The Basic Licence has a limit of 4 devices. So this does not solve my problem until I am told the definitive answer to my previous question, viz:

 

I also have two DVD drives - would these also show up as block devices even though there is no media inside them?? Hence taking me over the limit of 3??

 

 

The Basic Licence has a limit of 4 devices. So this does not solve my problem until I am told the definitive answer to my previous question, viz:

 

I also have two DVD drives - would these also show up as block devices even though there is no media inside them?? Hence taking me over the limit of 3??

Why do you want the DVD drives anyway?

I don't necessarily. It is just the less fiddling inside the PC the better.

 

Plus it seems like a straightforward question that deserves a clear answer.

 

Many thanks.

I don't necessarily. It is just the less fiddling inside the PC the better.

 

Plus it seems like a straightforward question that deserves a clear answer.

 

Many thanks.

I've never heard of anyone having this issue, but I doubt many users have DVD drives in their server. There are no DVD drivers in unRAID.

 

If I had to guess, I would say that it is probably the card reader since that issue has already been reported. Just disconnect the card reader and see if your problem goes away. If it does then we can forget about the DVD drives for now.

 

Fiddling inside the PC can be a pain depending on your case, but just make sure all of the drives are still plugged in good when you are done.

If the Card Reader counts as a drive that cannot be the only problem.

 

I would then have 3 drives - 2 DDD's and 1 card reader - which is within the constraints for the unRaid trial version - maximum of 3 drives. See: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=38192.0

 

If it's a multicard reader each slot could potentially be counted as a drive.

The card reader only has one slot therefore only counts as one device.

 

The question remains to be answered??

... Does it really repartion them as gary says? That doesn't seem very nice.

 

... Hope it just refuses to start and gives an explanation.

 

I should have been clearer.  My understanding is that the array will indeed refuse to start and give you a warning => AND offer to repartition the drives to stay within the 250GB limit.    No data is going to be lost without an explicit warning.    You could simply not do the repartitioning and buy a Basic license instead => in fact I suspect that's what many folks will do at that point.

 

Why don't you try it without the card reader and we can all learn something.

... Does it really repartion them as gary says? That doesn't seem very nice.

 

... Hope it just refuses to start and gives an explanation.

 

I should have been clearer.  My understanding is that the array will indeed refuse to start and give you a warning => AND offer to repartition the drives to stay within the 250GB limit.    No data is going to be lost without an explicit warning.    You could simply not do the repartitioning and buy a Basic license instead => in fact I suspect that's what many folks will do at that point.

 

I am simply unable to start my array. There no warning with an option to repartition. The start button is just greyed out with messages as described above??

 

Does it matter that the disks have data on them when I an trying to start unRAID - it is not data that I need to preserve??

... Does it really repartion them as gary says? That doesn't seem very nice.

 

... Hope it just refuses to start and gives an explanation.

 

I should have been clearer.  My understanding is that the array will indeed refuse to start and give you a warning => AND offer to repartition the drives to stay within the 250GB limit.    No data is going to be lost without an explicit warning.    You could simply not do the repartitioning and buy a Basic license instead => in fact I suspect that's what many folks will do at that point.

 

I am simply unable to start my array. There no warning with an option to repartition. The start button is just greyed out with messages as described above??

 

Does it matter that the disks have data on them when I an trying to start unRAID - it is not data that I need to preserve??

 

If you're having this issue now it has nothing to do with the 250GB limit  => that has not yet been implemented [it's scheduled to be implemented starting with RC1].    The problem you're having is too many attached devices => you simply need to disconnect the unused devices and everything should work just fine.

 

Does it matter that the disks have data on them when I an trying to start unRAID - it is not data that I need to preserve??

No it does not matter.  Unless a drive has been previously used by unRAID (and thus has an unRAID signature present on it), then unRAID will repartition the drive and write its signature (and any existing contents are lost).

Ok, I should expand the statement from earlier as cdroms might get seen as block devices and therefore are subject to the same bug as card readers. This will be addressed in a bug fix.

 

As for the capacity limit, stay tuned for an announcement post on this. In short, we are heavily considering not putting a capacity limit in place, but instead, requiring a registration to obtain a trial key that will last for 30 days.  I know this is going to prompt a lot of follow up questions, so I would ask that everyone remain patient as we finalize these plans and craft a formal announcement. Thanks.

 

Interesting that optical drives also count as attached devices => good to know that both these and card readers aren't going to present a device count issue once that bug is resolved.

 

Interesting that optical drives also count as attached devices => good to know that both these and card readers aren't going to present a device count issue once that bug is resolved.

 

It's merely in the method we were using to detect block devices.  A small oversight that until now, only one other user had reported.  It should be a relatively simple fix.

... It should be a relatively simple fix.

 

Hopefully so ... it'd be nice if that was fixed in the next release.    Of course an even better "fix" would be to eliminate the limit on attached devices and only count assigned devices      .... but I understand your reasons for not wanting to do that => and it's simple enough to essentially do that by just buying a higher level license than you need.

 

 

... It should be a relatively simple fix.

 

Hopefully so ... it'd be nice if that was fixed in the next release.    Of course an even better "fix" would be to eliminate the limit on attached devices and only count assigned devices      .... but I understand your reasons for not wanting to do that => and it's simple enough to essentially do that by just buying a higher level license than you need.

 

Tested this earlier.  CD-ROMs should NOT be affecting the trial attached device limit at all in beta 15.

 

In fact, the card reader we tested didn't even seem to affect it, but not all card readers are necessarily created equal.

Assuming that for me the problem is device limits due to card reader/CD roms - nobody has suggested another cause - does unRAID v5 work in the same way as v6 in respect of device limits??

Assuming that for me the problem is device limits due to card reader/CD roms - nobody has suggested another cause - does unRAID v5 work in the same way as v6 in respect of device limits??

I think that unRAID v5 just looks at assigned devices rather than attached devices.    However I could be wrong about that.  It is easy enough to check that out by creating a v5 USB drive and booting off it.

Assuming that for me the problem is device limits due to card reader/CD roms - nobody has suggested another cause - does unRAID v5 work in the same way as v6 in respect of device limits??

I think that unRAID v5 just looks at assigned devices rather than attached devices.    However I could be wrong about that.  It is easy enough to check that out by creating a v5 USB drive and booting off it.

 

That's correct  => there was no check for "attached devices" in v5.

(at least I certainly don't recall any discussion about this - it's possible it was added in one of the final updates, but I do not think that was the case)

 

As feedback:

 

I disconnected device that contained card reader - card reader actually has 4 slots. Device actually also contained 4 USB ports.

 

Now able to start array.

 

Therefore CD Rom cannot count as a device as I have 2 internal disks and if my 2 CD Rom drives counted as devices then I would be over 3 device limit for trial.

 

Thanks for all your help.

 

PS: I have another issue relating to passwords but have started new thread as it is a new topic: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=39660.0

Interesting that this had that impact even though Jonp indicated Beta 15 didn't have the problem.  Clearly different readers can have different results.    Hopefully the issue will be gone with the next release.

 

Unfortunately, i'm having a similar issue, but not with a card reader. In order to develop plugins I use unraid in a VM, which needs a clone of the usb drive as a virtual drive in order for it to boot (since virtualbox and vmware player can't boot from USB still). This means having 3 hard drives (disk1 disk2 parity) and the 8gb USB clone, I get the same error as OP, and can't start the array even though that USB virtual drive is unused.

Unfortunately, i'm having a similar issue, but not with a card reader. In order to develop plugins I use unraid in a VM, which needs a clone of the usb drive as a virtual drive in order for it to boot (since virtualbox and vmware player can't boot from USB still). This means having 3 hard drives (disk1 disk2 parity) and the 8gb USB clone, I get the same error as OP, and can't start the array even though that USB virtual drive is unused.

 

If you're doing this with v6, did you move your key file to the config folder?    It sounds like the system isn't recognizing your license.

 

I installed the trial though the web gui and it seems to have been recognized.

 

Just checked, ya its there.