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So I just spent the last two and half hours trying to figure out why my unRaid server wouldn't start up properly. Long story short, this always-connected DRM built into unRaid is a travesty. I virtualized a pfSense instance on unraid and had it all set up perfectly. All I wanted to do was add another HDD. Shut the machine down, installed the drive, booted back up. What to my surprise was happening? Unraid wouldn't start the array, wouldn't start the VM so itself couldn't get any internet. I spent more than an hour trying to figure it out until I noticed this little tag, after booting into GUI mode to be able to get to the web UI. This tag said my license was expired! This was news to me because I still had over 20 days left on my trial. I come to find out that unRaid won't boot the array or any VMs without internet! How in gods name is virtualizing pfSense at all even a thing someone can do if it won't even start?! Am I really going to be expected to have a separate router on hand ready to hook up at all times just in case I decide to reboot? This is something I will not do.

 

Guys, this is a borderline apple move here. What in gods name is the use of an array or VMs that won't start at all without internet?! If this is how unRaid works then this is one sale, was going to buy the unlimited license, you won't be getting. I will also have to recommend to a couple friends of mine, who saw my server and wanted to make their own, to avoid unRaid like the plague.

 

This is anti-user, anti-consumer and I will not have any part in a company that does this kind of thing. At least start the array and let it run for maybe 30 minutes so I can boot into my pfSense VM and actually start getting internet!

 

I need someone to explain to me how in any way this is the correct and proper way to treat customers. At least they had a trial and I was saved wasting the money I guess. The whole thing has made me so much angrier than I have ever been at any company in my life, and this is not hyperbole.

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9 minutes ago, cammelspit said:

Am I really going to be expected to have a separate router on hand ready to hook up at all times just in case I decide to reboot?

How did you get online before you set up your pfsense VM? It's unrealistic to depend on unraid to provide the only connection to the internet. If you have to take your server down for maintenance or something blows up, you need a way to limp online.

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3 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

The licensed version doesn't require internet to start, or at all for that matter.

 

If the trial version didn't verify itself by connecting to the internet, people could easily hack it and run indefinitely without paying.

So if I buy unRaid I, in theory, could go on and forever and ever reboot all day long and never ever EVER need internet first before the array and the VM would start. This is in perpetuity until the system turns to dust and dinosaurs have evolved again to be the dominant species on this planet. No internet ever?! EVER!? Promise? Like, legitimately for real... ACTUALLY?

 

Regardless, a 30-minute start would be best. I mean, this also means that I can't use unRaid as it is intended for the 30 days of the trial. Frankly, I was just holding off till next payday before plopping down the cash for the OS. It is unreasonable to not expect someone like myself, who intends to virtualize pfSense, to not want to test that functionality.

 

3 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

How did you get online before you set up your pfsense VM? It's unrealistic to depend on unraid to provide the only connection to the internet. If you have to take your server down for maintenance or something blows up, you need a way to limp online.

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Obviously, I had a bare metal pfSense machine already in production. I took it's power supply to put into the unRaid machine since it was an 850Watt 80+ gold modular powering a Pentium g3258. I ended up having to drag out the old as hell Asus, plug it in, reset it, rewire all of my cables, get internet into the unRaid, start everything... In still under the old Asus right now actually. Point is, what if that was not an option? It is perfectly reasonable to expect the unRaid server to at least be able to start and to boot VMs without internet EVEN under a trial.

 

Besides, piracy is not an excuse. If your software is good, people will pay for it. You can make the array shut down every 30 minutes if it cant verify the trial. But to not allow it to come up altogether? No, this is a bad idea and I am embarrassed for whoever made that decision.

 

Frankly, I am not sure that, even knowing the full paid version wouldn't have this problem, is enough to save my business and by extension two or three other sales for those who I have been excitedly showing my server off to. I am glad it happened now though, at least I can have a real moral discussion with my wife over if we want to give Lime Tech our money or not. I have literally sold off perfectly usable equipment and swore off companies entirely for what I consider immoral behavior and this is dangerously close to meeting that same standard.

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1 hour ago, cammelspit said:

Really? Trolling? Wow, and I thought people on here would be smarter than this...

note: this user is not a limetech employee, or representative of limetech.

 

OMG SICK BURN I NEED TO GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM NOW BECAUSE YOU INFERRED THAT I AM NOT SMART AND IT BURNED ME SO BAD SOMEBODY CALL 9-1-1!!!

 

You're just one in a successive line of people who think they know Limetech's business model better than they do. It's a great product and you have zero right to get pissy because it doesn't bend to your whims. I don't get everything I want, working the way I want it in this OS. But I don't whine about it and alienate people on the community forum about it. Well, I whine about it, but not alienate people.

 

Just chill out and buy it if it works for you or don't buy it. You didn't understand how it worked, then you were corrected. Then you changed direction to keep yourself being angry (maybe you are a rage queen?) and told us all about how you don't have enough equipment and unRaid should be changed to suit your specific situation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Wtf is that anyways? You have to have a MORAL discussion with her about spending 60 bucks on software? Are you going to get mad and erase the usb  with the trial now and throw the perfectly good drive in the trash for good measure? "THAT'LL SHOW THEM I MEAN BUSINESS!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK REAL TALK: we can still all be friends. I mean, I get that you're going to be mad about being called a rage queen, and also about the meme(s) and making fun of the "moral discussion" bit with your spouse. But people here will still help you. I would too. And as a part of that, I pledge I will not make fun of you anymore in this thread, regardless of any ridiculous thing you have to say next. I want you to understand how difficult it will be for me to not do this, but it is my what I'm willing to do to show you how much I think you're going to like it.

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2 hours ago, cammelspit said:

This is anti-user, anti-consumer and I will not have any part in a company that does this kind of thing. At least start the array and let it run for maybe 30 minutes so I can boot into my pfSense VM and actually start getting internet!

 

As has been mentioned already, Internet connectivity is only a trial license restriction.  I think your suggestion of starting the array for a limited time has some merit, but, it would have to come with lots of warnings and if someone ignored them and the array went offline after x minutes there would be a whole lot of people complaining about that and screaming that it somehow caused them to lose data, corrupted files, screwed up their dockers, VMs, etc.  That's not a perfect solution either. 

 

Limetech welcomes constructive feedback in the feature requests forum.  If you have ideas for how the trial process could be improved, I'm sure they would welcome that feedback.

 

I think perhaps the restrictions of the trial license and the requirement for Internet connectivity could be a bit more apparent to new users so as to not be caught off-guard as you were.

 

2 hours ago, cammelspit said:

I am glad it happened now though, at least I can have a real moral discussion with my wife over if we want to give Lime Tech our money or not. I have literally sold off perfectly usable equipment and swore off companies entirely for what I consider immoral behavior and this is dangerously close to meeting that same standard.

 

I don't agree with calling Limetech's decision to handle the trial license the way they do "immoral (or, dangerously close to it)" as they are not evil, wicked, unprincipled, dishonest, etc.  Perhaps you do not think it is a business best practice, but, again, they do welcome constructive user feedback on any aspect of the product. If the process can be improved in a way that protects their product and lessens user frustration, I am sure they would listen.

 

I hope you can evaluate unRAID on its merits despite this experience.  In the end, you may decide it is not for you, but, I hope this trial experience does not, by itself, wipe out the positives.

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Yeah, well, I get that I really do. Let's put it this way, I downloaded and installed and spent several days configuring without even knowing there was an internet connectivity block just to boot VMs. I don't think anyone can blame me for being torqued off about having to drag out an old router and reconfigure my whole network just to get the thing to start. It's not like there was something actually saying it at all in the UI and even in the downloads page, one single line of text which is lost in the other text on the page. I'll admit, I was angry, very VERY angry... I appreciate the calming response. I won't apologize for what I said because it was overall accurate and the array startup restriction is far too draconian to properly evaluate the software, especially considering virtualization of pfSense was my primary goal, only that I shouldn't have been so angry while posting about it. I should have taken a few hours to calm down first. My wife told me that I should still buy it because it does what i want and I should make it clear I am displeased with the array startup thing for the trial license, which I have now done via the feature request. Though I will be waiting till the last possible moment to make the purchase and will likely not be buying the top tier because in all honesty, I don't really need it, I just wanted to get the unlimited license because that's just how I do things. If I like something, I buy the unlimited, lifetime, most feature packed version of something I possibly can. That's assuming nothing else comes up between now and then.

 

I think you might be a little beside yourself too if it took hours to get your network reconfigured from scratch just because of a short sighted DRM mechanism. Again, this is my opinion but I think I have made a very good argument to support it despite my initial rage.

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Everyone who responded to you was an unRaid user. Nobody gets any benefit whether you buy or not. It is the quality of the community that is the real value here.

We don't have much drama. If you like that you'll like unRaid. If you are looking for drama this might not be for you.

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Just now, tr0910 said:

Everyone who responded to you was an unRaid user. Nobody gets any benefit whether you buy or not. It is the quality of the community that is the real value here.

We don't have much drama. If you like that you'll like unRaid. If you are looking for drama this might not be for you.

Where'd ya get that from? By my last post? Doubtful...

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7 hours ago, cammelspit said:

Regardless, a 30-minute start would be best.

 

Best would be if all software in the world could be had for free. But that wouldn't leave room for commercial development and so would limit the progress we could expect. So not all software is free. But since people still want everything to be free, the people who charge money for software needs a way to protect their properties. Requiring the free test version to handshake with the company servers really isn't a very big limitation.

7 hours ago, cammelspit said:

Point is, what if that was not an option?

 

Point is better covered by the following quote, since single point of failures are traditionally bad.

7 hours ago, cammelspit said:

It is perfectly reasonable to expect the unRaid server to at least be able to start and to boot VMs without internet EVEN under a trial.

 

 

 

7 hours ago, jonathanm said:

It's unrealistic to depend on unraid to provide the only connection to the internet.

 

While you are correct, it isn't that simple. The alternative - that the test license verifies itself before starting - is also reasonable. So when both alternatives are reasonable, it isn't unreasonable ;-) that the product owner (Limes) selects the alternative they prefer. There is a limit to what a non-paying customer can demand, and the majority of new users manages well with the perfectly reasonable alternative that Limes did select.

 

7 hours ago, cammelspit said:

Besides, piracy is not an excuse. If your software is good, people will pay for it.

 

Not really completely true. If the software is good, a lot of users will pay. But a lot of users will not, because quite a number of people are willing to do just about anything to avoid paying if they can see a route to that option. So if the option is losing one in hundred potential users because of the need to have internet during the test but the gain is have 10 extra of the hundred potential users actually pay, then that one in a hundred lost customers end up being irrelevant in the big picture.

 

 

7 hours ago, cammelspit said:

I am glad it happened now though, at least I can have a real moral discussion with my wife over if we want to give Lime Tech our money or not.

 

You have an interesting view of what you consider moral or immoral. With your view, it would be immoral if a car manufacturer only sells pink cars, just because you happen to dislike pink.

 

When LT limits your ability to use a payed product, it can be debated as moral/immoral. When LT put in limitations in a free test version, then moral isn't really part of the equation.

 

 

 

In the end, unRAID is a good product. But it isn't a product for everyone. When it's a good fit for the user, it will the users loss to fail to spot this and buy the license. When it isn't a good fit for the user, it's better if the user selects a different product. So don't evaluate based on any perceived moral/immoral perspective - evaluate based on how well unRAID fit your actual needs.


The important thing with unRAID, is that there exists a route where you can interact with LT. So you can post  suggestions about improvements. And LT can evaluate the suggestions and decide if the cost of introducing the changes are reasonable compared to the perceived gain. So if you have good suggestions, you may get them introduced in unRAID. If you have good suggestions, but possibly expensive to implement, then they might be kept on back-burner until it's obvious lots of other people also wants the change. As noted above, it would definitely be good if it was more obvious that the trial license requires a network connection on every start. But it almost never a show-stopper for new customers, which means LT has very little incentive to spend time trying to figure out a different model to protect the trial licenses from abuse.

 

Select the product based on if you feel it's a good product for you. But accept that LT must make their choices based on their view of what is good/bad/profitable/reasonable/... Unless there are specific regulatory requirements, it's always the manufacturer that must decide on what they want to sell. And unless there is a monopoly situation, it's the customers who must decide if the offering is good enough to buy.

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6 minutes ago, pwm said:

Best would be if all software in the world could be had for free. But that wouldn't leave room for commercial development and so would limit the progress we could expect. So not all software is free. But since people still want everything to be free, the people who charge money for software needs a way to protect their properties. Requiring the free test version to handshake with the company servers really isn't a very big limitation.

For evaluating the software, a 30 minute start up without internet would literally be the perfect solution. There really isn't an argument that can sideline the fact that I wished to test unRaid in a setup exactly like the one in which it would be used. Really, it doesn't even have to be 30 minutes, just long enough for a pfSense VM to start. This machine was originally created to be a replacement for my old pfSense so that really was the whole point of even going this route. I just wanted to be able to do other stuff with the machine and not JUST pfSense. I also mentioned in a later post about it end explained more thoroughly so I won't beat a dead horse. Anyways, this is just a smart suggestion that would satisfy the DRM and the new user in a similar situation.

 

11 minutes ago, pwm said:

So when both alternatives are reasonable, it isn't unreasonable ;-) that the product owner (Limes) selects the alternative they prefer. There is a limit to what a non-paying customer can demand, and the majority of new users manages well with the perfectly reasonable alternative that Limes did select.

 

This one, I don't really think both are reasonable at all. unRaid is a timed trial and I do understand the need for some kind of online DRM. Honestly, I would also prefer no DRM at all but having run my own businesses for many years I also understand this is not reasonable to expect that. So what needs to be done is to find an alternative that will satisfy the desire for DRM and the need for an evaluator to use the software in a way in which it is intended during the trial period. Otherwise, how would someone really know if it best fits their needs? I mean, I could always build a Linux machine and just install KVM and I'm off to the races. Lot's of alternatives, granted none with an easy GUI. Just saying, if I hadn't come in and double checked and posted like I did, I would genuinely think this is how unRaid works at all times and that most certainly would make me reject it entirely, no matter how many fancy features it had. Also, can we really say how many people have just decided to give up because of a similar issue? Likely not a LOT or anything but some number far from zero I would suspect.

 

And I know, someone is going to say, 'it was right on the DL page! BLARGHLABLAAAAA' but really, the one place it is mentioned at all and not everyone has eagle eyes that can see the whole content of a webpage at a glance in 4K either. Or even remember it a week down the road when they are having issues. I don't have great eyes and I missed it...

18 minutes ago, pwm said:

Not really completely true. If the software is good, a lot of users will pay. But a lot of users will not, because quite a number of people are willing to do just about anything to avoid paying if they can see a route to that option. So if the option is losing one in hundred potential users because of the need to have internet during the test but the gain is have 10 extra of the hundred potential users actually pay, then that one in a hundred lost customers end up being irrelevant in the big picture.

Frankly, if someone wasn't going to pay for it by pirating it, they wouldn't pay for it in any event. Anti piracy measures do not equal more sales. Though, as I stated before, if you must have DRM, let's make it not so heavy handed. That's my main point here no matter if I articulated it like an angry neanderthal in my OP.

21 minutes ago, pwm said:

In the end, unRAID is a good product. But it isn't a product for everyone. When it's a good fit for the user, it will the users loss to fail to spot this and buy the license. When it isn't a good fit for the user, it's better if the user selects a different product. So don't evaluate based on any perceived moral/immoral perspective - evaluate based on how well unRAID fit your actual needs.


The important thing with unRAID, is that there exists a route where you can interact with LT. So you can post  suggestions about improvements. And LT can evaluate the suggestions and decide if the cost of introducing the changes are reasonable compared to the perceived gain. So if you have good suggestions, you may get them introduced in unRAID. If you have good suggestions, but possibly expensive to implement, then they might be kept on back-burner until it's obvious lots of other people also wants the change. As noted above, it would definitely be good if it was more obvious that the trial license requires a network connection on every start. But it almost never a show-stopper for new customers, which means LT has very little incentive to spend time trying to figure out a different model to protect the trial licenses from abuse.

 

Select the product based on if you feel it's a good product for you. But accept that LT must make their choices based on their view of what is good/bad/profitable/reasonable/... Unless there are specific regulatory requirements, it's always the manufacturer that must decide on what they want to sell. And unless there is a monopoly situation, it's the customers who must decide if the offering is good enough to buy.

Morality is always a factor 100% of the time. If Apple decides to power their factories by purchasing Malaysian children to run in hamster wheels, yeah, no product is good enough to look past that. <- this is an extreme example to prove my point, not saying I think LT is powering their servers with slave children or that this is even remotely close to it.

 

Otherwise my wife agrees with you so I don't really have anything else to say there. She keeps me grounded when I go off the deep end, happens maybe once or twice a year and you should be privileged you got to see it. <- not really ?

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One feature that has been requested a number of times is to have the ability to run VMs without having the main array started (typically running of a cache disk or Unassigned Device) and left running if the array is stopped.   If this gets implemented it would have satisfied this particular issue.  It would also satisfy a number of other Use Cases that the general community of unRAID users have identified.    However, how difficult this might be to actually implement in a robust way I have no idea - I can see plenty of potential for problem corner cases.

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22 minutes ago, cammelspit said:

Morality is always a factor 100% of the time. If Apple decides to power their factories by purchasing Malaysian children to run in hamster wheels, yeah, no product is good enough to look past that. <- this is an extreme example to prove my point, not saying I think LT is powering their servers with slave children or that this is even remotely close to it.

True, but there are immoral/apathetic users/customers too. Believe what you want - but the case of say Apple sourcing factory power through very inhuman means will not guarantee the sheep from not purchasing any more Apple products. Some of them would not even care and dismiss these facts as fear mongering, slander, etc.. etc...

 

And lets face it - the tone of your first few posts were really overwhelmingly angsty, which really attracts people to poke fun at it. :D

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1 hour ago, cammelspit said:

Frankly, if someone wasn't going to pay for it by pirating it, they wouldn't pay for it in any event.


This statement has already been proved wrong quite a number of times in quite a number of different contexts. Lots of people who want to pirate software or music if they can, will switch to actually paying if they find that the amount of work to get the pirated copy is too high.

 

The film industry tries to push this too far, claiming every pirated movie is a lost sale which obviously isn't true.

But you go the other route and claim that people who prefer pirated licenses aren't willing to pay if that's the only open alternative.

 

1 hour ago, cammelspit said:

Anti piracy measures do not equal more sales.


They aren't as effective as the DRM content holders like to claim. But they do most definitely give more sales because cheap people who don't want to pay still puts value on their own time and don't want to fight too much to get their pirated copies. The bad thing is that lots of DRM hurts the paying customers. The license check in the unRAID trial does not hurt paying customers.

 

in the end, I hope you find unRAID to your liking, and get lots of good use out of it.

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11 hours ago, ken-ji said:

True, but there are immoral/apathetic users/customers too. Believe what you want - but the case of say Apple sourcing factory power through very inhuman means will not guarantee the sheep from not purchasing any more Apple products. Some of them would not even care and dismiss these facts as fear mongering, slander, etc.. etc...

 

And lets face it - the tone of your first few posts were really overwhelmingly angsty, which really attracts people to poke fun at it. :D

You are totally right. I am not the kind of person to edit or remove posts just because I was being a bit of an ass. I think we all have bad days and get overly frustrated sometimes. I even intended to not sound too angsty. At the time I even reread the thing and it looked perfectly reasonable to me. Not a shining example I must say.

10 hours ago, pwm said:

This statement has already been proved wrong quite a number of times in quite a number of different contexts. Lots of people who want to pirate software or music if they can, will switch to actually paying if they find that the amount of work to get the pirated copy is too high.

 

The film industry tries to push this too far, claiming every pirated movie is a lost sale which obviously isn't true.

But you go the other route and claim that people who prefer pirated licenses aren't willing to pay if that's the only open alternative.

For one, I was being more 'as a rule' here. There will always be that guy who wants to pirate anything he can, I get that. In reality, sales actually go up for music and movies by people who also pirate, they buy more. Though, they also pirate some stuff they don't necessarily want to buy anyway. I don't intend to get into a symatics argument here either. The simple fact of the matter is that anti piracy measures that are simple and easy to implement are just like the door lock on your house. They keep the honest people honest but they certainly won't keep the hardened criminal out of your house. If someone is motivated, they WILL steal your software regardless of the DRM mechanism employed, they would have never bought it in the first place and never would. Those casual persons who are just trying to be cheap may do a quick google for a crack or whatever and finding nothing will buy it, because they probably would have eventually bought it anyway and that was likely their intention to begin with. I would not say that this number of people are statistically significant though. You just don't want to give it away and thats the only point in a DRM scheme in the first place so it's not just unlocked always and relying on the honor system, because that would make it easier to pirate than to buy it.

 

Either way, I think I have proven my point overall. I got a response from LT about my feature request, they read this forum post too. I really do hope they can figure something out to resolve some of this frustration. ESPECIALLY, just making a big red "WARNING: WILL REQUIRE INTERNET ACCESS BEFORE YOU CAN START A VM OR THE ARRAY" right there before you reboot. Also, make the internet requirement a little easier to notice on the DL page and in the GUI itself. Still think a 30 minute power on without internet would be better but I guess we will just have to see then what they do...

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I hate to be the guy to complain again, really. But I do have another question for you guys regarding the same kind of issue I just dealt with. Is internet required for ALL the time or just on a fresh boot of the unRadi server? I expect that since it had already activate the trial from the internet it should have allowed me to start it up without the firewall VM on. That drive I put in I precleared and I shut down the array, and also my pfSense VM because it can't run a VM with the array off, and then the whole server just took a crap. I lost access to the WebUI and everything. Thankfully, I had that old router I had set up still plugged in on top of the server so I just swapped the cables to it and rebooted my modem and then magically, after a reboot, everything came back. So at least this time it took 10 minutes instead of several hours to figure it out. I would have thought that since the server was already on and had been verified it would have allowed me to start the array and subsequently the VM but that didn't happen. I think  I will just leave the old router in place till I buy unRaid at this point, I REALLY don't want to have to deal with this anymore. All I want is another week or so till next payday but it seems I just can't have it work properly without buying a full license right now. ?

 

Another question is, why can't the VM still run if I shut down the array? I mean, I just use a vDISK on the cache drive and it technically doesn't touch the array at all. Even if it weren't for the internet trial hulabaloo, being able to take the array offline without shutting my VM down seems like it would be super good to have, even for the full paid version of the software. Am I understanding this right? Should I have not lost the WebUI and have been forced to reboot the server from the console? Should giving it internet have been enough? ?

 

Thanks for the info because none of the details here are posted anywhere I could tell. ?

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11 minutes ago, cammelspit said:

Another question is, why can't the VM still run if I shut down the array? I

 

This is something many, including myself, have been asking for: the ability to keep a vm going regardless of array status after first startup.

 

I believe the trial check occurs at every array startup. My guess is that if the os were to authenticate by writing something somewhere (like, passed check in a file,) showing it had checked for a valid trial, then some intrepid person would be able to see that process, and then manually write the same code in the same place, faking the verification, making it a perpetually free license.

 

This same reason may also be why we can't keep vm's going: you could have a free hypervisor by faking the same process I would imagine? Just spoof the part where the OS checks for if the array has been started or not.

Edited by 1812
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7 minutes ago, cammelspit said:

Is internet required for ALL the time or just on a fresh boot of the unRadi server?

Whenever the array starts

 

8 minutes ago, cammelspit said:

Another question is, why can't the VM still run if I shut down the array? I mean, I just use a vDISK on the cache drive and it technically doesn't touch the array at all. Even if it weren't for the internet trial hulabaloo, being able to take the array offline without shutting my VM down seems like it would be super good to have, even for the full paid version of the software.

You're not the first to ask about that, and probably won't be the last.  More than likely technical issues regarding that (not the least of which is that the cache drive isn't mounted if the array isn't started), and also possible DRM issues regarding simply using trial as a hypervisor and ignoring everything else.  I honestly don't expect that behaviour to change any time soon.

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1 minute ago, 1812 said:

This is something many, including myself, have been asking for: the ability to keep a vm going regardless of array status after first startup.

 

unRAID should really keep track of the storage location for VM and allow any VM/docker not stored on the array or having mappings to the array continue to run when the array is stopped.

 

As it is now, unRAID assumes Docker/VM requires the array and so needs to be stopped before the array is stopped. And you then need Internet access again to start the array while running a trial license - just so you can't play with the computer clock to extend the trial time indefinitely.

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1 minute ago, 1812 said:

 

This is something many, including myself, have been asking for: the ability to keep a vm going regardless of array status after first startup.

 

I believe the trial check occurs at every array startup. My guess is that if the os were to authenticate by writing something somewhere (like, passed check in a file,) showing it had checked for a valid trial, then some intrepid person would be able to see that process, and then manually write the same code in the same place, faking the verification, making it a perpetually free license.

Ok, thanks for the info. I really didn't have any idea it would do the check on every start of the array regardless if it had verified already or not. Since it runs essentially from RAM, I would have hoped it would allow me to restart the array and the VMs without a hassle and only need to check again if the server was ever shut down.

 

Also, running VMs from the cache drive even with the array offline would be epically cool. I do really hope this happens sooner than later, for all our sanities sake. ?

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4 minutes ago, Squid said:

You're not the first to ask about that, and probably won't be the last.  More than likely technical issues regarding that (not the least of which is that the cache drive isn't mounted if the array isn't started), and also possible DRM issues regarding simply using trial as a hypervisor and ignoring everything else.  I honestly don't expect that behaviour to change any time soon.

2

You know, this would be useful enough, I would add another SSD literally JUST to enable this functionality. I wouldn't use it for the array or a cache disk but JUST to hold my one pfSense VM. Now, obviously, I don't expect to be needing this all the time, I mean, it's not like I can install a drive without shutting the machine down entirely anyway, don't have any hot swap bays in my case. In this situation, the preclear finished last night but I couldn't shut the array down then because my wife works from home and works at night so i waited till this morning to turn the array off just to add the drive to the array after the preclear. so, I can see this being the case every single time I go to add a drive to the server going forward. No offense, but I really hope you are wrong and they can figure out a good way to do this. Like I said, I would dedicate a non-array drive entirely just for VMs to have this work that way.

 

Anyways, thanks for the extra info guys. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle, or so they say...

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6 minutes ago, cammelspit said:

Also, running VMs from the cache drive even with the array offline would be epically cool. I do really hope this happens sooner than later, for all our sanities sake. ?

 

I agree. And as an aside, I don't run any vm's from the cache, only from drives mounted via unassigned drives. Would probably be easier to implement that way.

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1 minute ago, 1812 said:

 

I agree. And as an aside, I don't run any vm's from the cache, only from drives mounted via unassigned drives. Would probably be easier to implement that way.

even if that were the requirement, I would do it. That would be perfectly fine and worth the cost of a cheap extra SSD 100%.

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