Unraid a VM of Openwrt and a Unfaithful USB Nic

[vampyre_masquerade]

Hey All

 

So i normal trawl google and research to find my answers but this one is making me more bald. I have been using Unraid for many years but only as a server without VM's (lotsa Dockers though), in that respect i can work my way around it fairly well.

 

What im trying to do....

VM of OpenWRT which has a br0 Nic as LAN, a USB Nic as WAN connected to VDSL Modem (DHCP) and a OpenVPN client as a second WAN

 

So Unraid works great and have it configured/working, i also have the OpenWRT installed, configured and working (DHCP, DNSCrypt, VPN, Policy Routing of IP's to different WANs).

 

The issue starts if ever i need to do an unattended restart of Unraid, if i restart the Unraid server it all loads as its meant to but for some reason Unraid keeps a hold of the USB Nic and wont pass it through to the VM on first boot, if after it all settles i then stop the VM from the GUI and restart it then Unraid lets go of the Nic and OpenWRT loads as intended. Naturally if only Unraid loads and OpenWRT fails then i cant connect to it if im not there.

 

Now then to mention some stuff that i know a few are so itching to tell me to do. This is all been run on a Asrock Desk Mini, its plenty powerful enough to do everything i want but only has 1 Nic and 2 Drives (oh and a nvme), so no i cant add a Pcie Nic, also it only has one USB controller so i cant assign it to the VM, im not looking to upgrade to anything bigger this size is perfect. No i dont have a parity drive but i back up to an external USB drive every few days. OpenWRT is great for simplicity sake and i have tried all the others like pfSense, untangled.......... aka OpenWRT is perfect for my needs and i have it working perfectly. Yes i already have a Netgear Nighthawk router (which is now in access point mode) and it would defeat the purpose of the VPN to use it.

 

Basically i need to find a way to force Unraid not to take a hold of the USB Nic when it boots (sounds so simple but F@#K its not).

 

Sorry if i sound narky ive just read far to many posts where someone will always recommends to do exactly the opposite of what the OP is looking for.

Edited April 18, 2019 by vampyre_masquerade

[vampyre_masquerade]

Son of a %^$#$@%$#%^&^

 

Now it decides to do as its meant to do.

[JonathanM]

2 hours ago, vampyre_masquerade said:

Sorry if i sound narky ive just read far to many posts where someone will always recommends to do exactly the opposite of what the OP is looking for.

Most of the time that is because what the OP wants to do isn't possible, and the solution is to do what the OP doesn't want to do. You can't force a solution where none exists just because you think it should be possible.

 

38 minutes ago, vampyre_masquerade said:

Now it decides to do as its meant to do.

Good! Hopefully it continues to cooperate.

 

What you are doing is so far out of the normal use of unraid it's probably going to be a pain keeping it running through various upgrades. I'd advise keeping a backup plan for your network access if something decides not to work again.