Hi Guys,

 

Not sure if I should post here or Xen, but this is what I am looking to do. Sab is placing my ISO files in my download directory. I have been doing command line to mount and copy the files I need and then unmount. I then copy the files I chose to another directory. This is never the same so I cant run a script. I would like to do it with a GUI and not command line.

 

I was thinking of running a VM of windows so I can mount and copy all through explorer with keyboard and mouse. Not sure of advantages/disadvantages of KVM vs Xen. This is all I need to do with windows. Would I be better running some distro of linux as VM (one with a gui) or any thoughts or suggestions.

 

Not sure which way to go. Want to tie up the least amount of resources and have the simplest install.

 

Thanks for any help or suggestions

I would just use a different machine to mount the ISO from the appdata share, and copy the files directly to the other directory.  Unless these are Blu-Rays, it shouldn't take too long.

These are blu-rays and the copy process thru the network in 9-11 hours per

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure it would still take that long in a VM, as when you mount it, it would still have to transfer through the VM nic to the VM's ram, and then back out of the VM nic to the new hard drive space.  It'll probably be faster than doing it from a physical machine, but not much.  Fastest way to do it would be directly through Unraid CLI. 

 

If it were me, I would make sure that Screen is installed. Then mount the iso to a folder, use a screen session to use with Midnight Commando (mc), and copy it over that way. 

 

I do believe you might be able to get decent speeds if you use 9p sharing with a linux VM, but I have no experience with that.

Yeah the best way if you wanted to use a VM would be a linux VM with 9p sharing. Honestly though, whatever you're doing with those ISO files seems like so much work. There has to be a way to simplify what you're doing. Life's to short for all that nonsense.

I think a VM is overkill for what you are trying to accomplish. I have looked at your post history and you have several threads going about this. Here is what it sounds like you are trying to accomplish: You are downloading ISO files to unRAID. These ISO files (virtual drives) contain files that you want to extract to your unRAID.

 

I suggested unMenu's Share ISO function but that didn't suit because port 8080 is used by sabnzbd. I think you can change the port of sab depending on how you are actually installing it.

 

I think this script idea on one of your other threads is on the right track. Maybe if you could state your problem more clearly someone could give you some help.

A VM could solve this issue.  VirtFS may not be the right tool for this job though and if you're not familiar with Linux, Windows would probably be easier for you to use.

 

As far as this:

 

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure it would still take that long in a VM, as when you mount it, it would still have to transfer through the VM nic to the VM's ram, and then back out of the VM nic to the new hard drive space.  It'll probably be faster than doing it from a physical machine, but not much.  Fastest way to do it would be directly through Unraid CLI. 

 

I don't think that's an accurate statement entirely.  The biggest bottleneck in a multi-machine environment would be the physical network (typically 1Gbps).  1Gbps translates to ~ 125MB/s (bits to bytes conversion). With a VM, networking is done internally* when a bridge is involved (essentially the bridge sees that the source / destination are on the same machine and doesn't need to route that through to the router, eliminating the 1gbps limitation of the physical network). 

 

*Want to see that in action?  Start up your host, get a VM created that uses the network, then after both are running, disconnect the network cable.  Now use a web browser in your VM to go to the IP of your unRAID server (before the network cable was unplugged).  Should come up just fine. 

On the flip side, the read performance of an HDD at peak is going to be around the 100MB/s range (maybe a little faster / slower depending on the specific HDD we're talking about).  When in an unRAID array, the write performance can drop because of parity calculations (typically in the 30-40MB/s range).  To get around that, you can use a cache disk / cache pool.  if your cache device is an HDD, write speed will still teeter around the 100MB/s range, but if an SSD, you could see a nice bump, but only if the source you're reading from is also an SSD.

 

This is why others here want to better understand what you're trying to accomplish.  If you download an ISO, store it on an SSD, then mount that ISO inside a VM, then extract the contents to a cache-enabled user share, now you could see a performance increase potentially.  But it really does depend on other factors as well.

 

The big questions I'd ask is what your write performance is today the way you're doing things right now (in megabytes per second), what type of storage device(s) your ISOs are on (HDD/SSD), and if you have a cache / pool on your system.

Finally got my script running. working great. Using the above suggestion for midnight commander. Overall pretty good solution. Not smart enough to come up with another. But thanks for all the help. I really apprecitate it.