bzimage as very advanced, and only necessary if you actually need to replace some of the core unRAID distribution.

 

See here

Thanks, trurl. That's a great explanation.

I looked all over for that to post it here, but couldn't find it hiding in Plex!

I've bookmarked so it won't get away again.

Seems like this should be in the wiki, but I don't know where if it is. Here is where I have it bookmarked

Thanks, that's some good info. Right what I was looking for.