New life for 4.4.2 system Issue

[boosted]

I have an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ based system running with 6 disks of various sizes.  I decided I would upgrade all the drives to give it new life instead of upgrading hardware that is still perfect capable (based on what I read) since I only use it as storage.  (A new SATA III card may be added to replace the onboard SATA II.)  The upgrade started with replacing the current parity drive with a new WD 8TB Red drive.  The procedure I followed were these:

 

Shutdown

Install WD 8TB and swap power and SATA connector

power up

 

The WebGUI complained about the missing parity drive, I assigned the new WD drive in devices,(it may have done this on its own, can't remember) and started the array.  Normally this starts the sync process right away, but instead, it is just sitting there saying parity drive is "Not installed" eventhough it's assigned.  I reverted the drives and unRaid immediately started to sync.  Fortunately, I've already migrated all the data off of all 5 data drives, so starting over is not an issue.  But I want to figure out why it wouldn't sync with the new 8TB drive.

 

I realize we are up to version 6 now, but I'm hesitant to upgrade due to the aging hardware.  Definitely have no use for version 6, but if version 5 won't tax the Athlon 64 3500+, I might give it a shot.  Will my old processor be able to handle version 5 without issues?  Why wouldn't 4.4.2 sync to the new drive?  Any help would be appreciated.

 

*edit*

may have found the answer in 4.7 release notes:

Drives larger than 2TB are still not supported in this release
however.

Will my hardware be ok under version 6 or 5?

Edited February 21, 2018 by boosted

[JorgeB]

Will my hardware be ok under version 6 or 5?

CPU works with v6, though a dual core would be best, since you didn't post the rest of hardware that's all I can say.

 

 

[boosted]

 

7 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

CPU works with v6, though a dual core would be best, since you didn't post the rest of hardware that's all I can say.

 

 

 

Thanks for the reply.  I didn't think other hardware would apply, but I have an ASUS M2NPV-VM mother board with 1GB Ram.  Using onboard SATA and some cheap SATA II card, will probably add https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BUC3N74 as an upgrade.  The motherboard does support dual core Athlon II.  But would my single core be fast enough to saturate the read speed of the new 8TB drives (I read 200MB/s) I plan on using under v6?  How about write?  I really have no need for any of the new features of v6, just storage.

[JorgeB]

40 minutes ago, boosted said:

with 1GB Ram

4GB is the minimum recommended for v6

 

40 minutes ago, boosted said:

But would my single core be fast enough to saturate the read speed of the new 8TB drives (I read 200MB/s) I plan on using under v6? 

Possibly, even likely if not using many disks.

[SSD]

V5 is the beginning of support for drives over 2T.

 

You'd have to reach out to Limetech to get the final v5 .zip file.

 

Not sure there is a published minimum memory for v6 for NAS only use, just a recommended minimum. 1G may work if install is thin with no Dockers. I'd try that first, and only back down to v5 if required.

[itimpi]

3 hours ago, boosted said:

Will my hardware be ok under version 6 or 5?

The hardware is definitely OK for v5 and that included support for drives larger than 2TB.   However v5 is end-of-life and no longer gets updates.    Also plugins for v5 are not being maintained (even when they are still available).   Having said that it is still an improvement over the release you have and it was also the last release that runs on 32-bit hardware.

 

Not sure about v6 on your hardware, but if it will run then it has many more features than v5 even when used purely as a NAS.   If you use only a single parity drive with v6 then this should not be more demanding in CPU power.   However more than 1 GB RAM is almost certainly likely to be wanted.

[trurl]

2 hours ago, itimpi said:

However v5 is end-of-life and no longer gets updates.

And is difficult to support since not many on the forum are still using it. Not sure any of the frequently helpful people here have any copy of it running anymore.

[pwm]

I still have an ancient 5.0.4 running on a N54L micro-server. Have looked at it quite a number of times and considered a big-time conversion including stepping away from ReiserFS.

 

I most definitely do not recommend anyone to move to a 5-series installation unless you want to spend lots of time with own tweaking and additions of own-written scripts/programs or harvest whatever functionality you can from a Slackware distribution.

 

On one hand it lacks lots of security-related stuff - no iptables, ssh etc.

On the other hand it doesn't support events to inform about possible disk issues.

 

It really does take quite a lot of manual work to get a 5-series installation to be reasonable secure and monitored. And you have taken quite a lot of risks with your data by staying with your version 4.7.

[boosted]

Thanks everyone for chiming in.  I've had ok results with 4.4.2 aside from the slowness which I'm reading might be due to RiserFS.  But the ultimate issue with the 2TB limit is what is pushing me to V5.  But since it's not supported my limetech and limited support even by the community, I have no choice to go to V6.  I did some rough estimates on hardware upgrades that I would need to get it up to par to just handle V6, and that works out to over $100 and some change.  Rather than keep dragging on with older hardware, I found a cheap refurb Dell server for $176 after discount before taxes.  So I went with that instead.  Comes with Pentium G4400 dual core and 4GB of ram.  should be plenty of power for V6.  It will have lower power draw so less power bill, and quieter which is important for me.

Edited February 22, 2018 by boosted

[trurl]

15 minutes ago, boosted said:

4GB of ram.  should be plenty of power for V6

Unless you go beyond basic NAS functionality, then maybe more RAM.

[pwm]

14 minutes ago, boosted said:

I have no choice to go to V6.

You always have choices. Just that V5 is normally not a good choice compared to V6 because of security and ability to get mail reports of troubles.

 

You'll end up much happier with version 6.

[boosted]

19 minutes ago, trurl said:

Unless you go beyond basic NAS functionality, then maybe more RAM.

 

Just basic NAS.  I don't like running things on the NAS.  I have plenty of other boxes, so it should work fine.  But 4GB to run NAS, unRaid certainly have grown.

 

18 minutes ago, pwm said:

You always have choices. Just that V5 is normally not a good choice compared to V6 because of security and ability to get mail reports of troubles.

 

You'll end up much happier with version 6.

 

I'm worried about the slowness issue with ReiserFS.  Much harder to move 8TB x 5 of data than my current 3.5TB of the entire NAS.  

 

Question on the license key.  Do I need to contact Lime Tech to exchange my key file from 4.4.2 or anything?  It's been a while since I touched anything on the flash drive.

Edited February 22, 2018 by boosted

[SSD]

There were some changes to unRaid licensing with v6. Basically, it is counting all disks in the server against the license limit, and the limits have changed slightly. But the keys are the same and you don't need to do anything so long as your license is not exceeded.

 

Note the key file needs to be in the config directory. The root is no longer searched for that file.

[boosted]

If I read correctly, all drives count, including the cache(unfortunate), except for the boot USB.

[itimpi]

15 hours ago, boosted said:

If I read correctly, all drives count, including the cache(unfortunate), except for the boot USB.

Yes, but the limits for each license type have been raised significantly when used with v6 so you should be OK.

[boosted]

10 hours ago, itimpi said:

Yes, but the limits for each license type have been raised significantly when used with v6 so you should be OK.

 

On 4.4.2 basic license, it's 6 disks, same as v6.  So I won't be able to get a cache drive if I want to stay with 5 data drives like I have now.

[JorgeB]

4 hours ago, boosted said:

 

On 4.4.2 basic license, it's 6 disks, same as v6.  So I won't be able to get a cache drive if I want to stay with 5 data drives like I have now.

There wasn't a basic license for v4, only plus or pro, plus was limited to 6 devices up to v5, it can now use 12 devices.

[remotevisitor]

The limits for the v4 and v5 licenses are detailed here ... http://lime-technology.com/wiki/FAQ_for_unRAID_v4_and_v5#How_is_unRAID_licensed.3F

 

[boosted]

33 minutes ago, remotevisitor said:

The limits for the v4 and v5 licenses are detailed here ... http://lime-technology.com/wiki/FAQ_for_unRAID_v4_and_v5#How_is_unRAID_licensed.3F

 

 

Ohh! There's a new tier since v4.  So I had a device limit of 6 plus cache drive under v4, now I actually have a 12 device limit!  Thanks for pointing this out for me.

[boosted]

Not sure if anyone still cares.  I upgraded to V6 and did some testing on the same old Athlon hardware, no changes whatsoever from v4. I did not sync up before I ran these tests, since I didn't want to wait 3 hrs.

 

‎v4.4.2
copy from unRaid without parity 66MB/s
copy to unRaid without pairty 44MB/s

v6
copy from unRaid without parity 78MB/s
copy to unRaid without pairty 50MB/s

 

That's pretty interesting that speed went up on the same empty data drive on the old RiserFS.  This is also on 1GB ram, so v6 may not need as much ram as some thought.  But I only have 6 drives and nothing on them. Not sure if that'll impact memory usage.   I will test again when parity sync is complete and convert one of the drive to XFS and see the results.  I can post here if anyone's interested, if not, I'll just keep them to myself.

Edited February 24, 2018 by boosted

[tr0910]

Not sure if anyone still cares.  I upgraded to V6 and did some testing on the same old Athlon hardware, no changes whatsoever from v4. I did not sync up before I ran these tests, since I didn't want to wait 3 hrs.
 
‎v4.4.2
copy from unRaid without parity 66MB/s
copy to unRaid without pairty 44MB/s

v6
copy from unRaid without parity 78MB/s
copy to unRaid without pairty 50MB/s
 
That's pretty interesting that speed went up on the same empty data drive on the old RiserFS.  This is also on 1GB ram, so v6 may not need as much ram as some thought.  But I only have 6 drives and nothing on them. Not sure if that'll impact memory usage.   I will test again when parity sync is complete and convert one of the drive to XFS and see the results.  I can post here if anyone's interested, if not, I'll just keep them to myself.

Good to see the old hardware still chugging along. unRaid is frugal, but expect to want to try some new things with v6 that will require more memory. I used to have 1gb ram in a similar server and now have 128gb. (thanks to Facebook updating their servers)


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[Frank1940]

On 2/24/2018 at 3:02 AM, boosted said:

That's pretty interesting that speed went up on the same empty data drive on the old RiserFS.  This is also on 1GB ram, so v6 may not need as much ram as some thought. 

 

This may be true now but I will tell you that you will not be able to upgrade the system by clicking on the 'UpdateOS' button under the Tools menu.  That is because everything has to be done in RAM.  (There is no physical cache drive with a cache file on it to roll unused processes out to when RAM become short.)  While LimeTech has never made a definite statement on RAM requirements for version 6, I can tell that experience has shown that 4GB is about the minimum amount unless you enjoy random problems after a few plugins are installed that provide increased functionality that most folks enjoy having.  

[boosted]

6 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

 

This may be true now but I will tell you that you will not be able to upgrade the system by clicking on the 'UpdateOS' button under the Tools menu.  That is because everything has to be done in RAM.  (There is no physical cache drive with a cache file on it to roll unused processes out to when RAM become short.)  While LimeTech has never made a definite statement on RAM requirements for version 6, I can tell that experience has shown that 4GB is about the minimum amount unless you enjoy random problems after a few plugins are installed that provide increased functionality that most folks enjoy having.  

 

Worry not, new hardware is coming.  I was just testing what old hardware can do.  It's currently preclearing my drives so they can go right in after the new server comes in.