I'm currently building my servers which consists of:

 

Motherboard: ASUS M4A785-M

CPU: AMD Sempron 2.8GHz

RAM: 2GB Corsair XMS 675MHz (2x1GB sticks)

Parity Drive: Hitachi Deskstar 2TB 7200RPM HDD

Storage Drive: WD Green 2TB WD20EARS

PSU: Corsair 650W

 

First off, I know I have to put the jumpers on pins 7 & 8 in the WD20EARS but how are they numbered?

I'm assuming:

1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8

 

Now I need to move all of my Movies, Shows, and Music from my 2-bay DNS-321 NAS.  What should I do the first time I turn on my unRAID system? Pre-clear drives, transfer all the new info to my new drives, then parity check?

 

I need precise details if possible because I don't want to screw anything up.  Thanks.

I went through a big hassle with the WD20EARS drives because I did not know about the pins 7 and 8 jumper. Be sure to put the jumper between pins 7 and 8 on the WD20EARS advanced format drive before running the preclear_disk.sh script.

 

First install the pin 7 and 8 jumper on the WD20EARS drives. Then run the preclear_disk.sh script on each drive. You will need to run the command:

cd /boot

preclear_disk.sh /dev/sd#

Where # is a single letter, such as 'a', 'b', etc.

 

You can find out the sd# name by checking the drop down selection in 'devices' in the unRAID web GUI. Be sure not to actually select any of the drives, just determine the sd# name that you will need for each command line. You can run 6 preclears at once with the alt F1 through alt F6 at the unRAID command line. The preclears might take 36 hours if you are preclearing many drives at once. After the preclearing completes, configure the largest drive as a parity drive and the other drives as data drives. It also helps if you set up a cache drive.

 

Here's a link to more information about the advanced format drives:

http://www.lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Advanced_Format_Drives

 

Here's a link to a photo of pins 7 and 8

http://www.unraid.net/images/jumper.jpg

 

Dave

 

First off, I know I have to put the jumpers on pins 7 & 8 in the WD20EARS but how are they numbered?

I'm assuming:

1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8

I'm pretty sure you have it wrong. The label on the drive will show the correct pin assignments.

As you view the WD20EARS drive from the back of the drive, the pins 7 and 8 will be the two pins closest to the center of the back of the drive. Check the link to the photo in my previous post, it will be very clear.

 

Dave

Haha! I feel dumb now.  It is on the label.  I thought I had seen it somewhere before.

 

Thanks.

 

Right now I'm only preclearing 2 2TB drives.  About how long would this take?

Probably in the neighborhood of thirty plus hours. That's why the preclear script is so nice. The only other option is to let it clear "live", which means the server is offline the whole time. It's moot right now as you're just building it, but will be critical when you add drives later.

I just precleared two new 2 TB WD Green drives simultaneously for my recent build.  They were between 26-28 hours IIRC.  

 

Also, I followed this guide for my first build and it was perfect!  http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration_Tutorial

 

Good luck!

So I would have to download the script in the link below, correct?

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2817.0

 

And where would I run these commands from?

 

 

Edit: I just followed the instructions and installed unRAID on a 2GB Sandisk flash drive.  When I tried to boot up the server it said: Grub Error Unkown File System.  I'll try to re-do the process tomorrow (It's getting late).

 

I did go into the Bios settings and made sure that the only bootable device was the USB flash drive.

You'd run the preclear script either from the console, or from another computer by using a telnet session. If you're on a windows computer, you can download a program called "Putty".

So I would have to download the script in the link below, correct?

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2817.0

 

And where would I run these commands from?

 

 

Edit: I just followed the instructions and installed unRAID on a 2GB Sandisk flash drive.  When I tried to boot up the server it said: Grub Error Unkown File System.  I'll try to re-do the process tomorrow (It's getting late).

 

I did go into the Bios settings and made sure that the only bootable device was the USB flash drive.

 

Follow this configuration tutorial on "screen" and preclearing.

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration_Tutorial#Preclear_Hard_Drives

 

Screen allows you to close the window and return later, telnet requires that the window be left open during the pre-clear process, otherwise pre-clear does not complete.

 

Also, on the M4A785-M...set the usb as Forced FDD, and boot hard drives - disable everything but the USB, boot order - USB.  I'd reboot back into the bios to verify that all settings are saved after changing.

 

kenoka was able to get his to boot from the USB from these settings (different from above)

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7422.msg83976#msg83976

 

 

Did you follow these instructions for prepping the flash drive?

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=USB_Flash_Drive_Preparation#Instructions

 

I used the HP Formatting tool to format my flash drive.

 

 

 

Edit: I just followed the instructions and installed unRAID on a 2GB Sandisk flash drive.  When I tried to boot up the server it said: Grub Error Unkown File System.  I'll try to re-do the process tomorrow (It's getting late).

unRAID does not use "grub", therefore, you did not boot the USB drive (or did not successfully run syslinux on it)

I tried using another Cruzer flash drive and all seems to work now.  I guess the other flash drive just didn't work for some reason (even though it is also a SanDisk Cruzer).

 

Now I'm in the process of following the rest of your guys' advice.  Installing the preclear script and unMenu.  I have a lot of reading and learning to do at this point.

If you are following the configuration tutorial and notice anything that is unclear or just plain wrong, please let me know

 

It's a pretty new document and I've been meaning to get back to it to update a few things, but just haven't quite made it there yet.

 

G'luck with your install, it's not all that hard

I am following the configuration tutorial and I have to say it is very helpful and easy to follow.  I'm currently trying to set up the email portion in unmenu and have hit a road bump.

 

I set it up with my Hotmail email as follows:

 

Forward "root" email to: [email protected]

E-Mail Server: smtp.live.com (I tried it with and without the port at the end)

Use TLS?(YES/NO): NO

Mail ID: (blank)

Mail Password: (blank)

Mail Domain: localhost

From Line Override (YES/NO): YES

Re-Write Domain: (blank)

 

I get the error: Smmtp: cannot open smtp.live.com:25

 

Now when I am trying different information, can I just save new values and try to email on the fly or must I restart the server for the new changes to take effect?

 

Also, my final contingency is to input all the default values with gmail info (I have gmail as well), the only thing is that I am hesitant to put my username and password on there.  Is it safe to do so? Can someone explain a little further the process that goes into sending emails from unRAID to your inbox.

Full disclaimer, that's the one section I didn't actually write from the ground up

 

My guess is that live.com is not allowing un-encrypted, un-authenticated smtp connections for obvious reasons. Try changing the port to 995 => smtp.live.com:995 and setting use TLS to yes.  To use the script you have to put in your username and password to authenticate to the live.com mail server.  Otherwise they would be an open relay and be sending a gazillion spam messages an hour.  Gmail is the same way - they require a valid username/password before you can access their smtp servers.

 

I'm not sure about making changes and not rebooting, that's a question for Joe L.  It depends on whether or not submission is stopping and restarting the smtpd daemon.  If I had to guess I would say it does, but that is just a guess

 

As far as security goes, as long as TLS authentication is in place your username and password are sent across an encrypted channel.  With that said I believe they are stored locally in plain text.  It's up to you on how to proceed....

I get the error: Smmtp: cannot open smtp.live.com:25

That would indicate they are not listening on port 25 for mail.

Now when I am trying different information, can I just save new values and try to email on the fly or must I restart the server for the new changes to take effect?

You need to edit the config variables, then save the changes, and most importantly, click on the button that then says: "Re-Install Now with Edited Variables"  You do not need to re-start the server.

Also, my final contingency is to input all the default values with gmail info (I have gmail as well), the only thing is that I am hesitant to put my username and password on there.  Is it safe to do so? Can someone explain a little further the process that goes into sending emails from unRAID to your inbox.

As said by the previous user, the TLS connection from the unRAID server to an e-mail server is encrypted and secure.  It is safe.  Also as described, the login and password to your e-mail is stored locally on the unRAID server in un-encrypted form.  (there is no way to have it encrypted and still be usable by ssmtp, or any mail transport agent you might install on the unRAID server)

 

Joe L.

 

I input the settings from this post http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=6964.msg67689#msg67689 and used my gmail account.  It worked! Awesome!

 

One problem I'm having is that I cannot access unRAID by typing "\\Tower" in my browser, but rather having to type its IP Address instead.  This gets annoying since I have it set to Obtain IP Address Automatically and it changes often so I have to go through a big hassle to find the ip address of the server in order to log in.  I'm thinking of setting a static ip for the unRAID, any downside to that(it seems way better to me)?

 

I'd really like to access my unRAID system by typing "\\Media" in my browser.  How would I go about doing this?

 

Additional info:

 

I have a D-Link DIR-655 router.

 

when I input //Media and press "Enter" it turns to http://www1.dlinksearch.com/main?url=media and gives me results on yahoo.  I think it might have something to do with my router, but I'm not sure.

 

If I input \\Media and press "Enter" I get

File not found

Firefox can't find the file at ///Media.

 

One problem I'm having is that I cannot access unRAID by typing "\\Tower" in my browser, but rather having to type its IP Address instead.  This gets annoying since I have it set to Obtain IP Address Automatically and it changes often so I have to go through a big hassle to find the ip address of the server in order to log in.  I'm thinking of setting a static ip for the unRAID, any downside to that(it seems way better to me)?

 

I'd really like to access my unRAID system by typing "\\Media" in my browser.  How would I go about doing this?

 

 

This may help, particularly the linked thread inside.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=8456.msg81786#msg81786

To start with //tower means navigate to the webpage at http://tower which should resolve to the IP address of your server if it is named tower and take you to the web based setup page.  Typing \\tower into your browser doesn't make sense to it as using backslashes is for SMB mappings.  So in Windows if you go to start/run then put in \\tower you should be able browse the shares that are stored on your server.

 

To make it accessible as media, log into your server at http://IP_ADDRESS_OF_SERVER if name resolution is not working and click on Settings then change the server name to media.  Make sure the workgroup is set to the same workgroup as your Windows box.  Default used to be Workgroup but (I think) with Vista they changed it to MSHOME.  If you right click on my computer then select properties, you should see your workgroup listed in the properties box.  Click the apply  button in the Identification box.

 

In the Network settings box you can set the IP to a static address and there are no downsides as long as you assign it an IP address your DHCP server won't hand out to another machine.  Make sure you set your gateway and DNS servers, because if you aren't using DHCP that info will not be automagically provided.  Click apply in the Network settings box.

 

Reboot the unRaid box then once it is back up reboot your Windows box.  Reboots are not strictly necessary, but it's easier than the alternative description.  Once the windows box comes back up try pointing your web broswer to //media or whatever you changed the name to.  If name resolution is still not working you can try making the unRAID box the local master for the network by going back to the settings page and setting local master to yes, clicking apply, then rebooting both machines.  Again reboots not strictly necessary, but it's easier than describing the alternative.

 

Try //media again.  If name resolution is STILL not working, go to the hosts file method mentioned in the links from mbryanr's post.

I followed all of your instructions exactly as you posted, Spectrum. It still did not work.  Then I modified lmhosts.sam and tried several different formats of writing it to no avail.

 

My unRAID server now has a static IP and is named "media."

 

when I type "//media" into the browser without the quotation marks of course, it turns to:

http://www1.dlinksearch.com/main?url=media

 

I still have a feeling that it may be something with my DIR-655 router but I don't know much about it.  Any other suggestions?

 

Thanks for your help so far guys, this is a great community by the way.

What version of Windows are you using?

 

Use notepad to open

%windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

and add

IP_Address<tab>media

where IP_Address is the static IP you set the server to

don't type out <tab> just press the tab key

 

That will fix it from that one machine, and you would have to do the same on each machine on the network.

 

As for what is happening, for some reason your Windows box is not picking up on the Netbios name of the unRAID box.  When the computer looks for media it can't find it locally so it queries the DNS server, which has no idea it what you are looking for.  When the DNS server responds with an unknown domain error your router is hijacking the response and redirecting your browser to a search page instead of just letting it present a server not found error.  Take a look here and look at the last and next to last post for more info on what it's doing and, more importantly, how to disable it.  FWIW this is complete garbage and would make me avoid anything D-Link makes like the frickin plague.

 

If disabling the advanced dns settings on the router don't take care of things, it is probably something local on your Windows machine that is preventing it, and the fix depends on what version of Windows it is, etc, etc; and chasing down Netbios resolution problems can be a royal PITA!  You could start by disabling any software firewalls, even Windows firewall and see if that makes a difference.

Wow, thank you so much.  I had tried messing with the host file before, but had done it incorrectly.  I edited the host file the way you said above and now it seems to be working.  I can access unmenu and all the links work perfectly now.

 

 

What version of Windows are you using?

 

Use notepad to open

%windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

and add

IP_Address<tab>media

where IP_Address is the static IP you set the server to

don't type out <tab> just press the tab key

 

That will fix it from that one machine, and you would have to do the same on each machine on the network.

 

 

Excellent instructions Spectrum!  This post and your above provide a great troubleshooting tool.  Think you could add to the wiki?

What version of Windows are you using?

 

Use notepad to open

%windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

and add

IP_Address<tab>media

where IP_Address is the static IP you set the server to

don't type out <tab> just press the tab key

 

That will fix it from that one machine, and you would have to do the same on each machine on the network.

 

 

Excellent instructions Spectrum!  This post and your above provide a great troubleshooting tool.  Think you could add to the wiki?

 

It's already in the wiki.  I described the same process for a Mac and instruction for the windows side are also there I believe.

It's already in the wiki.  I described the same process for a Mac and instruction for the windows side are also there I believe.

 

I searched for it prostuff, but couldn't find it so I added the basic info in the troubleshooting section here.