April 29, 201511 yr Any one else have /bzroot take forever to load on startup? Yes. Takes about 5th minutes to boot. I was using plop and passing thru the usb, that also took 5 minutes to load bzroot.. If you move to a pre build virtual disk then it will be a lot quicker, I licked the plop and passthru thing because it meant that i only had to change the bootorder of the server bios to load unraid bare metal again, fully bypassing esxi..
April 29, 201511 yr Only issue I have with plop is it doesn't auto boot to usb even though I configured it to. I have to manually select usb in preboot UI
May 16, 201511 yr Any one else have /bzroot take forever to load on startup? When switching from unRAID 5.0.5 to unRAID 6-Beta15 I noticed that the loading /bzroot takes about 4 minutes, whereas the v5 boot was probably under a minute. I'd guess the file is much larger now, and it needs to be uncompressed as part of the startup process. Thankfully, I don't restart the unRAID VM that often. This is using PLOP.
May 19, 201511 yr Any one else have /bzroot take forever to load on startup? When switching from unRAID 5.0.5 to unRAID 6-Beta15 I noticed that the loading /bzroot takes about 4 minutes, whereas the v5 boot was probably under a minute. I'd guess the file is much larger now, and it needs to be uncompressed as part of the startup process. Thankfully, I don't restart the unRAID VM that often. This is using PLOP. ESXi using plop has always been slow to boot. It's an issue with USB 2.0 support under ESXi--it's painfully bad. You may be remembering your baremetal speeds, as I only recently switched over to 6 and it was always slow with plop. Utilizing a VMDK absolutely speeds up boot, but its no longer as easy to update unRAID. And, with the auto-upgrade features in 6, you won't be able to take advantage of that. For those curious, unRAID launches under the VMDK, but once booted, everything is being read from your flash drive. So your license key, plugins, addons, etc. are all coming from the flash. The VMDK is really only to boot, but if you do an unRAID autoupdate, it will boot you into the old version of unRAID since it only updates the flash. I've been debating going back to plop since I very rarely reboot my server, and I am finding the update process a hassle.
May 19, 201511 yr Any one else have /bzroot take forever to load on startup? When switching from unRAID 5.0.5 to unRAID 6-Beta15 I noticed that the loading /bzroot takes about 4 minutes, whereas the v5 boot was probably under a minute. I'd guess the file is much larger now, and it needs to be uncompressed as part of the startup process. Thankfully, I don't restart the unRAID VM that often. This is using PLOP. ESXi using plop has always been slow to boot. It's an issue with USB 2.0 support under ESXi--it's painfully bad. You may be remembering your baremetal speeds, as I only recently switched over to 6 and it was always slow with plop. Utilizing a VMDK absolutely speeds up boot, but its no longer as easy to update unRAID. And, with the auto-upgrade features in 6, you won't be able to take advantage of that. For those curious, unRAID launches under the VMDK, but once booted, everything is being read from your flash drive. So your license key, plugins, addons, etc. are all coming from the flash. The VMDK is really only to boot, but if you do an unRAID autoupdate, it will boot you into the old version of unRAID since it only updates the flash. I've been debating going back to plop since I very rarely reboot my server, and I am finding the update process a hassle. What hassle? Mount your VMDK in unRAID (mine mounts automatically), click the update button, then SSH in and copy the two files from your flash to the VMDK, then reboot.
May 19, 201511 yr What hassle? Mount your VMDK in unRAID (mine mounts automatically), click the update button, then SSH in and copy the two files from your flash to the VMDK, then reboot. Hmm. I never considered mounting in unRAID. Using SNAP? The way I've been updating is adding the VMDK to a Windows VM to do the copy... which I think is a hassle because it requires me to powerdown unRAID, unassign VMDK, assign it to a Windows VM, make the copy, unassign it, reassign it, etc.
May 19, 201511 yr What hassle? Mount your VMDK in unRAID (mine mounts automatically), click the update button, then SSH in and copy the two files from your flash to the VMDK, then reboot. Hmm. I never considered mounting in unRAID. Using SNAP? The way I've been updating is adding the VMDK to a Windows VM to do the copy... which I think is a hassle because it requires me to powerdown unRAID, unassign VMDK, assign it to a Windows VM, make the copy, unassign it, reassign it, etc. I have this in my go file: #mount boot vm hd mkdir /mnt/boothdd mount -w -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/boothdd 2>&1 Or you could use the Unassigned Devices plugin, and just mount it when you need it.
May 20, 201511 yr I have this in my go file: #mount boot vm hd mkdir /mnt/boothdd mount -w -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/boothdd 2>&1 Or you could use the Unassigned Devices plugin, and just mount it when you need it. Strange. The VMDK doesn't seem to be visible to unRAID. Can't find it via 'fstab -l' nor with the Unassigned Devices plugin. Edit: StevenD, I noticed (in this thread) you ran into the same issue not seeing the drive. How'd you overcome this?
May 20, 201511 yr I have this in my go file: #mount boot vm hd mkdir /mnt/boothdd mount -w -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/boothdd 2>&1 Or you could use the Unassigned Devices plugin, and just mount it when you need it. Strange. The VMDK doesn't seem to be visible to unRAID. Can't find it via 'fstab -l' nor with the Unassigned Devices plugin. Edit: StevenD, I noticed (in this thread) you ran into the same issue not seeing the drive. How'd you overcome this? are you using this approach? http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=20392.msg234649#msg234649
May 20, 201511 yr are you using this approach? http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=20392.msg234649#msg234649 I actually found this thread last night and checked--I already had that setting enabled.
May 21, 201511 yr Well, I figured out how to get the VMDK to show up, and thought I'd share in case others run into this issue. My problem was the VMDK hard drive I created was a SCSI drive. For whatever reason, it's not presented to unRAID despite it booting fine from it. I recreated the drive as an IDE drive and it immediately became mountable.
May 21, 201511 yr Well, I figured out how to get the VMDK to show up, and thought I'd share in case others run into this issue. My problem was the VMDK hard drive I created was a SCSI drive. For whatever reason, it's not presented to unRAID despite it booting fine from it. I recreated the drive as an IDE drive and it immediately became mountable. Good to know. Which version of ESXi are you running?
May 21, 201511 yr Well, I figured out how to get the VMDK to show up, and thought I'd share in case others run into this issue. My problem was the VMDK hard drive I created was a SCSI drive. For whatever reason, it's not presented to unRAID despite it booting fine from it. I recreated the drive as an IDE drive and it immediately became mountable. Is this in unRAID 6? I've got unRAID5 and can see the drive just fine as a SCSI, ESXI 5.5. Wondering if I would need to recreate it as IDE for 6 when I upgrade. (I also upgrade over a share, which is terribly convenient - I'd hate to give it up.)
May 21, 201511 yr Well, I figured out how to get the VMDK to show up, and thought I'd share in case others run into this issue. My problem was the VMDK hard drive I created was a SCSI drive. For whatever reason, it's not presented to unRAID despite it booting fine from it. I recreated the drive as an IDE drive and it immediately became mountable. Thats really strange...I had to do the exact opposite to get it to work. This config is working just fine under -beta15:
May 21, 201511 yr The LSI adapter that ESXi gave me for the SCSI drive was LSI Logic Parallel. Perhaps that was the underlying issue and not the fact it was a SCSI drive. Next time I shut down my server, I'll switch back to the SCSI VMDK and change the LSI to SAS and see if it works. In any case, there's two potential solutions for other people who may run into this issue.
June 5, 201511 yr What guest OS did you choose when setting up your VM? When I try to add my USB controller in order to pass through my unRAID USB it gives me the following warning if I choose xHCI. I've tried FreeBSD and Other Linux 64-bit.
June 5, 201511 yr What guest OS did you choose when setting up your VM? When I try to add my USB controller in order to pass through my unRAID USB it gives me the following warning if I choose xHCI. I chose Suse Linux Enterprise 10 (64-bit). unRAID is based on Slackware, and Suse and Slackware are pretty closely related. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions Also - if you are just trying to have a USB memory stick available for boot, there is no reason to dedicate or pass-through the whole USB controller to your unRAID VM. Just have your USB memory stick inserted to you VMware ESXi host at the time you are creating your unRAID VM, and select USB Controller as a device you want added to the VM. Then after that, select the specific USB port you want added. Here is my unRAID VM settings screen.
June 5, 201511 yr What guest OS did you choose when setting up your VM? When I try to add my USB controller in order to pass through my unRAID USB it gives me the following warning if I choose xHCI. I chose Suse Linux Enterprise 10 (64-bit). unRAID is based on Slackware, and Suse and Slackware are pretty closely related. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions Also - if you are just trying to have a USB memory stick available for boot, there is no reason to dedicate or pass-through the whole USB controller to your unRAID VM. Just have your USB memory stick inserted to you VMware ESXi host at the time you are creating your unRAID VM, and select USB Controller as a device you want added to the VM. Then after that, select the specific USB port you want added. Here is my unRAID VM settings screen. Hmmm, my host is showing no USB devices available when I do that. Is there something in my BIOS that may be stopping it from showing up? EDIT: Nvmd, got it.
June 5, 201511 yr Ubuntu Linux (64-bit) Do you pass through your USB boot drive Steven? me not, just follow the Atlas thread and all should be fine i'm booting my unRAID from VMDK..
June 5, 201511 yr Ubuntu Linux (64-bit) Do you pass through your USB boot drive Steven? You quoted me earlier, showing where I do.
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