December 22, 201015 yr I'm going to be setting up an unraid server (version 4.6) over my holiday. I'm preparing by going through the official and unofficial documentation. Everything is going smooth except for one topic: split level. I can't seem to wrap my head around it. My music directory structure is as follows: Music ---Artist ------Album ---------Track 01.mp3 ---------Track 02.mp3 ---------Track 03.mp3 ---------etc... ('Music' being a folder that contains the others) Now I'd obviously want each individual album to reside on a single disk, but I wouldn't mind different artists to be on different disks. What split level would accomplish this? Thanks.
December 22, 201015 yr Author Ah okay, that makes sense. So in a directory structure like this: TV Shows ...Name ......Season 01 .........Ep01.avi .........Ep02.avi ......Season 02 .........Ep01.avi .........Ep02.avi Assuming I don't mind if different episodes from the same season are split amongst different disks, would split level 2 work? And then if I were to add another directory within a season directory (using split level 2), it would NOT be split amongst disks? I apologize if my wording is a bit confusing. I'm trying to grasp this complex concept
December 23, 201015 yr Example 1 - level 1 means the Music directory can appear on multiple drives. If you want to allow the same artist to be on multiple drives then use level 2. Example 2 - level 3 would do what you are describing. Peter
December 23, 201015 yr Author So in my first example, level 1 is music, level 2 is artist, etc? I was thinking it started at 0 (with music being level 0), which is why I was so confused. But setting split level to 0 would cause everything in the share to be on the same drive, correct? It's all making sense now.
December 23, 201015 yr So in my first example, level 1 is music, level 2 is artist, etc? I was thinking it started at 0 (with music being level 0), which is why I was so confused. But setting split level to 0 would cause everything in the share to be on the same drive, correct? It's all making sense now. Split level of 0 has a special meaning. It indicates YOU will create the directories. unRAID will then use whatever directory structure YOU put into place as long as the immediate parent directory for the object being created already exists on a given disk.
December 24, 201015 yr Author And finally, a split level set to something like 999 would just cause unraid to always use the allocation method? Thanks a bunch for all the help guys.
December 28, 201015 yr And finally, a split level set to something like 999 would just cause unraid to always use the allocation method? Thanks a bunch for all the help guys. That's what I'd imagine but for me.. it hasn't done it. It allocates to 2 out of 3 of my drives.. but it won't touch the 3rd drive and I have no clue why.
December 28, 201015 yr And finally, a split level set to something like 999 would just cause unraid to always use the allocation method? Thanks a bunch for all the help guys. That's what I'd imagine but for me.. it hasn't done it. It allocates to 2 out of 3 of my drives.. but it won't touch the 3rd drive and I have no clue why. What allocation method are you using? Are all three of your drives the same size?
December 28, 201015 yr And finally, a split level set to something like 999 would just cause unraid to always use the allocation method? Thanks a bunch for all the help guys. That's what I'd imagine but for me.. it hasn't done it. It allocates to 2 out of 3 of my drives.. but it won't touch the 3rd drive and I have no clue why. What allocation method are you using? Are all three of your drives the same size? No they are not. 2 drives are 1TB and the third is 500GB.. and the parity is 2TB.
December 28, 201015 yr And finally, a split level set to something like 999 would just cause unraid to always use the allocation method? Thanks a bunch for all the help guys. That's what I'd imagine but for me.. it hasn't done it. It allocates to 2 out of 3 of my drives.. but it won't touch the 3rd drive and I have no clue why. What allocation method are you using? Are all three of your drives the same size? No they are not. 2 drives are 1TB and the third is 500GB.. and the parity is 2TB. What allocation method are you using? Which data drive is not being written to? How much data is on the array? How much data is on each drive? Depending on your answers to these questions your server could be allocating exactly how it is supposed to.
January 12, 201115 yr Since we cannot create new topics I will bring this up in this post. Has anyone written a newbie guide to user shares and allocation settings? This seems to be the one of the most difficult concepts to understand for the new user, including myself. I would gladly write on up if I understood it. I see on several other forums a postings titled how to's. I will gladly start it out if someone with knowledge would edit it for accuracy. Would it be best to write this on a word doc or just start a new post and have a mod move it to the correct place. If there is an interest or a need I will get started right away.
January 12, 201115 yr Since we cannot create new topics I will bring this up in this post. Has anyone written a newbie guide to user shares and allocation settings? This seems to be the one of the most difficult concepts to understand for the new user, including myself. I would gladly write on up if I understood it. I see on several other forums a postings titled how to's. I will gladly start it out if someone with knowledge would edit it for accuracy. Would it be best to write this on a word doc or just start a new post and have a mod move it to the correct place. If there is an interest or a need I will get started right away. There is interest... you can do it in a post, or, better yet, in the wiki. There others can modify and assist if they are inclined. If you do it in a post, we can migrate it to the wiki once proofed.
January 12, 201115 yr Ok I will start it out and see where it goes from there. I am not familiar with this whole wiki thing, I took a break from computers for several years and recently came back. I have also switched to Mac, so I am really behind the 8 ball.
January 12, 201115 yr I'm writing an article that will appear on the website and then the wiki, but for now, here is the rough draft - there is still more I need to add to this. The problem we're trying to solve with split level is this. Suppose you have a directory that contains a set of media files, and in order to play back the media, your player will open and play each file in turn. Obvious example of this is the VIDEO_TS folder of a DVD rip which consists of a set of VOB files. Well you would like all the files of the VIDEO_TS folder to be on the same disk, so that once that disk spins up to play the first file, no other disk will need to spin up to play subsequent files. If the files within VIDEO_TS were on different disks, then you would see a pause in the playback caused by the next disk spinning up. Got it? A share "split level" is just a mechanism to tell unRaid to keep all files of a directory together on the same disk. So how does split level accomplish this? There are three ways of using 'split level', depending on what you're trying to accomplish and how your media is organized. Before explaining the methods, here are a couple concepts that makes it easier. First, realize that every file or sub-directory you create in a share has a parent directory, that is, every object is created in some directory, and that directory has to first exist, right? We'll call that the "parent directory" of the object (file or sub-directory) you are creating. Second, realize that unRaid naturally wants to spread objects around amongst all the disks (according to allocation method explained above). What we are trying to do is defeat this action for certain directories. Method 1. You can specify a numeric value for split level starting with 1, ie, you can set split level to 1, 2, 3, etc. What this does is tell unRaid how deep in the directory hierarchy the "unsplittable" directories exist at. The root of the share is considered level 0, so the set of directories you see when you click on a share are all at level 1. If you click on one of these directories, any sub-directories you see there would be at level 2, and so forth. So if you set split level to 1, it says, "all directories are level 1 and below are unsplittable". Ok time for an example. Suppose you have this directory hierarchy: 0 Movies 1 A Simple Plan 2 VIDEO_TS 1 Bad News Bears 2 VIDEO_TS 1 Catch Me If You Can 2 VIDEO_TS Let's say we now want to create the directory "Dish Dogz" in the Movies share. Well the parent directory for Dish Dogz is going to be the share itself which is at level 0. Since it's level is less than split level of 1, unRaid could choose any disk to create the Dish Dogz directory on (according to allocation method). Let's just say it picks disk4. After creating Dish Dogz we have this: 0 Movies 1 A Simple Plan 2 VIDEO_TS 1 Bad News Bears 2 VIDEO_TS 1 Catch Me If You Can 2 VIDEO_TS 1 Dish Dogz Now it's time to create the VIDEO_TS folder. The parent directory for the VIDEO_TS subdirectory we are creating is of course Dish Dogz, which is at level 1. Since it's level is equal to split-level, unRaid is not free to choose any disk, it must use the same disk that the parent directory happens to be on, in this case disk4. After creating VIDEO_TS we have this: 0 Movies 1 A Simple Plan 2 VIDEO_TS 1 Bad News Bears 2 VIDEO_TS 1 Catch Me If You Can 2 VIDEO_TS 1 Dish Dogz 2 VIDEO_TS Now it's time to create a VOB file. The parent directory for this VOB file is going to be VIDEO_TS which is at level 2 in the hierarchy. Since this level is greater than split-level, again unRaid is not free to choose any disk; instead it must create the VOB file in the same disk that contains it's parent directory, which is again disk4. So you see all the files and subdirs underneath the Dish Dogz folder will all be on the same disk, but what particular disk was determined when the original Dish Dogz folder was first created. Simple, eh? (Now an astute reader might ask, "Hey it's only necessary to keep the files within a VIDEO_TS directory on the same disk, so couldn't you set the split-level to 2?" And you would be right. But in practice, one usually has more files/directories underneath the main movie directory than just VIDEO_TS, such as AUDIO_TS and meta-data files like folder.jpg. We actually want to try and keep all this stuff on the same disk as well, hence we use split-level 1). How about an example of where you might use split-level 2? Ok: 0 Movies 1 Drama 2 A Simple Plan 3 VIDEO_TS 1 Kids 2 Bad News Bears 3 VIDEO_TS 2 Catch Me If You Can 3 VIDEO_TS 2 Dish Dogz 3 VIDEO_TS What if my movies are not in a nice hierarchy like this? Ok, then maybe use can use method 2... Method 2. You define some "identifying string" that will exist in a directory to mark it "unsplittable". For example, suppose instead of putting a numeric value for split-level, I set it to "[" (that's right, a single-character string consisting of a left bracket symbol). Now I can do this: Movies A Simple Plan [DVD] VIDEO_TS Bad News Bears [DVD] VIDEO_TS BluRay Carlitos Way [bluray] STREAM Let's say now we want to create the directory "Movies/Bluray/Defiance [bluray]". Since the parent directory of "Defiance [bluray]" does not contain a "[", unRaid is free to choose any disk to put it on. Next, we will create the STREAM folder. But now, since the parent directory of where we will create STREAM does have a "[" character, unRaid is not free to choose any disk, it must create STREAM on the same disk that "Defiance [bluray]" exists on. What if I don't want to bother with creating some kind of identifying string? There is one more method... Method 3. Here you set the split-level explicitly to a 0 (zero). In this method, unRaid will unconditionally create an object on the disk that contains the parent directory; and, if the parent directory already exists on multiple disks, unRaid will choose which disk to use according to the allocation method. This is not as complex as it sounds. All it means is that you must manually set up the folder hierarchy on individual disks first. For example, suppose we have 4 disks, and we want disk1 to contain only DVD and disk2-4 to contain only Bluray. What we would do is go to each disk share and create these directories: Disk1/Movies/DVD Disk2/Movies/Bluray Disk3/Movies/Bluray Disk4/Movies/Bluray Now having done that, lets see what happens when we start creating movie directories. First, let's create "A Simple Plan" underneath the Movies/DVD folder. To determine which disk to create this object on, unRaid notices that the set of disks which contain "Movies/DVD" contains only one disk: disk1. Hence it will create "A Simple Plan" on disk1. As we create additional files/directories under "A Simple Plan", they too will all go onto disk1 (because that's where their parent directory resides). Now let's create "Godfather" under the "Movies/Bluray" folder. Here, unRaid sees that the "Movies/Bluray" folder exists on three disks: disk2, disk3, and disk4. So unRaid will choose one of theses disks to create "Godfather" on according to the allocation method. Now once, "Godfather" has been created, all subsequent files/directories underneath "Godfather" will all be on the same disk as "Godfather". This method provides the most flexibility but requires some manual work to initially set up. Furthermore, it requires some work after you have added another hard drive. For example, suppose we add Disk5. If we want "Movies/Bluray" to expand into Disk5, we would have to manually create first "Movies", then "Movies/Bluray" on disk5. Subsequent object creation within "Movies/Bluray" will now be within the set disk2-5.
January 12, 201115 yr LOL I will give it a read. You are the man or I guess could be a woman. I don't want to offend anyone.
January 12, 201115 yr Tom, previously the root of the share (ie Movies) has always been level 1. What gives here? Peter
January 12, 201115 yr Uh oh just when I thought I was catching on. So if I want to stream videos through something like airplay, zumocast, or plex I should use method 1 because the folder I share for movies would show up as 1 folder and 1 place for these services to get the movies. If I use method 3 then I have to set up the movie folder for airplay once for each physical disk right. Am I correct in assuming that method 1 would also be preferred for using xbmc,plex, or other library type program.
January 12, 201115 yr Tom, previously the root of the share (ie Movies) has always been level 1. What gives here? Peter Including in Tom's own previous descriptions. The user-share was ALWAYS level 1. The split level was described as the lowest level directory you wanted a split to occur. A split level of 1 would allow the "Movies" directory to be duplicated on other disks. Is there no wonder there is confusion.... :( :(
January 12, 201115 yr I was not trying to create confusion but make it as simple as possible for everyone to understand. In a way it is good to have so many choices but what I want to accomplish might not be the same as someone else. There are basic users and there are power users. And a lot in between.
January 12, 201115 yr In the "Official" user manual it says: Split level defines the highest level in the share directory hierarchy which can be split among multiple disks. In the Movie share example above, setting Split level to 1 only permits any object created directly under the Movie directory to be allocated to any disk according to the Allocation method. Thus, when we create the Alien subdirectory, it may reside on any of the data disks; however, when we create a file or another directory within the Movies/Alien directory, this object is at level 2, and will be created on whatever disk the Movies/Alien directory actually resides on. If the share were organized differently, for example according to genre: * Movies o SciFi + Alien o Action + Basic + Dejavu o Kids + Cars Then you would set Split level to 2. This will let the genres expand among all disks, but still ensure that the contents of the actual movie directories stay within the same disk. I'm so confused.....
January 12, 201115 yr You described split level the same way here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1397.msg9445;topicseen#msg9445 In that thread you admitted: Yes, "split-level" concept is very confusing - even confuses me all the time and I wrote it In your organization, you indeed want split-level 2. This says, "any object created in the first or second level directory will be allocated to a disk according to the allocation method, but objects created in a third or lower level directory will be created on the disk where the parent directory exists." Still confusing, right? Cry Here is where you drew a nice picture: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1928.msg13748;topicseen#msg13748 To answer your question I added the level number to the left: 0 Disk1 | 1 Videos (User Share) THIS WILL SPAN DISKS | 2 --Movies (Directory) | 3 --DVDs (Directory) | 4 --[Movie Title 1] (Directory) | | | VIDEO_TS (Directory) | .VOB file | .VOB file | 4 --[Movie Title 2] (Directory) | --VIDEO_TS (Directory) .VOB file .VOB file Confused yet... I'm sure many are.
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.