Tidy Up Question

[daytona235]

We may need to file this under Noob stupid questions without enough info. Apologize since I am technically not a noob to UNRAID but I am a bit green with containers and linux in general. 

I have the following folders/shares under /mnt/user/

 

/docker

 - docker.img

/domains

  /VM

 - - vdisk2.img 

/appdata

 - This seems to be where all my docker data is 

/vdisks

 -  *.img files 

 - think these are my virtual machines 

 

/system

 / libvert 

 - libvert.img 

 

I didn't create them. 

 

Is there a way to tidy these up? 

Say move /docker /vdisks /domains under /appdata? without breaking my well running system? 

 

Thank you, 

 

 

Edited September 18, 2020 by daytona235

[Frank1940]

The question you really need to ask is why you want to do this.  OCD is the only reason that I can think of.  You should realize that these 'shares' will exist only if you are using Dockers and/or VM's!   I don't use VM's so I don't see the ones that were created you decided to create a VM.  (I only see   appdata.  Someone who does not use either a Docker or a VM will not see any of the ones that you mentioned.)

 

Now, you do realize that they are only 'shares' because they are top level directories on a disk.  They are  not visible to the outside world unless you made a conscious decision to export them.  (Bad idea-- by the way!)   Furthermore, these are system files that have to persist across a reboot, so they have to stored on permanent media.  This has be be either a hard disk or the boot drive which is a flash drive.  The files can get quite large and could have significant read/write activity.  Not really that great from a reliability standpoint for a flash drive.  Most folks will store these on a cache drive and many of those will use a SSD (particularly if they are using VM's!).  Plus, I am not sure what the size for the VM images files could be.  (The flash drive is limited to being 32GB or less in size.)

 

If you really intent on moving things around, I would suggest that you google    unraid.net move VM folder   then     unraid.net move appdata folder   I don't know if those two strings will find everything you need but you can modify them to get you want you for each directory.

 

Remember if you run into a problem, it will make it very difficult for anyone to help you...

Edited September 18, 2020 by Frank1940

[JonathanM]

I agree with Frank. If you really insist on messing with it, you really need to deep dive into where all those paths are referenced, and make sure they are all changed to point to the new location.

 

It's not just a matter of renaming the folders (which is what you would be doing), it's making sure all the pieces know how to find each other to run properly.

 

If you really insist on trying to "fix" it, I suggest tackling one item at a time.  For example, you seem to have VM's both at the /domains/VM location and /vdisks location. Pick one of the files in vdisks, figure out which VM it is attached to, in the VM xml you can see the current path, and change it to the new path, and move the vdisk file to the new location. Make sure that VM still works.

 

Each piece you move is going to be referenced in at least one, possibly many config or xml files. You will have to make sure all references are corrected. Also, many of these items are in use as soon as the array is started unless you disable the appropriate service, so you have to make sure nothing is actively using the piece you are dealing with at the moment.

 

This is one of those things that's fairly trivial if you have all the knowledge already, but starting from scratch it's going to be a lot of learning.

[daytona235]

You are 100% right - it is OCD  guilty as charged. 
 

Want to confirm everyone who uses Dockers / VMs have them - and this is not some weird thing I managed to do to my server. 

 

And yes - my OCD does not trump my sanity - I don't want to have a super special setup that no one can help me with so I will not do that. Thank you for the advice. 

 

[JonathanM]

5 minutes ago, daytona235 said:

Want to confirm everyone who uses Dockers / VMs have them - and this is not some weird thing I managed to do to my server. 

The main thing that is a little different is the /vdisks folder. Most people leave them under /domains, but at some point you probably selected a custom location for a VM instead of taking the defaults.

[daytona235]

These are all on my cache drives which are fully redundant. 

 

What can I read that would explain the purpose of each directory. 

 

[daytona235]

One last question on the OCD front notice in the image attached how Disk 3 is missing - its cos I made what used to be Disk 3 to be Parity 2.  Is there an easy fix for this or - leave well enough alone? 

 

[Frank1940]

6 hours ago, daytona235 said:

One last question on the OCD front notice in the image attached how Disk 3 is missing - its cos I made what used to be Disk 3 to be Parity 2.  Is there an easy fix for this or - leave well enough alone? 

I waited a while before posting up here as I am not a true expert in walking someone through the steps required.  What you want to do can be done. 

 

Read through this section on converting file systems on an array:

 

     https://wiki.unraid.net/index.php/File_System_Conversion#Mirror_each_disk_with_rsync.2C_preserving_parity

 

Particularly the section entitled "Mirroring procedure to convert drives"   Read and understand the steps 10 through 16.   The steps detail how to reassign a disk from one position to another.  Since you have dual parity, you will have to rebuild parity because the Parity2 calculation is disk location dependent!  So don't click the box for Parity is already valid . 

 

Personally, I would copy out those steps, paste the text into a text document and print out the instructions.  Then mark up the copy, crossing anything that does not have to be done for your somewhat simpler procedure and change the numbers to the exact disk#'s (and disk serial number--using the last four numbers is usually sufficient.)  that you will be working in the reassignment.   Then make a check mark as you do each step. 

[trurl]

8 hours ago, daytona235 said:

These are all on my cache drives

If you want to check this to make sure you can go to Shares - User Shares and click Compute... for each of those shares. That will show how much of each disk each user share uses. Making sure none of those are on the array will improve docker/VM performance (no parity involved) and will allow array disks to spindown (these shares always have open files).

 

13 hours ago, daytona235 said:

I didn't create them

Back in the early days of dockers and VMs on Unraid, I don't think these shares were created for you. I'm pretty sure if you start from scratch only appdata, domains, system are created for you as cache-prefer, and maybe isos. This is in accordance with the settings you have in Settings - Docker and Settings - VM Manager, when you enable these. So I think you probably did create the docker and vdisks share. What you have in docker share is normally part of system share, and what you have in vdisks share is normally part of domains share.

 

I agree don't fix it if it ain't broke. As long as it is working, and all of this is indeed on cache, then just leave it.