May 2, 201511 yr I figured out Xen on unraid a year ago and messed with passthrough and other painful things. It was good, if not a bit finicky with my particular hardware. Today I loaded up KVM and installed a W8 VM for testing, and my first impressions are quite good. Webgui is great. I'm impressed that I have a VM up and running without touching the command line, a configuration file, or spending more than an hour messing around. I only used the WebGUI so far a and haven't resorted to editing a configuration file yet. All done on b15. I used the incomplete wiki/manual as a guide (although it was all mostly self explanatory). Some feedback [*]The virtio drivers linked from the wiki are now deprecated. I had to bounce around a bit to find an ISO, and I'm not sure I got the latest. [*]The wiki doesn't explain that you need to install the virtio storage drivers so that VM will actually see your vdisk. [*]In VM manager, if you don't specify a vdisk filename in the path, it creates a generic vdisk1 file. This could be explained better in the wiki and tooltips. I assumed it would name after the VM name. General comments / issues [*]I have no advanced view available in the WebGUI. [*]For my W8 VM, I ended up installed a virtio driver in the amd64 folder rather than x86 (using an intel 4th gen i5). I had to click on the option to show drivers that are incompatible with the hardware. [*]My VM has no network access. I have no bridge configured in unraid and assumed based on the description in the wiki that unraid would set up NAT and act as a DHCP server for my VMs. Stopping for now.
May 2, 201511 yr I figured out Xen on unraid a year ago and messed with passthrough and other painful things. It was good, if not a bit finicky with my particular hardware. Today I loaded up KVM and installed a W8 VM for testing, and my first impressions are quite good. Webgui is great. I'm impressed that I have a VM up and running without touching the command line, a configuration file, or spending more than an hour messing around. I only used the WebGUI so far a and haven't resorted to editing a configuration file yet. All done on b15. I used the incomplete wiki/manual as a guide (although it was all mostly self explanatory). Thank you for this feedback. This kind of input is exactly what we need to continue to make this better, both in the product and in our documentation. Some feedback The virtio drivers linked from the wiki are now deprecated. I had to bounce around a bit to find an ISO, and I'm not sure I got the latest. This must have JUST changed (probably on 5/1). We will need to update and locate the newer version of these drives in ISO format. Side note: I'm excited to play with the newest VirtIO drivers for Windows! May have some goodies! Need to check this out!! The wiki doesn't explain that you need to install the virtio storage drivers so that VM will actually see your vdisk. Added to the "to-do" list for me to update. In VM manager, if you don't specify a vdisk filename in the path, it creates a generic vdisk1 file. This could be explained better in the wiki and tooltips. I assumed it would name after the VM name. We do this because if you specify a vdisk location on a btrfs-formatted device, we set NODATACOW to the folder for the VMs so that when we create the vdisks, they will automatically get this setting as well, which is important for VM performance on BTRFS. Agreed though, we need to better document that. I have no advanced view available in the WebGUI. See here: For my W8 VM, I ended up installed a virtio driver in the amd64 folder rather than x86 (using an intel 4th gen i5). I had to click on the option to show drivers that are incompatible with the hardware. You should install AMD64 and you shouldn't have had to click "show incompatible". Can you screenshot this if you're having problems for me so I can see exactly where you went and how? My VM has no network access. I have no bridge configured in unraid and assumed based on the description in the wiki that unraid would set up NAT and act as a DHCP server for my VMs. Stopping for now. Edit your VM by clicking the pencil symbol. When you do, click that toggle I showed in my screenshot to turn on advanced, look at the network section. What is entered under bridge?
May 3, 201511 yr Author This must have JUST changed (probably on 5/1). We will need to update and locate the newer version of these drives in ISO format. Side note: I'm excited to play with the newest VirtIO drivers for Windows! May have some goodies! Need to check this out!! I downloaded 0.1.96, which I think is the latest stable version. I had to poke around their directory structure until I found this. The folder I found this in also had a "virtio-win.iso" with the same filesize as the "virtio-win-0.1.96.iso". I grabbed the one with the version number on it. I have no advanced view available in the WebGUI. See here: Oh. How did I miss that? This isn't doing much for my technical credibility... I might have been too impatient for it to parse the xml and populate the template settings when I was trying to find the advanced button - the button doesn't appear until the template is populated. It takes like 2-3 seconds. For my W8 VM, I ended up installed a virtio driver in the amd64 folder rather than x86 (using an intel 4th gen i5). I had to click on the option to show drivers that are incompatible with the hardware. You should install AMD64 and you shouldn't have had to click "show incompatible". Can you screenshot this if you're having problems for me so I can see exactly where you went and how? I'm sure I'll be messing with this again in the near future, I'll make a note to capture a screenshot or figure out that I just didn't know what I was doing and mis-remembered how it went... My VM has no network access. I have no bridge configured in unraid and assumed based on the description in the wiki that unraid would set up NAT and act as a DHCP server for my VMs. Stopping for now. Edit your VM by clicking the pencil symbol. When you do, click that toggle I showed in my screenshot to turn on advanced, look at the network section. What is entered under bridge? The bridge shown in the VM manager config is virbr0. I previously had a bridge enabled at the unraid level for Xen. Bridge is disabled but it's still showing xenbr0 as the bridge name. Here's my network.cfg: # Generated settings: USE_DHCP="yes" IPADDR="192.168.1.150" NETMASK="255.255.255.0" GATEWAY="192.168.1.1" DHCP_KEEPRESOLV="no" DNS_SERVER1="192.168.1.1" DNS_SERVER2="" DNS_SERVER3="" BONDING="no" BONDING_MODE="1" BRIDGING="no" BRNAME="xenbr0" BRSTP="yes" Now I'm wondering if I need to install virtio network drivers too? Anything else I'm missing?
May 3, 201511 yr Author Now I'm wondering if I need to install virtio network drivers too? Anything else I'm missing? Alright, lesson learned and now I have network. Perhaps another good wiki improvement would to explicitly point out that virtio drivers need to be installed for various things for windows. Seems obvious to me now but wasn't on the first pass, especially coming from Xen when most of this just worked. Thanks for the quick response! Keep up the good work. As a side note, I noticed the unraid 6 manual in the wiki is publicly editable. I assume that because it's the official manual you don't want people messing with it, right?
May 3, 201511 yr Author They must have been actively updating the virtio driver website last night when I downloaded them. The wiki page here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Windows_Virtio_Drivers now has direct download links populated, which were not there last night when I was poking around. Indeed the stable release is 0.1.96. Latest link is going to 0.1.103.
May 3, 201511 yr As a side note, I noticed the unraid 6 manual in the wiki is publicly editable. I assume that because it's the official manual you don't want people messing with it, right? While true, there are various individuals that constantly monitor it, with a stick behind their back!
May 3, 201511 yr Author As a side note, I noticed the unraid 6 manual in the wiki is publicly editable. I assume that because it's the official manual you don't want people messing with it, right? While true, there are various individuals that constantly monitor it, with a stick behind their back! I figured as much, which is why I asked here rather than start editing. It took some serious effort to restrain the OCD documentation monkey portion of my personality... I didn't want to be the new guy that started screwing with everything.
May 3, 201511 yr Sorry, I REALLY don't want to discourage anyone from editing the wiki, just don't want malicious tampering. PLEASE edit away, loads of work needed! However, there are a few pages, such as the unRAID Manual 6, that are Limetech controlled, considered official information, so we avoid editing those. I've pointed out a few things to Jon or Tom, most of which they have then edited themselves. There's still a 'can can' and a few other things they haven't gotten to yet.
May 3, 201511 yr Sorry, I REALLY don't want to discourage anyone from editing the wiki, just don't want malicious tampering. PLEASE edit away, loads of work needed! However, there are a few pages, such as the unRAID Manual 6, that are Limetech controlled, considered official information, so we avoid editing those. I've pointed out a few things to Jon or Tom, most of which they have then edited themselves. There's still a 'can can' and a few other things they haven't gotten to yet. I just added a few words on the Dynamix plugins, far from complete, but keep working on it! Thanks for bringing this great wiki to us!
May 3, 201511 yr Author Sorry, I REALLY don't want to discourage anyone from editing the wiki, just don't want malicious tampering. PLEASE edit away, loads of work needed! However, there are a few pages, such as the unRAID Manual 6, that are Limetech controlled, considered official information, so we avoid editing those. I've pointed out a few things to Jon or Tom, most of which they have then edited themselves. There's still a 'can can' and a few other things they haven't gotten to yet. I will keep that in mind and definitely try to help where I can. I actually was referring specifically to the official v6 manual, so it is good to be clear that its under LT control.
May 5, 201511 yr Sorry, I REALLY don't want to discourage anyone from editing the wiki, just don't want malicious tampering. PLEASE edit away, loads of work needed! However, there are a few pages, such as the unRAID Manual 6, that are Limetech controlled, considered official information, so we avoid editing those. I've pointed out a few things to Jon or Tom, most of which they have then edited themselves. There's still a 'can can' and a few other things they haven't gotten to yet. I will keep that in mind and definitely try to help where I can. I actually was referring specifically to the official v6 manual, so it is good to be clear that its under LT control. Jim, Thanks for pointing this out. I completely forgot to enable protection for the official manual. The official manual pages are NOT to be edited by anyone but Lime Technology. The wiki has two sections of documentation primarily: Official Documentation and User Contributed Content. We are all about our community adding to the wiki, but not under the official documentation, otherwise, what's "official" about it? I have added protection to the unRAID 6 manual now.
May 5, 201511 yr I like the way the new documentation of v6 is going, very comprehensive information, yet a couple of suggestions from my side. 1. Start with a summary of the main features of unRAID, explain them in a few words and use the more elaborate explanation later in the document. The immediate deep dive may be too overwhelming for people just learning unRAID. 2. Move the system requirements higher up, that is after the summary. So people see quickly what is required in terms of hardware before diving into system set up. 3. Divide the wiki in functionality, that is: NAS, Docker & VM. Start with describing how to setup unRAID as NAS. First basics, then advanced / tweaking settings of the NAS - including user shares. Describe Docker and VM hereafter, these are "add-ons" and require unRAID to function properly first as a NAS. 4. Don't know if possible but instead of one very long page make it separate pages and avoid long scrolling, in other words keep pages and topics condensed. Thanks and keep up the good work.
May 5, 201511 yr I like the way the new documentation of v6 is going, very comprehensive information, yet a couple of suggestions from my side. 1. Start with a summary of the main features of unRAID, explain them in a few words and use the more elaborate explanation later in the document. The immediate deep dive may be too overwhelming for people just learning unRAID. 2. Move the system requirements higher up, that is after the summary. So people see quickly what is required in terms of hardware before diving into system set up. 3. Divide the wiki in functionality, that is: NAS, Docker & VM. Start with describing how to setup unRAID as NAS. First basics, then advanced / tweaking settings of the NAS - including user shares. Describe Docker and VM hereafter, these are "add-ons" and require unRAID to function properly first as a NAS. 4. Don't know if possible but instead of one very long page make it separate pages and avoid long scrolling, in other words keep pages and topics condensed. Thanks and keep up the good work. Thanks! We're aiming to keep the Wiki as "documentation" and not "explanation" too much. The website changes we have planned for unveiling will do the job of explaining things in a much more condensed form. The idea is that someone comes to the website and spends 2 minutes getting a high-level explanation. Then they will be able to dig deeper on the website's technology pages. Then to get even more info, they can travel to the wiki for product documentation. We may actually pull a lot of content from the beginning of the wiki as it really belongs on the technology pages of the website, but hey, had to start somewhere ;-). All of that said, I have been wondering about the best way to go about documenting the NAS, Docker, and VM capabilities of unRAID and whether or not to sub-divide those into different wiki pages altogether, or keep them all in a single master wiki page. I think the former approach will be better (breaking this out). For now, it'll stay as one giant doc to make it easier for me to add content, but as I finish up, I'll be doing some massive cut/copy/paste work into new pages to break this up into more digestible chunks.
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