I recently installed 320GB Spinners on both on my servers as cache drives.  I did this to implement a scheme to secure my shares again Ransomware basically.  As a part of this scheme, I needed a file manger on each unRAID server to handle the file management without exposing the shares to any Windows computer.  After a bit of research, I decided to try Krusader running in a Docker.  Turns out it is very easy to use and can be easily customized to meet the needs of my situation.

 

However, there is one side effect to it's use. If it is running, it keeps the cache drive spun up 24-7.   If I stop the Krusader, the drive will spin down and stay spun down.  If Krusader is started, spinning the drive down manually will work but it spins back up within a few seconds.  (That is one advantage of having two systems setup the same way--- I can both case A (Krusader started) and Case B (Krusader stopped) running at the same time!)

 

My Question:  Does installing any running Docker application cause the cache drive to always be spun up or is this strictly an issue with Krusader?  (Obviously, the answer will determine my next course of action...)

Edited July 4, 20179 yr by Frank1940
Marked as Solved

I can't answer the direct question, BUT I did want to strongly recommend not keeping Krusader running. It only takes a second or two to start it, and it allows too much power without any authentication.

1 hour ago, Frank1940 said:

Does installing any running Docker application cause the cache drive to always be spun up

General answer: Yes  With the app's OS installed in the docker.img file, the odds are that there's going to be reads / writes to the image which will keep the drive spun up.  Not too much different than Windows always keeping your C drive always running unless you're very lucky.

 

 

19 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

I can't answer the direct question, BUT I did want to strongly recommend not keeping Krusader running. It only takes a second or two to start it, and it allows too much power without any authentication.

 

As I think about it, that is probably true.  Specially, since you can't logout of the the GUI with shutting down the browser.  (But it is better than setting the shares to Secure where, after having logged in via Windows, you can't logout with a reboot.  And even that doesn't work if you have Windows Credentials enabled! Anyone with the most basic knowledge about Windows and its file management can do havoc and, of course, any Malware has unrestricted access to all of the shares from that Windows computer.)

 

2 minutes ago, Squid said:

General answer: Yes  With the app's OS installed in the docker.img file, the odds are that there's going to be reads / writes to the image which will keep the drive spun up.  Not too much different than Windows always keeping your C drive always running unless you're very lucky.

 

That does make sense.  So it is not a bug in Krusader but, rather, it is basically intrinsic with using any Docker App.  

 

This is one reason I wanted an SSD cache drive pool for my Docker and VMs.  Can stay "Spun-up" but doesn't really mean much if anything on a SSD.

1 hour ago, BobPhoenix said:

This is one reason I wanted an SSD cache drive pool for my Docker and VMs.

Unfortunately, when I was implementing the Data Protection Scheme, I was not thinking that this would even be an issue.  First, I was not really planning to use a Docker to do the User Share file managing and, second, I did not realize that an active Docker App would keep the drive spun up 100% of the time.  I was not really concerned about the the data transfer rate (which is still fine as far as I am concerned) and the spinner was a quarter of the SSD cost!

 

I will probably follow the recommendation of @jonathanm and just start and stop the Docker as required.  I will probably only have to use Krusader once or twice a month. 

Edited July 4, 20179 yr by Frank1940

1 minute ago, Frank1940 said:

I will probably only have to use Krusader once or twice a month.

That's how I write to my arrays.  Batch mode and TBs at a time. 

 

I'm hoping I can stretch that into a year now.  Over spent on an old hobby I resurrected with eBay purchases.