Multiple AppData Folders

[Spyderturbo007]

I'm starting to use my setup for more and more things, but want to make sure I get things correct before moving forward.  I added another app today (pihole) and noticed that I have two AppData folders.  I'd like to consolidate them to where ever they are supposed to be.

 

Looks like the one with pihole is /mnt/cache/appdata

 

My other apps (SAB, Emby, etc) are /mnt/cache/system/docker/AppData/

 

Which one is correct?  I also have a share called appdata set to cache only which I'm assuming is /mnt/cache/appdata?

[JonathanM]

Technically, there is no "correct" location, it can be placed anywhere you have permanent storage mounted.

However, if you set up unraid fresh with no existing folders, it will be defined as /mnt/user/appdata, with a setting of cache : prefer, which will be placed on disk1 if you have no cache pool defined, or cache if you do.

Some containers don't play well with the /mnt/user path, so explicitly defining it as /mnt/cache/appdata if you have a cache pool works well.

 

You don't have to move things, you can leave them where they are, if you want to move the pihole appdata folder to live with your other containers you certainly could, just stop the container, move the data using MC, edit the container to point to the new path, done. If you choose to move all your other containers, you would be moving a whole lot more stuff around.

 

If it were me, I'd just move pihole in with the others.

[Spyderturbo007]

Thanks for the help!  What's MC?  Can I just move it with windows explorer \\tower\cache?  I only have a single SSD cache drive right now with plans to add a second.  I'm working towards finding a way to backup my appdata stuff so wanted to consolidate it all.

[JonathanM]

17 minutes ago, Spyderturbo007 said:

What's MC?  Can I just move it with windows explorer \\tower\cache? 

Midnight Commander, you type mc into the console.

Windows explorer may get hung up on the required appdata permissions, depending on what you are moving.

19 minutes ago, Spyderturbo007 said:

I'm working towards finding a way to backup my appdata stuff so wanted to consolidate it all.

 

[Spyderturbo007]

I'm actually reading through that thread right now.

 

I'll do some reading on MC and see if I can figure out how it works.

 

It looks like all the appdata stuff has to be consolidated for that backup utility to work.  Thanks so much for all your help!

[Squid]

As an aside, here's why there's two appdata shares

 

By and large, the majority of apps within the Apps tab have a path mapping of /config (you can see it via Show More Settings / Advanced View when editing the app).  Any path mapping of /config is automatically set to whatever the OS has set within Settings - Docker - Default Appdata Path.

 

But, a small subset of applications do not have a /config settings for various reasons.  One of these is piHole which has 2 path mappings (/etc/pihole and /etc/dnsmasq.d)  Because neither of these is /config, the OS takes the host path as-is (which is on piHole set to /mnt/cache/appdata/...)  This results in your situation of having the 2 separate folders.

 

Note that even though the template directly references /mnt/cache, in the event that your system does not have a cache drive (or in the event of when 6.9 is released, the cache-pool the template references), then CA automatically adjusts the templates to match the user's system

1. If there is no cache drive present in the system, CA will adjust the template to automatically directly reference an installed drive (eg /mnt/disk1 instead of /mnt/cache)
2. If running 6.9 and a directly referenced cache pool does not exist, then CA will adjust the template to reference a cache-pool that is installed, with a fall back to an installed drive)

These under the hood changes prevent the circumstance that pops up intermittently where the appdata for one of these few apps winds up being created in RAM instead of on a drive.

[Spyderturbo007]

Thanks Squid.  That makes a lot of sense.  I was wondering why it was sent to /mnt/cache/appdata/ when my default was set to /mnt/cache/system/docker/appdata

 

I did move it last night and things seem to be working just fine.  From what I read yesterday, the CA backup can only be pointed to one location, which was why I wanted to consolidate.

[JonathanM]

23 hours ago, Spyderturbo007 said:

My other apps (SAB, Emby, etc) are /mnt/cache/system/docker/AppData/

 

3 hours ago, Spyderturbo007 said:

my default was set to /mnt/cache/system/docker/appdata

Genuinely not trying to pick on you, but your loosely tossing about two different paths makes me think you may not understand how important case sensitivity is in linux. What you posted in those two posts are different paths to linux, but windows would see them as the same, causing much confusion.

 

Be very careful to keep your upper and lower case letters consistent in linux, else you will find yourself wondering where your data went.