Video Demo: Managing Game Libraries with unRAID User Shares

[rix]

Have this setup. Games install to share. When I select a game it appears to start but just exits back to Steam screen. To me it appears to be a write permission issue. Directory belongs to ROOT?!?

 

Any ideas?

 

Kryspy

 

Getting it all working seems to be more difficult than I anticipated.

 

I have succesfully set this up as follows: Steam/Uplay/Other Games run fine from a local Symlink

e.g. in CMD (admin) go to C:\ there mklink /D Games \\unraid\games\

 

Origin was resistant to running of a share. I created two VHDs in Windows' own drive management tool. The smaller of which sits on my cache drive, the larger on the array. This way all games I own (3+ TB) run fine in a VM on unraid!?

 

Maybe this will help you.

[bigjme]

I had a similar issue with both origin and uplay. Uplay refused symlinks and origin added the downloads to the queue but then did nothing.

 

I created a 500gb vhd for origin and uplay and simply mount them as needed. One thing to note, I could not create the vhd to the user share via the symlink but could if I entered the path to the share manually.

 

These seem to be working fine and only take up as much space as needed when set to expanding mode so they won't take up the entire 500gb.

 

It's not the best but it works fine.

 

Regards,

Jamie

[El Gabito]

How are the shares being accessed by the VM? I'm guessing it's magically staying local to the hardware and not going out over the "network"?

[bigjme]

How are the shares being accessed by the VM? I'm guessing it's magically staying local to the hardware and not going out over the "network"?

 

Was this a question to me? Sorry, its not very clear

[El Gabito]

 

 

 

Was this a question to me? Sorry, its not very clear

 

No, just for the topic of the thread.

[rix]

It goes over the network, since a share is meant to work this way.

 

Because you can only achieve this with the br0 network bridge, though, your packets never "leave" your unraid system. That's why they stay local. If you look at the task manager while starting a game you will see instead of disk usage, that your network speed usage will spike.

[bigjme]

rix is correct. One other thing is that whilst it goes over the network, if you check your connection to unraid in windows you will see it gives you a 10gb network speed which shows it is internal

[El Gabito]

Interesting, thanks. I assumed it would have to go out to the switch.

[Kryspy]

So I took another stab at this. Not sure what worked but I got it going.  I believe my success may have been from my Windows 10 VM user login also being a user on unRAID.  Same user name and same password.  When I mapped the network drive I chose to using different credentials and logged in using that user/pass.

 

After that it worked as advertised.

 

Kryspy

[IG82]

After having some small issues with framerate drops on my main machine I moved my GTX 960 to a test bench and have been comparing baremetal with virtual performance.  I generally found that my results match Jon's with around 95%, most of the difference attributable to CPU rather than GPU.

 

I have found an issue with this setup of having the Steam library on a share with one game in particular, Thomas Was Alone.  The only reason I selected it was that it is small and relatively undemanding, but is sensitive to input lag.

 

If I run it from a share mounted as per the video when the actual gameplay starts it is becomes a stuttery mess, stutter is being generous.  If I install direct to the VM disk it is responsive and playable.  The game is under 300MB in size.

 

This is a W7 VM, with 7 cores, 8GB RAM and an Nvidia GTX 960.  Know the core count is odd, just where I got to with some of the benchmarking I have been doing!

 

Would be very interested if anyone has it in their library to perform a similar test!  JonP, if you don't have it I think I have a spare key if you would be willing to give it a go?

 

EDIT: Tried setting up the windows user and using those credentials for the share

[psparks]

I followed these directions to set this up and am having a hell of a time getting it to work. Whenever I move a game from the cache to a disk share or vice versa steam fails to recognize the move (or i suppose it does recognize, which is what we don't want) and tells me it can't find the executable needed to launch the game. Steam seems to be looking in the Network mapped drive instead of where the file is after it's moved.

 

I found a workaround -  which is - I delete local content from steam after I move the game file in MC, and then reinstall to the location that I transferred it to.  This allows steam to realize that the game is installed in the new location and makes it playable again.  I'd like to avoid this last step of deleting and reinstalling if possible, like shown in the video.  Am I doing something stupid possibly, or are there significant changes in Windows 10/Current unRAID that could be causing the issues? I'm totally new to unRAID so, any help is appreciated.

[saarg]

Try the below method and see if it works.

 

In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry subkey:

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

 

Right-click Configuration, click New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.

 

Name the new registry entry as EnableLinkedConnections.

 

Double-click the EnableLinkedConnections registry entry.

 

In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, type 1 in the Value data field, and then click OK.

 

Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer

[psparks]

Try the below method and see if it works.

 

In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry subkey:

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

 

Right-click Configuration, click New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.

 

Name the new registry entry as EnableLinkedConnections.

 

Double-click the EnableLinkedConnections registry entry.

 

In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, type 1 in the Value data field, and then click OK.

 

Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer

 

Thanks for the suggestion Saarg.

 

I tried what you said, but I my problem actually came down to which folders I was using as my steamLibrary folders.  I had both games folders from the cache and disk drives saved in steam as steamlibrary folders, instead of just the games user share.  It was super obvious once I realized the mistake and saw all my games in the games user share from both cache and disk.  As I said I'm new to this, and there is a bit of a learning curve to understand how all these folders and shares work together.

[TexasTitan915]

Excellent Video Jon.  I had not even though of doing it like that.

first post with the exact same thought as i.

this is awesome.

[gtroyp]

I had to reset my Win10 VM, and now everything is wonky. (BTW, I hate windows. Dirty, disgusting OS)

 

I had this setup and it worked awesome. Now, the games that were on the the G: drive are 50/50 for working, most fail. Downloading to the G: drive throws up Disk Write Errors too.

 

I am not sure where to even start debugging this nonsense. I have tried uninstalling the local content and reinstalling, I ran the New Permissions tool JIC, checked that the Computer can write to the drive (and I THINK it can), but Steam is now only 1/3-1/2 working. I was able to install to the C: drive, so I think the problem is SMB related.

 

Any help is appreciated.

[blknitro11]

I had to reset my Win10 VM, and now everything is wonky. (BTW, I hate windows. Dirty, disgusting OS)

 

I had this setup and it worked awesome. Now, the games that were on the the G: drive are 50/50 for working, most fail. Downloading to the G: drive throws up Disk Write Errors too.

 

I am not sure where to even start debugging this nonsense. I have tried uninstalling the local content and reinstalling, I ran the New Permissions tool JIC, checked that the Computer can write to the drive (and I THINK it can), but Steam is now only 1/3-1/2 working. I was able to install to the C: drive, so I think the problem is SMB related.

 

Any help is appreciated.

 

Same exact issue im havinng.  When i Install to the G drive, 75% of the games at first run start to do the initial install, then nothing.  Skyrim for example, the skyrim splash screen comes up, click install the gray install window pops up, closes then goes right back to the Skyrim splash screen for me to try to install again.  Now if i point it to the C drive, it works perfect.  Have you been able to find a solution to this?

[ryoko227]

Weird thing for me is when I go to add my mapped network drive in to steam's library directories, it doesn't show up. In fact, none of the mapped network drives show up for me. So, I bypassed this issue using a symlink. Hope this is helpful for anyone else that might be seeing this.

 

 

EDIT - this was fixed by using saarg's recommendation from above, pasted in below.

 

Try the below method and see if it works.

 

In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry subkey:

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

 

Right-click Configuration, click New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.

 

Name the new registry entry as EnableLinkedConnections.

 

Double-click the EnableLinkedConnections registry entry.

 

In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, type 1 in the Value data field, and then click OK.

 

Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer

[johnodon]

So...here is where I am at.

 

I have been flip flopping between an XBOX ONE and PS4 (PS4 is the flavor of the month due to BAD experience with XO).  Anyway, while I was at Best Buy picking up the PS4, I also grabbed a GeForce GTX 950 and put it in my server.  I passed this through to a WIN10 VM and so far it has played everything I can throw at it admirably (granted...the audience is 5 and 6 years old boys so mostly Lego games and Star Wars Battlefront).

 

That being said...

 

I was initially installing games to my cache pool but ran out of space quickly.  So, I decided to try a user share instead.  To my surprise, the games load surprisingly fast...so much so that I plan on making this the norm.  My question:  are there any ill effects to installing games to a parity protected share (other than a potential speed hit which I am not seeing)?  Do games constantly write to the install location?  I would think 'not' in most cases.

 

Also, I did have to perform the hack saarg posted here to have to the ability to install to a mapped share:  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=40777.msg485897#msg485897

 

John

[IG82]

Would still love to hear if anyone else has tried 'Thomas Was Alone' from a share?  Bizarre that such a simple game struggles across a network share!

[johnodon]

Would still love to hear if anyone else has tried 'Thomas Was Alone' from a share?  Bizarre that such a simple game struggles across a network share!

 

I just installed but not to an array drive...to a USB drive mounted via Unassigned Devices.  Launched/played without issue.

 

John

[NeoDude]

This seems to go wonky eventually for me too after a while. I think what happens is that for games stored on the Array, when updates are downloaded they are automatically saved to the Cache and so you end up with duplicated files. I'm just going to bite the bullet and set my games share back to just using the array.

[lionceau]

Does anybody have long-time experiences with Steam games on a SMB share? I'd be interested to hear from you, particularly the posters above that had it working but experienced failures after a while.

 

I'm trying to sort out how to best manage the Steam Library for my VM. Currently I have a 256GB KVM VM disk image on cache only and a 1TB KVM VM disk image on the array only.

I use the new steam "Move install folder..." feature to move games between the two drives.

 

This works o.k. but steam spins up the drive and parity disk whenever it launches. The best solution would be a 2TB 850 Pro as cache drive and to leave the steam VM disk on it all the time but that's rather expensive at the moment.

Or, software wise, block level caching of the KVM VM disk image that holds my steam games but that would be at odds with how UnRAID works.

[bigjme]

Personally I have my vm image on cache and my games installed to a mapped network drive on the data array without using a disk image

 

I've found a few games that stutter this way such as subnautica but heavy game like doom and Assassins Creed Syndicate run perfectly fine with no issues

 

I have my entire steam library installed this way (3tb+) and honestly don't have many problems

 

Jamie

[luca2]

Hi Jamie, the mapped network drive you have on the data array is placed on an ssd?

Also, have you tried performance impact by passing-through a whole ssd to the VM?

Rgds

 

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[luca2]

Also, I have a new install with the same setup as Jon, and realised steam data for a game is saved in my c:/users/.. (plugins, configs, ...). Has anyone experience how this affects the game?

 

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