unRAID Server release 4.5-beta4 available

Download.

Most notable new feature is an increase in the max array size from 16 to 20 drives.  Also finally can press the normal power-off switch & have the server gracefully shutdown.

Added the pc speaker driver & 'beep' command described here.  Make your server sound like R2-D2!

There will be one more beta where I want to get this work done before moving on to 5.0:

- hide "private" data in syslog, eg, passwords, names, user share names, etc.

- add webGui control for "read only" parity check

- add Joe L.'s idea of a separate tmpfs for syslog - to prevent runaway syslog from consuming all memory and crashing the system.

- upgrade to latest linux kernel - man those guys churn out new kernels at a furious pace

- a few other goodies

unRAID Server 4.5-beta4 Release Notes
=====================================

Changes from 4.5-beta3 to 4.5-beta4
-----------------------------------

New features:
- Increased maximum number of array devices from 16 to 20 (Pro only).
- Pressing Power button gracefully shuts down the server.
- Disable NCQ on all disk devices that support NCQ.  This typically results in much better write throughput.  A setting called "Force NCQ disabled [yes/no]" is also available in the Disk section of the Settings page of the System Management Utility to override this new behavior.  That is, if this setting is 'yes', then we force NCQ off; if setting is 'no', we leave NCQ queue_depth as-is, ie, whatever linux driver sets it to.

Bug fixes:
- Fixed syslog rotation problem - syslog was rotated, but then syslogd was not restarted.

Other changes:
- Support SAS (Serially-Attached SCSI).
- Support Initio 162x SATA chipset.
- Support the motherboard speaker (beeping).
- Added 'lm_sensors' package.
- Upgrade Samba to version 3.3.3.
- Upgrade memtest to version 2.11 in release zip file.


Changes from 4.5-beta2 to 4.5-beta3
-----------------------------------

Known issues:
- The 'reiserfs' file system is built with kernel-option to enable extended attribute support.  This is necessary for Active Directory.  Even if file system is not mounted with extended attributes, reiserfs still seems to create a hidden file called '.reiserfs_priv' in the volume root. This file is harmless and does not appear in any share.

Bug fixes:
- Fixed problem where all Flash files appeared to have Hidden/System/Archive all set.
- Fixed upgrade problem where 'simple security' was not being initialized properly.
- After formatting a new disk, the 'File system type' was not being updated.
- If cache disk present, should allow 'use cache disk' option in creating new share.
- Fixed problem with mover not moving.

Other changes:
- Changed name of samba include file introduced in -beta2 from 'boot/config/smb.extra' to 'boot/config/smb-extra.conf'.
- Upgrade Samba to (patched) version 3.3.2.  The patch is a bug fix that prevented windows client from removing Read-only attribute (previous versions of samba 3.3.x fail with 'Access denied').
- If security model is not Active Directory don't mount the data disks with acl & extended attributes enabled.
- Prevent recording (ie, writing) 'last access time' when directories and files are read on the Flash.
- Added 'lsof' command.
- Include 'Hardware Monitoring' in the linux kernel build along with this device support:
  AMD Athlon64/FX or Opteron temperature sensor
  Intel Core (2) Duo/Solo temperature sensor
  ITE IT87xx and compatibles
  Winbond W83627HF, W83627THF, W83637HF, W83687THF, W83697HF
  Winbond W83627EHF/DHG


Changes from 4.4.2 to 4.5-beta2
-------------------------------

New features:
- Support Active Directory Service (ADS).  This lets an unRAID server join an Active Directory (AD) domain.
- System Management Utility will now use a CSS style sheet file on the Flash (config/style.css) if present.
- May now read syslog directly via browser by referencing 'http://tower/log/syslog' (substitute 'tower' with your server name).  Actually any 'file' in the /var/log directory can be read via 'http://tower/log/file'.
- May now read arbitrary files on disk and user shares via http protocol by referencing URL 'http://tower/share/<diskN>/...' or 'http://tower/share/user/<sharename>/...' (substitute 'tower' with your server name).
- Samba configuration now 'includes' the file on the Flash 'config/smb.extra' if present.  This is included at the end of the 'global' section just before the share definitions.  This may be used to customize the Samba configuration.
- Added control to enable/disable 'mover' logging.

Bug fixes:
- With user mode security enabled, would not accept 'root' share login until password was set at least once.
- Fixed problem in 'mover' script where mover would attempt to move objects in a top-level directory staring with a '.' character.  These would all fail and cause excessive syslog messages.
- Fixed bug in 'logrotate' which would prevent syslog from rotating.

Other changes:
- Part of adding AD support: Removed "User security [enabled/disabled]" control from Shares page, and added "Share security [simple/User Level/Active Directory]" control to Settings page:
  unRAID 'Basic' (free version) supports only 'Simple' share security model;
  unRAID 'Plus' supports 'Simple' and 'User Level' share security models only;
  unRAID 'Pro' supports all share security models ('Simple', 'User Level', and 'Active Directory').
- Removed System Management Utility control for setting SMB ports; this can be done via 'config/smb.extra' if desired.
- Change spin-down logic to account for external programs spinning drives up/down.
- Per user request, added '/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6.0.9'
- Upgraded to linux kernel 2.6.28.4.
- Upgraded to samba 3.3.0.


Upgrade Instructions (Please Read Carefully)
============================================

If you are currently running unRAID Server 4.2-beta1 or higher (including 4.2.x 'final'), please copy the following files from the new release to the root of your Flash device:
    bzimage
    bzroot

If you are currently running unRAID server 4.0 or 4.1, please copy the following files from the new release to the root of your Flash device:
    bzimage
    bzroot
    syslinux.cfg
    menu.c32
    memtest

This can be done either by plugging the Flash into your PC or, by copying the files to the 'flash' share on your running server.  The server must then be rebooted.

If you are currently running unRAID Server 3.0-beta1 or higher, please follow these steps to upgrade:

1. Referring to the System Management Utility 'Main' page, make a note of each disks's model/serial number; you will need this information later.

2. Shut down your server, remove the Flash and plug it into your PC.

3. Right-click your Flash device listed under My Computer and select Properties.  Make sure the volume label is set to "UNRAID" (without the quotes) and click OK.  You do NOT need to format the Flash.

4. Copy the files from the new release to the root of your Flash device.

5. Right-click your Flash device listed under My Computer and select Eject.  Remove the Flash, install in your server and power-up.

6. After your server has booted up, the System Management Utility 'Main' page will probably show no devices; this is OK, navigate to the 'Devices' page. Using the model/serial number information gathered in step 1, assign each of your hard drives to the correct disk slot.

7. Go back to the 'Main' page and your devices should appear correctly.  You may now Start the array.


If you are installing this release to a new Flash, please refer to instructions on our website at:

http://www.lime-technology.com/wordpress/?page_id=19

Change notes added to the wiki

*Edit: Not bad for 2 minutes after release

Change notes added to the wiki

 

*Edit: Not bad for 2 minutes after release

I think you set a new record.

Compliments on this release. Beep and upgrade to 20 drives are personal milestones for me. I had a 18 hour power cut this week so the inclusion of the power of from switch is a serious data saving tool as well.

Stating the completely obvious the upgrade to 20 drives reduces my per GB cost by about 20-25%. Thats always good

And finally the syslog fix means i can track down where all those dupe files are.

Will be upgrading today  after i work on my garden

Download.

 

Most notable new feature is an increase in the max array size from 16 to 20 drives. 

YES! 

Very nice. Thanks for this one!

great thanks!

now my controller is most probably supported (haven't tested yet) - hope Bubba incorporates 4.5 and his "add-in"

I can now see my SATA drives on my SAS controller. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3109.msg25851#msg25851 but without the kernel update I still get the HDIO_GET_IDENTITY bug.  It is one step closer which is great.  Thanks Tom

From Tom in an earlier email I recieved

Well there's good news and bad news... The good news is that this problem (sas driver correctly handling HDIO_GET_IDENTITY) has been identified and a kernel patch generated: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.scsi/47723

The bad news is that this patch made it into 2.6.29 kernel and unRAID is using 2.6.28.4 at present. So... this will require updating to 2.6.29 which probably won't happen in this unRAID release cycle (4.5).  However if you have been following other discussions on forum you might know that I'm also working on unRAID 5.0.  I'll look into updating the kernel in that release.

Installed flawlessly as expected.

And it beeped at me when i booted it up. A grown man smiling at a computer beeping doesn't get more cool than that

Most notable new feature is an increase in the max array size from 16 to 20 drives.  Also finally can press the normal power-off switch & have the server gracefully shutdown.

WOW, thanks. I keep talking myself out of a Norco case and now this. 

I got bit by the syslog bug last night so I'm eagerly installing this.

I hope this fixes the spin down problem I've been facing in Beta 2. I would schedule the drive to spin down after 4 hrs but unraid web page wouldn't show them flashing or that they had spun down. I could tell they were down as i would hear them spin back up when active.

I'll let y'all know in 9hrs

Download.

 

 

Changes from 4.4.2 to 4.5-beta2

-------------------------------

 

New features:

- Support Active Directory Service (ADS).  This lets an unRAID server join an Active Directory (AD) domain.

 

I run a small Windows Domain at home rather than a workgroup type setup.  This started life under Windows NT 4 using NT Server as the domain controller and a few years ago I migrated the domain controller role to a Debian Linux box running a Samba 3.x service. 

I presume that it should now be possible for my unRAID box (running 4.5-beta2 or higher) to join my domain (even though I don't have an active directory server for the accounts - these are just done through Samba's local database).

If this is possible what are the steps to do it?  Is this all through the unRAID web interface or do I need to do a "net join" type command from the shell?

I'm quite interested in this because I just got one of the SageTV HD Theater units and if there is a domain present on the LAN it will not show any machines that are not in the domain, so it cannot see my unRAID box where all the media resides...

Regards,

Stephen

after letting the raid sync all nite, this fixed the light notification of spun down drive problem.

Just for info, my motherboard is the Asus P5B-E, I upgraded to beta 4 without a problem but with "Force NCQ Disabled" set to ON my Parity sync speeds dropped from about 96Mb/s to about 29Mb/s and my transfer rates from about 25Mb/s to under 1Mb/s. It's not a problem as I just set it to OFF but I thought somebody might be interested.

Santan.

 

Just for info, my motherboard is the Asus P5B-E, I upgraded to beta 4 without a problem but with "Force NCQ Disabled" set to ON my Parity sync speeds dropped from about 96Mb/s to about 29Mb/s and my transfer rates from about 25Mb/s to under 1Mb/s. It's not a problem as I just set it to OFF but I thought somebody might be interested.

 

 

Santan.

Yes that's interesting.  Did you run parity 'sync' or parity 'check' (sync writes parity, check just reads)?

Wonder if you woudn't mind running an experiment?  I believe that board bios can have SATA ports configured to either "IDE" or "AHCI" mode.  What mode do you have it running in?  If possible, set to the 'other' mode and re-run the operation with both settings of 'Force NCQ Disabled' & then report your results.

Just wondering of the SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 is now supported (PCI-e x4 / 8 drive controller)?

See here and here

Many might need a controller like this to get to 20 drives without overloading the PCI bus.

No problem, I'm not near the machine at the moment but I'll give it a go tomorrow and report back.

Just wondering of the SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 is now supported (PCI-e x4 / 8 drive controller)?

 

See here and here

 

Many might need a controller like this to get to 20 drives without overloading the PCI bus.

I posted about another card earlier.  More than likely the controller card will see the drives as SAS which is fine as unraid will now detect them    The bad news is there is a bug in the HDIO_GET_IDENTITY but it is fixed in the 2.6.29 kernel which should be part of the next beta release.  Post on my dealings with a SAS card http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3109.0

The bad news is there is a bug in the HDIO_GET_IDENTITY but it is fixed in the 2.6.29 kernel which should be part of the next beta release.

Testing 4.5-beta5 now which has kernel 2.6.29.1.  Should be able to post this week.

Still having an issue with the "Spin Up" button on the web interface:

Clicking it gives this in the syslog:

Apr 14 11:52:17 RCNAS emhttp: Spinning up all drives...
Apr 14 11:52:26 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (59): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/sdc >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:52:26 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (60): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/sdd >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:52:27 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (61): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/sde >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:52:30 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (62): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hdf >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:52:30 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (63): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hde >/dev/null

Still having an issue with the "Spin Up" button on the web interface:

Clicking it gives this in the syslog:

Apr 14 11:52:17 RCNAS emhttp: Spinning up all drives...
Apr 14 11:52:26 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (59): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/sdc >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:52:26 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (60): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/sdd >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:52:27 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (61): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/sde >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:52:30 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (62): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hdf >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:52:30 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (63): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hde >/dev/null

Excerpt from my syslog when "Spin Up" button pressed on main web-interface page.

Apr 14 11:55:37 Tower emhttp: Spinning up all drives...
Apr 14 11:56:02 Tower emhttp: shcmd (111): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hde >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:56:02 Tower emhttp: shcmd (112): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hdf >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:56:03 Tower emhttp: shcmd (113): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hdg >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:56:03 Tower emhttp: shcmd (114): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hdh >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:56:03 Tower emhttp: shcmd (115): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hdk >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:56:03 Tower emhttp: shcmd (116): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hda >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:56:03 Tower emhttp: shcmd (117): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/sde >/dev/null

Joe L.

The memtest file included in unRAID Server 4.5-beta4.zip is actually the zip of the actual memtest tool.  If you try to run it, from the boot menu, you will get a corrupt kernel image error.  The memtest is actually available, if you extract it from the server distro, then extract the memtest86+-2.10.bin from within memtest, and rename it to memtest, and copy it to the flash.  (That memtest86+-2.10.bin is actually memtest86+-2.11.bin - their naming mistake.)

Still having an issue with the "Spin Up" button on the web interface:

Clicking it gives this in the syslog:

Apr 14 11:52:17 RCNAS emhttp: Spinning up all drives...
Apr 14 11:52:26 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (59): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/sdc >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:52:26 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (60): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/sdd >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:52:27 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (61): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/sde >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:52:30 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (62): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hdf >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:52:30 RCNAS emhttp: shcmd (63): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hde >/dev/null

Same here... "-y" option is putting the drives to sleep, not spinning them up..

 

Excerpt from my syslog when "Spin Up" button pressed on main web-interface page.

Apr 14 11:55:37 Tower emhttp: Spinning up all drives...
Apr 14 11:56:02 Tower emhttp: shcmd (111): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hde >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:56:02 Tower emhttp: shcmd (112): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hdf >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:56:03 Tower emhttp: shcmd (113): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hdg >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:56:03 Tower emhttp: shcmd (114): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hdh >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:56:03 Tower emhttp: shcmd (115): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hdk >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:56:03 Tower emhttp: shcmd (116): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/hda >/dev/null
Apr 14 11:56:03 Tower emhttp: shcmd (117): /usr/sbin/hdparm -y /dev/sde >/dev/null

 

Joe L.

My money is on a missing break statement following the spin up commands, so it then falls into the next case statement group, the spin down loop.

My money is on a missing break statement following the spin up commands, so it then falls into the next case statement group, the spin down loop.

(Been there, done that, got the "T-shirt")

Sold mine on eBay!!

I need to report that there is a problem in the startup of the NTP daemon, for some but not all users.  It is not starting successfully for me, and judging by all of the syslogs I've checked, it appears it is not starting for perhaps a third of other users either.  A typical syslog line sequence is:

Mar 17 19:59:17 Media ntpd_initres[1464]: host name not found: pool.ntp.org
Mar 17 19:59:17 Media ntpd_initres[1464]: couldn't resolve `pool.ntp.org', giving up on it

Mine is:

Apr 14 10:04:46 JacoBack ntpd_initres[1430]: host name not found: 0.us.pool.ntp.org
Apr 14 10:04:46 JacoBack ntpd_initres[1430]: couldn't resolve `0.us.pool.ntp.org', giving up on it
Apr 14 10:04:47 JacoBack ntpd_initres[1430]: host name not found: 1.us.pool.ntp.org
Apr 14 10:04:47 JacoBack ntpd_initres[1430]: couldn't resolve `1.us.pool.ntp.org', giving up on it
Apr 14 10:04:48 JacoBack ntpd_initres[1430]: host name not found: 2.us.pool.ntp.org
Apr 14 10:04:48 JacoBack ntpd_initres[1430]: couldn't resolve `2.us.pool.ntp.org', giving up on it

Waiting awhile and checking, using my show_ntp script below, shows no time servers associated and no drift file created, and whenever I do initiate it myself (mimic'ing the rc.ntp restart plus copy of my drift file), it starts up correctly and a syslog line indicates a sizable reset of the time, which shows it was configured correctly but has not been working at all.  I first discovered this when I found the time was off by about 7 minutes.

A way for users currently to kick-start it, is to go to the Settings tab and click the Apply button for the Date and Time section.  Your syslog will then confirm it is working, and the first reset amount will show how much it was off.

I use a simple script to monitor it, called show_ntp:

ntpq -p
ls -l /etc/ntp/drift
cat /etc/ntp/drift

It shows the current time servers, and various parameters of their performance, then the location of the drift file and when it was last updated, and the value of the drift.

I would like to request a small enhancement.  Could the NTP startup look for a drift file on the flash and copy it first (if it exists)?  Perhaps cp /boot/config/drift /etc/ntp/drift.  It avoids a bunch of syslog messages, while it 'trains' the NTP tool.  A user could copy their drift file there, one that is at least a few days to a week old.