Screen (+utempter) included as standard


itimpi

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Geeks and Nerds are different spieces.  A Nerd is not necessarily a CLI junkie, but a Geek most likely is.

 

Would you rather have a geek or a nerd configuring your server

 

(note, this post, while true, is in jest)

 

Lol!!  So we maybe should call it GeekTools instead of NerdPack?

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So just to extend on this, that plugin is real and will setup the following packages for you automatically:

 

cpio-2.11-x86_64-2.txz

iftop-1.0pre2-x86_64-1.txz

inotify-tools-3.14-x86_64-1.txz

iotop-0.6-x86_64-1_fs.tgz

kbd-1.15.3-x86_64-2.txz

lshw-B.02.17-x86_64-1_SBo_LT.txz

screen-4.2.1-x86_64-1.txz

utempter-1.1.5-x86_64-1.txz

 

These are common tools that advanced users may want to add to unraid to perform tasks via command line that average users do not need or care to perform.

 

We at Lime Tech will not provide official support in using these tools, so install and use at your own risk, but I'm sure many others here on the forums can help folks better understand them.

 

I'll be creating a sticky thread somewhere with this plugin for future reference.

 

I'm going to move this thread to the boneyard later tonight.  Thanks.

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+1 ... sounds like a step in the right direction although, as a 'user' and by no means an 'expert' i would expect to see any packages referenced in UnRaid help pages, as screen is, be accessible from the gui.

 

To prove the just a 'user' point i've no idea what the other packages mentioned are, or do. Thats possible future work for me but at this point in time i just want to be able to setup and use the product. The lack of screen availability to a novice is off putting when its use is recommended.

 

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+1 ... sounds like a step in the right direction although, as a 'user' and by no means an 'expert' i would expect to see any packages referenced in UnRaid help pages, as screen is, be accessible from the gui.

By its very nature screen is not usable from the GUI.

To prove a point i've no idea what the other packages mentioned are, or do. Thats possible future work for me but at this point in time i just want to be able to setup and use the product. The lack of screen availability to a novice is off putting.

Although I would like screen to be installed by default I think providing an easy way to install it is a good compromise.  It is quite possible to proceed without screen although its use is very convenient.

 

Note that screen is only really wanted anyway if you are running headless.  If you have a screen+keyboard attached to the unRAID server then you can run up to 6 sessions without using screen using ALT-1 to ALT-6 to switch between the 6 possible sessions.

 

To some extent there is validity in the view that if one does not understand what the tools are you should probably not be using them.

 

 

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I run headless and appreciate that screen is not 'usable' from the gui. Point i was making is that the package itself should be delivered inside the unraid install. I knew that screen was needed to facilitate my preclears but it needed to have been available to me without all of the faff and froth of having to locate and install it myself. There are plenty other procedures that i WILL need to do that for once my array is up and running. But ... without an integral (not usable from gui but within the install package) procedure needed to setup my disks i fell at the first hurdle. Less than perfect given the time v6 has been around. Sort out the basics first thats what i say. It still feels targetted towards the geeky end of the market. Not sure i'll stick with it.

 

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I run headless and appreciate that screen is not 'usable' from the gui. Point i was making is that the package itself should be delivered inside the unraid install. I knew that screen was needed to facilitate my preclears but it needed to have been available to me without all of the faff and froth of having to locate and install it myself. There are plenty other procedures that i WILL need to do that for once my array is up and running. But ... without an integral (not usable from gui but within the install package) procedure needed to setup my disks i fell at the first hurdle. Less than perfect given the time v6 has been around. Sort out the basics first thats what i say. It still feels targetted towards the geeky end of the market. Not sure i'll stick with it.

The question that needs to be resolved is what did you use screen for beside pre_clear?  Since pre_clear is going to be integrated as standard and available via the GUI you will not need screen for that purpose once the integration is done.  Also you CAN run pre_clear without screen even now although it is far less convenient.

 

I personally would find it convenient if screen was included as standard, but I can see why Limetech are reluctant to include packages they do not think are really necessary.  Each package adds to the support/testing effort and also includes the image size which since unRAID runs from RAM is definitely something to consider.

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LT faqs make reference to screen. In that case they should ensure its availability or remove references to it if they cant/wont do that. New users, myself included, will continue to ask where is it and why is it missing otherwise.

Fair enough - but I assume that as the documentation gets updated to reflect v6 that will happen.

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I feel the new plugin is a reasonable compromise.

The additional 'SlackAdd'/geek/nerdpack packages can be updated as the community sees fit.

 

If you feel that strongly about it, perhaps you can work with Joe L to make preclear a slackware package and/or plugin that includes/downloads support tools for assisted operation.

 

A point here is, pre_clear is third party and screen is a tool for it's use in protection against disconnected sessions.

if pre_clear were submitted via batch/at now, run in the background in unRAID 6, you would get email on it's final completion.

 

In my version of surface anaylsys/preclear using badblocks, I submit a job to batch/at now. It outputs via syslog so I can monitor it via the webgui. At the end of the job it scrapes the syslog for the current process job log and emails it.

 

FWIW, there's another tool called dtach that can do what screen does also (without utempter).

 

I think the plugin provides a reasonable stop gap until preclear is native in the webGui, which i do not see that far off any more.

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  • 5 months later...

I know it's been a while since this topic was posted to and thank you jonp for posting the plugin link.

 

I just wanted to add in why I use Screen.

 

Not only do I also use it for my preclear of multiple disks, but I also use it to mount and transfer VERY Large amounts of data between my unRAID and other servers on my local network.  I may be going about it wrong, and perhaps another veteran of the forum can show me the errors in my ways.  However, when I mount file systems direclty to my unRAID server and initiate local transfers through a screen session I get MUCH greater transfer speeds than trying to pass the data through a windows, or non-direct machine transfer, and of course I don't have to worry about timing out my session during transfer.

 

It should be noted, as I'm sure someone will say "Initiate the transfer within the unRAID console, or your exporting server".  - I run all my servers headless, and again, even if I RDP into my Local exporting server to initiate data transfer to my unRAID, I see much lower transfer speeds.

 

Sorry to revive an old topic, I hate being that guy, but as I recently just upgraded from v5.0.3 to v6.0.1 I can't tell you how happy, and lucky I am to have found this thread, as I don't see the feature baked in yet for preclear, (Maybe I missed it...).  I'm also glad I found it before I migrated versions.

 

 

Thanks,

 

-D

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