After 12 years, will my licence still work with a new configuration?


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Hi all,

 

My last post was back in 2008 and the coronavirus is giving me time to revive my, antic by today’s standard, unRAID system. It is still on version 4.7. I think I remember I tried to upgrade to 5 a long time ago but my Gigabit board (Dlink 528t) was not working so I went back to 4.7. Funny thing, appart from the bios reset because my mobo battery has died (probably a long time ago) everything powered up perfectly except that Dlink card so I have to rely on the slower onboard NIC for now till I can figure it out.

I just finished a parity check, no problem, so I am copying all the data from my 4 data drives... on a small USB drive, things have changed ;-). Looking at all that old data brought me some smile, but no forgotten bitcoin unfortunately. 😞

 

So quick question: since I probably can’t upgrade that system much further, can I take the USB drive a build a new one, i.e. will my old licence work with modern unRaid?

I can probably justify forking some USD for a new licence, I mean that system has 13 or 14 years and is still kicking with all its data, but I am just curious.

 

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8 minutes ago, orb said:

So quick question: since I probably can’t upgrade that system much further, can I take the USB drive a build a new one, i.e. will my old licence work with modern unRaid?

I can probably justify forking some USD for a new licence, I mean that system has 13 or 14 years and is still kicking with all its data, but I am just curious.

A license, once purchased, is good for all future upgrades of unRAID.  Yes, your license can still be used with the latest version of unRAID (6.8.3 as of this writing with 6.9 in beta).

 

The license is tied to the original flash drive GUID, but, there is a mechanism for transferring that to the a new flash drive/GUID.  Depending on the size and condition of your current flash drive you may be able to simply upgrade to unRAID 6.8.3 on the old flash drive.

 

In 4.7, the license file (*.key) was on the root of the flash drive, I believe, but current versions expect it in the /config folder. Setup your system on a new flash drive if you wish and copy the license file from the old flash drive to the new one placing it in the config folder.  Then you can transfer that license to the GUID of the new flash drive.  This can be done in the GUI.

 

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11 minutes ago, orb said:

can I take the USB drive a build a new one, i.e. will my old licence work with modern unRaid?

Sure!

 

The only thing I would suggest is possibly sourcing a new USB stick as well, which complicates matters slightly. What is your current Unraid usb drive?

 

The *.key file is linked to the physical stick GUID, and as long as you keep a copy of that file, you are fine. You can use that file to license a new USB stick, which blacklists the old stick, you can do a license transfer automatically as long as it's been more than a year since the last automatic transfer.

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Thanks, my USB drive is a Lexar JD Firefly.

 

Nice to know that a licence transfer is possible.

 

I am not sure what I will do, if I can get the Gigabit Ethernet to work to I might just stick with It for a while or I could try to source an intel NIC I knew was suppose to work in v5 and do some upgrade ,( and maybe 6 supports it better now ?). I could also try to use the onboard NIC as I would mostly stream music to my Sonos. but in both case I am not sure how far my old Athlon 32bit will carry me.

 

To be honest, this feels like using this system is like contemplating a pyramid in computer years ;-) and I am not sure I want to disturb it much, maybe I want to check the data in 10 more years 🙂

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18 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

If your CPU truly does not support 64 bit, then don't bother trying to update Unraid until you change to a processor that does work with 64 bit. Unraid 6.x is 64 bit only.

Well that settles it then. I would need a whole new system to upgrade, most of my components are 15+ yo. Well at least now I know I could reuse the licence if I want. Time for some recycling.

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Also a shout out for the longevity of the Lexar Firelfy USB drives.  I  have three of  them; they were one of the recommendations from Limetech when I started out.  Both my main and backup servers still use them (4GB, both 10 years old).  I would not assume that you need a new drive if the old one still works fine, although as mentioned above, transferring the license to a new USB drive is much simpler these days. 

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10 hours ago, S80_UK said:

Also a shout out for the longevity of the Lexar Firelfy USB drives.  I  have three of  them; they were one of the recommendations from Limetech when I started out.  Both my main and backup servers still use them (4GB, both 10 years old).  I would not assume that you need a new drive if the old one still works fine, although as mentioned above, transferring the license to a new USB drive is much simpler these days. 

Considering my Lexar flash drive has been half punctured by my cat’s teeth way back and is still kicking, I can second that 😄 I have its twin somewhere still in wrap, only 2GB however I think.

Anyway good news, the NIC not working was only bad cable, so I am back to Gigabit speed.

Now I have to think real hard the way forward.

 

 

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3 hours ago, ezhik said:

Is it running on EPoX 8RDA3+ with Corsair DDR-400 2 x 256MB Sticks with Geforce 2 MX400 AGP 8x?

 

What a blast from the past.

Close, it is an nForce2 but not the Epox, it is an A7N8X Deluxe v2. The memory is Crucial 2 x 512. I use to have a Radeon 9500 in it but gave it away then I ran unRAID headless with no GPU card, except temporarily a quarter of century Old Matrox Mystique for update and debug.

 

To be honest I had forgotten that I bought latter on a more "modern" update&debug card, still fanless which is now in it, a GeForce FX 5200, but I'm glad I did because it has the DVI output that saved me because I now have no monitor/TV with VGA ever since I replaced my old Plasma TV, and with the mobo battery out of juice, it didn't boot without some BIOS setup.

 

It is a bit funny running that PC with the DVI to HDMI (which I knew I had but had to hunt down) on my 4k LG TV, raised a lot of question from the kids, the older just half the age of that setup 😀 "Dad, it is not a computer, it has no screen"

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Ha! That literally took me back a decade, boy does the time fly fast. Running "Barton" Anthlon XP 2500+ @ 3200+ speeds and soldering that transistor on Radeon 9500 to convert it to 9700... Those were the fun days.

 

Windows XP with Zune theme, running 1GB of ram and some Q3 and urban terror. 

 

Enjoy:

 

 

 

 

  • Haha 1
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  • 4 weeks later...

It is not budget so much but feeling bad about not using still usable hardware that can run recent software...🤗 My daughter is using my 2007 MacBook for school and Teams video call during lockdown  (yes it already had an SSD, from 2011 😅 and I have to say that it was a project in itself to manage to get Windows 10 64 running on it with the 32 bit EFI, and to hunt for an additional GB of RAM, but it works fine albeit running a bit hot but those early Intel MacBook were already prone to it when they came out).

My 2006 MacMini, technically not 64bit when it came out, but upgraded to it thanks to the non soldered CPU long time ago, is now my test bed for OpenMediaVault (to be honest, if I had a spare monitor and webcam my daughter would be using that as it is quiet as a whisper running the same Win 10, almost same hardware as the MacBook, much better heatsink and fan).

 

But yes, I can see the writing on the wall for that 32bit Athlon 😢. I was planning to purchase an Intel NIC back when Unraid 5 came out, because my Gigabit DGE-528T was not supported and I would have had to revert to the onboard 100M NIC. for some reasons I never did it and that's why I have still a 4.7 install which I power up time to time.

 

Now I have to decided if I will get a second hand 64 system or a mobo/cpu upgrade. or some new hardware. or even just live without a new unRAID system.

 

 

 

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