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What is Unraid and how to build an Unraid media server

Show off your HTPC builds, NAS Servers, and any other hardware. Great place to ask for hardware help too.
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Pauven
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Re: What is Unraid and how to build an Unraid media server

Post by Pauven » Wed Apr 12, 2023 10:45 am

Hey Jamie. No, I've never used myservers. I tried to check it out on the Apps page, but for some reason my Unraid box can't receive any updates or display any apps. Also, my plugins page isn't showing updates. I seem to be having some type of network issue, or maybe the Lime-Tech servers are down.
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Jamie
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Re: What is Unraid and how to build an Unraid media server

Post by Jamie » Wed Apr 12, 2023 6:10 pm

Hi Paul,

Were you able to fix your connectivity issues? I just updated unassigned devices and I seem to be able to reach Limetech.

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Re: What is Unraid and how to build an Unraid media server

Post by Pauven » Wed Apr 12, 2023 7:51 pm

No, still not working for me. I restarted the server and that didn't help. Not sure what is going on. I wonder if I'm too far behind on versions, I'm still running 6.9.2. It won't show the app store, plugin updates, or new Unraid versions.

It's possible the problems started when I swapped motherboards a few months ago, and I didn't notice until now.
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Re: What is Unraid and how to build an Unraid media server

Post by Jamie » Thu Apr 13, 2023 4:26 pm

Could be that the ethernet port. Do you have a second port? I keep a usb to ethernet adapter on hand to test these things. ethernet wire can go bad too. I hope that you can get it worked out without replacing the motherboard again. You can also get a cheap ethernet card if you don't want to swap motherboards.

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Re: What is Unraid and how to build an Unraid media server

Post by Pauven » Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:42 pm

It's got 3 ethernet ports, so plenty of redundancy there. I'm connecting to it remotely without issue, and the network config appears to be correct.

It's not just Lime Tech servers it can't connect to. I noticed in the logs it tried to email me a status update, and failed to reach gmail. It appears to be a DNS resolver issue.
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Re: What is Unraid and how to build an Unraid media server

Post by Jamie » Thu Apr 13, 2023 6:42 pm

Interesting. What dns provider are you using? I use opendns.

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Re: What is Unraid and how to build an Unraid media server

Post by Pauven » Thu Apr 13, 2023 6:44 pm

LOL, the fix was laughably simple. Of the 3 ethernet ports, 2 were configured with the same static IP address. I had noticed that before, but figured it didn't matter since no cable was plugged into the 2nd one. Apparently, it mattered...

With that fixed, I was able to check out the My Servers plugin, and watched the entire SpaceInvader One video. It brought back lots of memories for me, for some stuff I read on the Unraid forums a year or so ago. Lime Tech was going in the direction of adding online capabilities to Unraid, and in their first beta go-round, they made it mandatory, and a lot of users freaked out. Many users, like myself, run Unraid mostly offline. Internet goes out, and my server keeps working fine. Things that could previously be done offline, like key registration, was now going to be online only, and they got a lot of pushback for this. Not everyone wants their precious servers exposed to the internet.

So it seems that My Servers is part of the compromise. They made these features optional and bundled them into this plugin. I believe you can still do things the old, offline way, but online promises to be quicker and easier.

Myself, I'm undecided. I've made local backups of my flash drive, and I can't think of a time I wanted to manage my server remotely. So these features, fancy as they are, mostly add risk to my server by exposing it to the internet. But I'm not strongly opposed to it, just slightly. I may change my mind and decide to do this.
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Re: What is Unraid and how to build an Unraid media server

Post by Jamie » Thu Apr 13, 2023 8:38 pm

Interesting. Are your vms offline too? I thought that I read somewhere on the unraid forums that you had to connect to limetech to do the flash drive replacement. When I tried to replace my flashdrive manually it kept trying to get me to install the myservers plugin. Maybe because my unraid server had access to the internet? The only reason I allow access to the internet through my unraid server is because some programs on my windows 10 vm requires access. Maybe I should stop using the vm and move the vm programs to my mymovies server and cut the unraid online access off. I am fearful of allowing a hacker to hack my server. If I can keep the LAN access and stop access outside my home that sounds like a win. The reason I replaced my flash drive is because unraid reported that the old one was corrupted just after I upgraded my unraid server to the newest version.

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Re: What is Unraid and how to build an Unraid media server

Post by Pauven » Fri Apr 14, 2023 9:48 am

No, the VMs remained online. Probably because they have dedicated IP addresses that bridged directly to the eth0 NIC, so they weren't affected by the dupe IP address issue. Only the Unraid software was affected. I guess that's why I didn't notice for over 4 months that Unraid was running offline. To be honest, the lack of plugin update nags was pleasant.

I could be wrong about the flash drive replacement options - Lime Tech might be mandating using the plugin. It seems like a pretty sophisticated solution, probably took a ton of man hours to develop, and the benefit of that expense is greatly reduced licensing support costs going forward for them. I get that, which is one of the main reasons CMC is now free, as licensing was my #1 loss leader (both money and time). From that perspective, I could see why they would want to leverage automation as much as possible. But I thought pushback was strong enough that they had planned to "grandfather" access to the manual pathway for long-term customers that were resistant to the online method. But I haven't been following along lately, been way too busy, so perhaps they changed directions again.

I think you should keep using your VMs. I love mine. And like I said, they remained online even when Unraid was technically offline. One of the benefits of the VM is that you can expose it online and for the most part your underlying Unraid server remains isolated and protected. It's very hard to break out of the VM to access the host system - hard, but not impossible, and the effort is unlikely to be made to access systems like ours, we just aren't very valuable targets. But of course malicious software on any PC, real or virtual, can affect other PC's/servers on your network, so keep internet access minimized as much as possible.

As far as a hacker attacking your Unraid server, the most likely scenario is ransomware on one of your Windows PC's reaching out over the network to encrypt/delete all files on all reachable targets. So even if you keep your Unraid server offline from the internet, it's still vulnerable from other PC's on your network, and generic ransomware is much more prevalent than an individual hacker specifically targeting your Unraid server. The main (only?) protection from this is offline backups. So while reasonably minimizing exposure to the internet is beneficial, it's no replacement for a true offline backup.

Also, one last thought about my Unraid server being offline from the internet - technically it was still reachable. I could access the files and the web pages remotely on my network without issue. So if a hacker broke through my firewalls, they could have accessed it without issue. The only thing that was broken was Unraid's ability to reach out to the internet. So it wasn't protected at all by being "offline", just broken.
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Unraid and gmail notifications

Post by Jamie » Sat May 27, 2023 9:25 pm

HI,

Anyone here use gmail to send unraid notifications to your gmail account? I have been using gmail smtp server for years and it just recently stopped working for unraid and my home security system. After doing some research, I think google finally shut down their smtp server for what they call unsecure apps. I have been using an app password but it looks as though they turned that off. I guess my best option for getting notifications from unraid and my security system is to use pushover which is compatible with both applications. Damn, another weekend ruined. Anyone have any other suggestions other than, just don't need any stinking notifcations. ;)

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