Unraid lessons learnt?

Armageus said:
docs.unraid.net

Licensing | Unraid Docs

Do I own my software license?
docs.unraid.net docs.unraid.net

You can replace your key once every 12 months using their automated system
Click to expand...
Just to clarify, you can automatically replace a licence every 12 months yourself, if you need to do it more than that (you’d be seriously unlucky to have that many drive failures, but it happens), the process is manual requiring an email, you are still given a new key. In the interim, you just grab a demo key with full functionality anyway, then replace it with your new licence key.

I’ve been an UNRaid user for more years than I care to think about, Tom was still answering the emails back then, I have replaced keys, but never because a USB drive has failed, my last 512MB key was only retired this year as space was becoming an issue.
 
Last edited:
DHR said:
Well, reluctantly, and grumpily I've just pushed myself to grab the lifetime license, it's done, I'll move on and stop being grumpy about it :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
14 years ago I recall feeling the same way about spending $89 on two pro licences, looking back now, it was an absolute bargain. I hope in 14 years time, you feel the same :D
 
Thread revival via a google search. What's the recommended licence route nowadays the one year and then see how the land lies and but the lifetime one or leave it without any more updates? Or just buy the lifetime licence now before it goes up?
 
Jimbeam3678 said:
Thread revival via a google search. What's the recommended licence route nowadays the one year and then see how the land lies and but the lifetime one or leave it without any more updates? Or just buy the lifetime licence now before it goes up?
Click to expand...

Will you need updates?

Mines out of date, not had any issues
 
I bought the lifetime straight away, I tend to not update things straight away though, just to let any bugs get ironed out.
 
Jimbeam3678 said:
What have they brought to the table in say the last 18 months? their roadmap is way out of date :p
Click to expand...
I can't say I've kept track on that tbh. UNRAID does everything I need it to do on the sytem it runs on. Runs VMs great, unfortunately the same couldn't be said for TrueNas as I was going to use that.
 
Jimbeam3678 said:
I guess that's the question I'm trying to understand, only been using it for 10 days so it's difficult to say.
Click to expand...

If your setting up plex or jelly fin on it and it works. Your not going to mess with it. Dockers still get updated, so it won't matter.

Im not bothering , cant see what I need changed currently.

I just reinstalled today, mt licence out of date for updates. But on latest version.

Not really sure how it works, assume it won't update from now on.
 
Last edited:
The only licence that makes any financial sense is lifetime, after 4-6 additional years of updates, you're past break even vs starter/unleashed + annual subscription. I don't see the sense in running an unpatched OS for a few years to save money, then again i'm 15 years into this, so what do I know?
 
Last edited:
In my head I was going to take the years licence and then take stock 12 months from now. As mentioned about come 2-3 years time, you'll wish you bought the lifetime license, as with Plex....
 
I would just buy a lifetime and call it done.

That said I don’t actually use Unraid anymore, I got about frustrated with the GUI and documentation being written for system admins which I am not. That said it’s absolutely fantastic for those who don’t want to buy matched drives, the only real downside was storage speed because of this.

I just run a UGREEN NAS these days, KISS and all that.
 
Can you do everything on the UGREEN NAS that you can on Unraid? My ultimate plan is getting to a position where I am happy with it and leave it alone. What were you trying to do with Unraid out of interest?
 
Jimbeam3678 said:
In my head I was going to take the years licence and then take stock 12 months from now. As mentioned about come 2-3 years time, you'll wish you bought the lifetime license, as with Plex....
Click to expand...
This is what I did, after a month I know I'll get the lifetime and probably should have right away
 
Jimbeam3678 said:
Can you do everything on the UGREEN NAS that you can on Unraid? My ultimate plan is getting to a position where I am happy with it and leave it alone. What were you trying to do with Unraid out of interest?
Click to expand...
Yes and no.

First and foremost it’s a hard drive NAS. Secondly it runs stuff like Plex in docker and home assistant in a VM.

A lot of turnkey NAS solutions inc UGREEN can do that. UnRaid can do that and more but I don’t really need the ‘and more’ part.

The ‘and more’ part generally requires you to know what what you are doing. I could know but I don’t have the time or inclination to learn. I want something easier and has less maintenance.

The unraid GUI is somewhat lacking for those looking for something simple. There is some fairly basic stuff that you have to go to a community plug in store to get working like hardware monitoring.

If you set up a VM or docker container there is a plethora of options with no hints why they all mean. If you watch a set up guide, it will just say select this one but no explanation as to why.

I don’t even pretend to know what half the patch notes even mean.

Part of the issues with Unraid are similar to Linux for tech savvy people but aren’t ’tech sweaty people’, ‘normal people’ don’t have a chance. The support is community driven and unfortunately, some of that communities attitude to those who need help is telling them to ‘get good’.

If the solution is ever, ‘run this promo in command line’, which it sometimes is, you’ve already lost 99.9% of people.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good piece of software and I ran it for many years. I just can’t be bothered to keep up with it and the lack of any kind of handholding for even a tech savvy but non expert user is a real turn off.

Edit: on the flip side, I think I had the UGREEN NAS up and running with storage pools in about 5 minutes. It comes with an app for your phone and a bunch inbuilt apps like theatre and photo gallery which will sync from your phone etc. which can displace the need to deal with imch, Plex etc.

If I didn’t need the Plex app for my TV I’d have probably just used the built in theatre app to stream video files to my phone remotely etc.

Turn key isn’t for everyone but they are very good these days.
 
Last edited:
Completely agree with the majority of that, at the risk of upsetting some, I find asking for any type of help linux related most of the time results in the attitude response you described.

Rightly or wrongly I accepted it a long time ago, I've come to the conclusion that's why Gemini exists. :p For the configuration I have done on Unraid so far I pointed Gemini to Github release notes and asked it to configure said docker or plugin. Seems to have worked ok so far, apart from OnlyOffice and Filebrowser:mad:

The only part I have been really cautious about is external access via TailScale

Edit still can't decide on the license type to buy - I have a few weeks to decide yet.
 
Last edited:
Jimbeam3678 said:
Completely agree with the majority of that, at the risk of upsetting some, I find asking for any type of help linux related most of the time results in the attitude response you described.

Rightly or wrongly I accepted it a long time ago, I've come to the conclusion that's why Gemini exists. :p For the configuration I have done on Unraid so far I pointed Gemini to Github release notes and asked it to configure said docker or plugin. Seems to have worked ok so far, apart from OnlyOffice and Filebrowser:mad:

The only part I have been really cautious about is external access via TailScale

Edit still can't decide on the license type to buy - I have a few weeks to decide yet.
Click to expand...
Yes AI bots have been pretty helpful although not issue free as you have found out already.

It’s the same on home assistant, they come up with stuff which is just wrong or based on out of date releases.

I like UnRaid as a piece of software, I just wanted to give a ‘used to do it for years but stopped and went turn key’ perspective as thats not usually how that goes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom