Unraid OS 6.9-RC1 is Now Available
Unraid OS 6.9-RC1 is Here!
We are pleased to announce the release of the Unraid 6.9 release candidate. Most of the work in this release is related to upgrading to the Linux 5.9 kernel along with some bug fixes. Given this is a large release with many new features and updates spread across multiple public betas, we wanted to highlight the major ones all in one place here.
As always, before updating, please create a backup of your USB flash device. From the Unraid webgui, go to "Main/Flash/Flash Device Settings" - click "Flash Backup".
Multiple Pools
This new feature permits you to define up to 35 named pools, of up to 30 storage devices per pool. The current "cache pool" is now simply a pool named "cache". Pools are created and managed via the Main page.
When you create a user share or edit an existing user share, you can specify which pool should be associated with that share. The assigned pool functions identically to the current cache pool operation. As with the current "cache pool", a single-device pool may be formatted with either xfs, btrfs, or reiserfs. A multiple-device pool may only be formatted with btrfs. A future release will include support for multiple "Unraid array" pools. We are also considering zfs support.
Note: When you upgrade a server that has a cache pool defined, a backup of config/disk.cfg will be saved to config/disk.cfg.bak, and then cache device assignment settings are moved out of disk.cfg and into a new file, config/pools/cache.cfg. If later you revert back to a pre-6.9 Unraid OS release you will lose your cache device assignments and you will have to manually re-assign devices to cache. As long as you reassign the correct devices, data should remain intact.
For more details on Multiple Pools, please see the forum release announcement.
Multi-Language Support
Another exciting new feature in Unraid 6.9 is the ability to download language packs and use the Unraid OS in a number of different languages.
Currently, English, Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Arabic, simplified Chinese, and Portuguese are available and several others are in the works.
Language packs are installed via the Community Applications plugin - look for a new "Language" category along the left side of CA or you can also search for specific language packs using the search bar.
For more info on Multi-Language Support, please check out our guide here.
Along with Multi-language OS Support
For a breakdown of Multiple Pools, Multi-language Support, and more, check out this Spaceinvader One video!
Unassigned Devices:
We have integrated spin-up/down and temperature monitoring for Unassigned Devices and have coordinated with @dlandon to ensure proper integration with the Unassigned Devices plugin. Please remove Unassigned Devices first before upgrading to 6.9-rc1 and then re-install via Community Apps.
SAS Device Spin up/down:
We should now be able to properly support SAS device spin-up/down (finally) and with extraordinary help from @doron, we are almost there. SAS devices are generally designed for enterprise environments where device spin-down is rare, and many devices have inconsistent behavior surrounding this functionality. This release itself does not include SAS device spin handling built-in but @doron is providing a plugin where we continue to address some nagging details. We expect to have these issues ironed out before stable release and will eventually have this functionality natively integrated into the OS.
Please see the plugin page for more details and known device issues with this functionality.
SSH Improvements
There are changes in /etc/ssh/sshd_conf to improve security (thanks to @Mihai and @ljm42 for the suggestions):
- only the root user is permitted to login via ssh (remember: no traditional users in Unraid OS - just 'root')
- non-null password is now required
- non-root tunneling is disabled
In addition, upon upgrade we ensure the 'config/ssh/root' directory exists on the USB flash boot device; and, we have set up a symlink: /root/.ssh to this directory. This means any files you might put into /root/.ssh will be persistent across reboots.
For more info on SSH Improvements, please see the forum release announcement.
Excessive SSD Writes Fix
Many modern SSD devices, in particular Samsung EVO, do not perform most efficiently using the standard partition layout, and the devices seem to write far more than one would expect. With SSDs, one wants to minimize writes as much as possible.
After extensive testing, we have found a fix to this issue that is detailed here.
Additional "Mover" Capabilities
Since SSD pools are commonly used to store vdisk images, shfs/mover is now aware of:
- sparse files - when a sparse file is moved from one volume to another, it's sparseness is preserved
- NoCOW attribute - when a file or directory in a btrfs volume has the NoCOW attribute set, the attribute is preserved when the file or directory is moved to another btrfs volume.
For more detail on these additional Mover capabilities, please see the forum release announcement.
GPU Driver Integration
Unraid OS now includes selected in-tree GPU drivers: ast (Aspeed), i915 (Intel), amdgpu, and Radeon (AMD). To configure this functionality, please see here.
Nvidia Driver
For each Unraid OS release kernel, starting with 5.8.18, we create separate Nvidia driver packages. A JSON file describing the driver version(s) supported with each kernel can be downloaded here. Each driver package includes the Nvidia vendor Linux driver along with a set of container tools. The container tools include nvidia-container-runtime, nvidia-container-toolkit, and libnvidia-container. These tools are useful in facilitating accelerated transcoding in Docker containers. Thank you very much to community member @ich777 for providing these tools. @ich777 has also provided a handy plugin to facilitate installing the correct driver.
For more info, please see the release announcement and plugin page for more info.
Better Support for Third-Party Modules
Recall that we distribute Linux modules and firmware in separate squashfs files which are read-only mounted at /lib/modules and /lib/firmware. We now set up an overlayfs on each of these mount points, making it possible to install 3rd party modules at boot time. This technique is used to install the Nvidia driver (see below) and may be used by Community Developers to provide an easier way to add modules not included in base Unraid OS.
For more informaton, please see the forum release announcement.
Added workaround for mpt3sas
For devices not being recognized with certain LSI chipsets, we added a new file and fix detailed here.
Version 6.9.0-rc1 2020-12-09 (vs -beta35)
Base distro:
- aaa_elflibs: version 15.0 build 27
- hdparm: version 9.60
- icu4c: version 68.1
- intel-microcode: version 20201118
- kernel-firmware: version 20201130_7455a36
- nginx: version 1.19.5
- openssh: version 8.4p1
- pam: version 1.5.1
- php: version 7.4.13
- samba: version 4.12.10
- xfsprogs: version 5.9.0
Linux kernel:
- version 5.9.13
- md/unraid: version 2.9.17
removed spinup group spinup/spdindown support (functionality moved to emhttpd)
added configurable sync start offset - added iSCSI kernel support:
CONFIG_ISCSI_TARGET: Linux-iSCSI.org iSCSI Target Mode Stack
CONFIG_ISCSI_TARGET_CXGB4: Chelsio iSCSI target offload driver
CONFIG_LOOPBACK_TARGET: TCM Virtual SAS target and Linux/SCSI LDD fabric loopback module
CONFIG_NVME_TARGET: NVMe Target support
CONFIG_NVME_TARGET_LOOP: NVMe loopback device support
CONFIG_NVME_TARGET_PASSTHRU: NVMe Target Passthrough support
CONFIG_TARGET_CORE: Generic Target Core Mod (TCM) and ConfigFS Infrastructure
CONFIG_TCM_FILEIO: TCM/FILEIO Subsystem Plugin for Linux/VFS
CONFIG_TCM_IBLOCK: TCM/IBLOCK Subsystem Plugin for Linux/BLOCK
CONFIG_TCM_PSCSI: TCM/pSCSI Subsystem Plugin for Linux/SCSI
CONFIG_TCM_USER2: TCM/USER Subsystem Plugin for Linux - added USB/IP kernel support:
CONFIG_USBIP_CORE: USB/IP support
CONFIG_USBIP_VHCI_HCD: VHCI hcd
Management:
- emhttpd: implement spinup group spinup/spindown; add spinup/spindown callouts
- emhttpd: get rid of poll_attributes event
- emhttpd: fix disk "SMART controller type" not being honored when reading temperatures
- rsyslog: fix broken "Mirror syslog to flash"
- webgui: Fix wrong docker run URL reference
- webgui: Fix crash when reading very large log files (limiting output to 1000 lines).
- webgui: Fix dismiss all notification
- webgui: Fix Started VMs not appearing in dashboard
- webgui: VM manager: add virtio-win-0.1.190-1
- webgui: Notifications: Fix gap on white / black
- webgui: Do not show CA profiles in Add Container list
- webgui: support spin-up/down and temperature monitoring of unassigned devices
- webgui: VM manager: Fix: Changing from VM VNC graphics to GPU passthrough
- webgui: Change Icon for Motherboard Info from cog (settings) to info