Unraid OS 6.9.0-Beta35 is Now Available

IMPORTANT: This is Beta software. We recommend running on test servers only!

Here's What's New:

GPU Driver Integration

Unraid OS now includes selected in-tree GPU drivers: ast (Aspeed), i915 (Intel), amdgpu and radeon (AMD). These drivers are blacklisted by default via 'conf' files in:

/etc/modprobe.d/ast.conf /etc/modprobe.d/amdgpu.conf /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf /etc/modprobe.d/radeon.confx.

Each of these files has a single line that blacklists the driver, preventing it from being loaded by the Linux kernel.

However, it is possible to override the settings in these files by creating the directory 'config/modprobe.d' on your USB flash boot device and then creating the same named-file in that directory. For example, to unblacklist amdgpu type these commands in a Terminal session:

mkdir /boot/config/modprobe.d touch /boot/config/modprobe.d/amdgpu.conf

When Unraid OS boots, before the Linux kernel executes device discovery, we copy any files from /boot/config/modprobe.d to /etc/modprobe.d. Since amdgpu.conf on the flash is an empty file, it will effectively cancel the driver from being blacklisted.

This technique can be used to set boot-time options for any driver as well.

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, provided those modules are built against the same kernel version. 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: no need to build custom bzimage, bzmodules, bzfirmware, and bzroot files.

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:

https://releases.unraid.net/json

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. A big Thank You! to Community member @ich777 for help and providing the tools. @ich777 has also provided a handy plugin to facilitate installing the correct driver.

Linux Kernel

This release includes Linux kernel 5.8.18. We realize the 5.8 kernel has reached EOL and we are currently busy upgrading to 5.9.